Well this is awkward. Remember the old skit on the Dave Chappelle Show about the White Surpremicist leader Clayton Bigsby, who was blind and therefore didn't realize he was black? No big surprise here, but Chappelle was barking up the right tree.
We've got a case in Hungary that has come to light and received international attention today, because Csanád Szegedi, a pillar of the far-right Jobbick political party, had to resign after he discovered he was Jewish.
Szegedi had previously ranted against Jews, saying they were "buying up" the country. His party's President called Jews "lice-infested, dirty murderers."
Then, in 2010, a man named Zoltan Ambrus confronted Szegedi with evidence that he has Jewish roots. In a secretly recorded conversation, Szegedi sounds genuinely surprised about his lineage, and then offers to bribe Ambrus to keep quiet. Ambrus refused the bribed.
As it turned out, not only is Szegedi's mother Jewish, his grandmother survived Auschwitch, and his grandfather worked in forced labor camps.
Szegedi has acknowledged in interviews to Hungarian media that he is now aware of his Jewish roots, though he also now denies ever making Anti-Semitic comments. He said that after hearing the news from Ambrus, he had a long conversation with his grandmother about his family's history as Orthodox Jews.
"It was then that it dawned on me that my grandmother really is Jewish," Szegedi told Hir TV. "I asked her how the deportations happened. She was in Auschwitz and Dachau and she was the only survivor in the extended family."
So this story is depressingly ironic, and maybe just a little bit funny? Insofar as Anti-Semitism can be funny?
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