Leader of anti-Semitic Hungarian political party discovers he’s Jewish

Don’t you just hate it when this happens:

One of the leaders of Hungary’s Jobbik Party, which the Anti-Defamation League says is one of the few political parties in Europe to overtly campaign with anti-Semitic materials, has discovered that he is himself a Jew.

As the AP says, Csanad Szegedi had in the past railed about the “Jewishness” of the political class. According to the ADL, his party’s presidential candidate referred to Israeli Jews as “lice-infested, dirty murderers.”

For Szegedi all of this came to a screeching halt, when in 2010 a prisoner confronted him with evidence that he had Jewish roots. According to the AP, Szegedi tried to bribe the prisoner to keep him quiet, but rumors and innuendo reached a fever pitch by late last year and in June, Szegedi conceded that his mother was a Jew. According to Jewish law, that makes Szegedi Jewish, too.

That’s from NPR. Much more from the AP and JTA.

Csanad Szegedi discovering he’s Jewish—good for the Jews?

My knee-jerk reaction is ask why any Jew would want to call him a fellow MOT. On the other hand, maybe Szegedi can make a change in the Jobbik Party as a result of this revelation.

Moreover, this story is not as surprising as it seems at first blush. History is replete with just anti-Semites ignorant of their own Jewishness and also closet Jews whose anti-Semitism is motivated by a hatred of their own people.