One of Trump's advisers goes around wearing a Nazi collaborator medal

Sebastian Gorka is, not unlike Trump, terrible

Sebastian Gorka is the deputy assistant to President Trump. He’s a rabid anti-Islamic presence in the world. As Mic explains:

Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent, was a professor and Breitbart's national security editor before joining the Trump team. A regular fixture on Fox News, he also has ties to the anti-Muslim right. Gorka was arrested in early 2016 for trying to take a gun through airport security (charges were dropped after six months of good behavior as part of a plea deal). He recently suggested the Trump administration uses — and will continue to use — the term "fake news" to describe media outlets that are critical of the president.

Last week, Gorka was the talking face brought out to push propaganda after Trump chose not to mention Jews or the Holocaust during his Holocaust Remembrance Day speech.

Gorka replied by calling criticism of the statement "asinine," arguing that it was motivated by the media's desire to attack Trump.

"It's a Holocaust remembrance statement," Gorka said. "No, I'm not going to admit it. Because it's asinine. It's absurd. You're making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it's about the Holocaust because that's what the statement's about. It's only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the President."

Gorka is also a proponent of calling everything “fake news” that isn’t a lie being told by the Trump administration. LobeLog points out that having Gorka of all people come out to talk about something related to the Holocaust Remembrance Day is “strange,” because Gorka seems to like to wear the uniform of a Nazi collaborator.

He has appeared in multiple photographs wearing the medal of a Hungarian group listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Inauguration night

The medal is from the order vitézi rend.

The order of Vitezi

The group has the distinction of being on a list of Nazi collaborators at the State Department. According to LobeLog:

Eva Balogh, founder of the news analysis blog Hungarian Spectrum and former professor of Eastern European History at Yale University, confirmed to LobeLog the identity of the medal worn by Gorka. She said:

Yes, the medal is of the “vitézi rend” established by Miklós Horthy in 1920. He, as a mere governor, didn’t have the privilege to ennoble his subjects as the king could do before 1918, and therefore the “knightly order” he established was a kind of compensation for him. Officers and even enlisted men of exceptional valor could become knights. Between 1920 and 1944 there were 23,000 such knights. The title was inheritable by the oldest son. I found information that makes it clear that Gorka’s father, Pál Gorka, used the title. However, since he was born in 1930 he couldn’t himself be the one “knighted.” So, most likely, it was Gorka’s grandfather who was the original recipient.

Horthy would become the head of Hungary.

Unlike Poland, which was under German rule, Hungary was a willing ally of Nazi Germany.  Hungary adopted antisemitic legislation emulating Germany’s Nuremberg Laws beginning in 1938. With its entry into the war in 1941, Hungary sent 100,000 Jewish men to forced labor, where 40,000 died. That same year, the Hungarian government deported at least 15,000 Jews to German-occupied Ukraine, where they were murdered.

Although Hungary was initially resistant to mass deportations of its Jews, in early 1944 it agreed to do so. After the Germans occupied the country in March 1944, they sent a small SS detachment led by Adolf Eichmann to Budapest to work with a newly appointed prime minister and a more cooperative government. With the approval of Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian head of state, the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, police, gendarmerie, and local civilian administrators carried out the deportations. In a matter of weeks, from May to early July, they forced 440,000 Jews into ghettos, stripped them of their possessions, and loaded them into trains. Some 425,000 were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. More than three-quarters of them were gassed on arrival, and additional tens of thousands died from disease, starvation, and harsh treatment.   

Seventy-five percent of Hungary’s Jews would be dead by the end of the Holocaust. So the man that started the group that Gorky wants historic “heritage” ties to was a huge anti-Semite who collaborated in the murder of Jewish men, women, and children.

“In post-World War II Hungary, no noble titles of any sort can be officially used,” said Balogh. “The ‘knightly order’ no longer officially exists. However, right-wing émigrés kept the order going abroad.”

She later added, “Many supporters of the Horthy regime were enamored by the Nazis and Hitler and the ‘knights’ were especially so. Put it that way, after 1948 one wouldn’t have bragged about his father being a ‘vitéz.’ Lately, however, especially since 2010, it has become fashionable again to boast about such ‘illustrious’ ancestors.”

Are they Nazis? No. Do they kind of want to maybe be Nazis? Possibly. Do people like Gorka and others want to re-imagine right-wing fascistic European history romantically? Yes.