Tamas Gaudi-Nagy, a former far-right politician, and the attorney representing the two plaintiffs in the case, Zoltan Degi and Laszlo Racz Szabo, said in a TV interview on Friday that such “hurtful, insulting, and unacceptable” language had injured the dignity of his clients as members of the Hungarian nation, because national consciousness was so closely tied to the legacy of the Magyar tribes.
Mr. Tota disagreed, saying that the court either “became very lost in the labyrinth of literary comprehension,” or “they had the ruling before they came up with the reasoning.”
The lawsuit against Mr. Tota was a landmark case that built on two legal provisions adopted during Mr. Orban’s tenure that give legal recourse to Hungarians who feel their national identity has come under assault.
Petra Bard, a professor and researcher of E.U. law at Central European University in Budapest and Vienna, said that the law set a dangerous precedent that could be broadly applied to journalists whose writings on politics were deemed provocative.
