Cowardice Masquerading as Virtue: Cleveland 1971 and Europe 2026

I have lived in Budapest for most of the last five years and traveled extensively throughout Western Europe in that time. Over and over again in my travels, I face Europeans demanding that I justify the policies of that ‘monster,’ Viktor Orbán. To be fair, they are under no obligation to support Orbán and his Fidesz party, but it would be nice if these critics had any idea what they were talking about. They usually don’t—especially when it comes to migration.

Long ago, I concluded that these Europeans, including British bien-pensants, have to scapegoat Orbán to escape blame for the messes they have made in their own countries via mass migration. I always invite them to Budapest to see for themselves what it is like to live in a safe, well-ordered city—one that achieves that not by heavy policing, but because it is not home to a population that is internally lawless and that hates the culture that has taken them in.

It has puzzled me why it is so difficult for otherwise intelligent Europeans to see what is right in front of their eyes regarding crime and other migrant problems—or, if they do see it, why they won’t allow themselves to say it and do something about it. Along those lines, I have found it difficult to understand why white Europeans get so uncomfortable when I, a foreigner, talk about it.

And then the other day I read this amazing story from The New York Times, published in 1971. It’s the kind of piece that the liberal Times would never publish today. It was written by Paul Wilkes, a journalist of Slovak migrant heritage. In it, he returns to his hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, to see what happened to his old ethnic neighborhood. The blacks were moving in, and the white ethnics were moving out.

Living on Forest Avenue after the war and through the first half of the nineteen‐fifties surely fulfilled all the dreams of the Slovak and Hungarian immigrants and their offspring. There was regular work nearby, the brick streets were clean, lawns were mowed and—except for some home‐grown hooligans who might beat you up—it was safe. Blacks? … They lived on the crumbling rim of the downtown area seemingly content to wallow in their poverty. They were at once out of mind and a dull pain that would surely trouble us more in days to come.

“We had a lot of trouble with school children being beaten, in fact the entire baseball team and their coaches were overrun by a gang of 30. I guess you heard about the eighth‐grade girl who was raped by four boys from Audubon.” I had, and Audubon, a public junior high school now almost entirely black though surrounded by a predominantly white neighborhood, was the reason given by many people for the old neighborhood’s current state.

A recent event had intensified the resentment in the neighborhood: the bludgeon slaying of Joe Toke, who was killed during a holdup at the service station he had run for more than 40 years. Had his murder been mentioned from the pulpit? “No, my own judgment tells me it was best not to mention him,” and Father Michael hesitated before saying, with no hint of expression on his face, “I wouldn’t want to pinpoint the problem.”

Europe 2026, meet Cleveland 1971. The decent people who see what’s happening won’t say so because they don’t want to be accused of being racist, nor do they want to be racist.

It’s good and right not to want to be racist! But not at the expense of the truth—especially a truth that, if not faced, will destroy the neighborhood (or the country).

“To people around here, Joe was a fixture, the honest businessman who had made it by hard work,” his widow said. “We all knew the neighborhood was changing, but then this. … I think of leaving the neighborhood now, but where would I go? Everything I know is here. I just want those killers found, and I want them to get their due.”

“Everything I know is here,” she said—and besides, where would she go? One thinks of the despairing line from the French protagonist in Michel Houllebecq’s 2015 novel Submission. When his Jewish girlfriend tells him she and her family are moving to Israel to escape violence and persecution by Muslim migrants, he muses sadly, “There is no Israel for me.”

That is, there’s nowhere to escape to. Well, there is Hungary—and Poland, and other European Union countries of Central Europe, where peoples and governments are determined not to allow their countries to be ruined by mass migration. But it’s still not home for Western Europeans, and besides, if Brussels has its way, Hungary and the Central European countries will be compelled to accept the same ruin that has overtaken them, all in the name of upholding a false left-wing narrative.

I learned something else from reading the story about 1971 Cleveland. According to 2025 figures, Cleveland is one of the most violent cities in America, with most crime concentrated on its east side—the very neighborhoods that used to be home to Slovaks, Hungarians, and other white European immigrants. They lost those neighborhoods, and those places are not going to come back.

Reading the story from 1971, I saw something of myself in the reaction of that priest. I am 59 years old and was raised in the wake of the civil rights movement, when black Americans fought for and won their full constitutional rights, overturning segregationist laws in the American South. Their cause was noble and just. My generation was raised to believe in the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said he had a dream of an America where people would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Educated white people of my generation—even conservatives like me—were raised to police ourselves for racist thoughts and attitudes. This was no bad thing. In the South, where I grew up, most whites of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation were openly racist. We wanted to put that ugliness behind us. I don’t apologize for that.

But a funny thing happened: most of us turned into a version of that Cleveland priest, Father Michael, who saw what was going on with black crime and dysfunction but who refused to acknowledge it. Why didn’t he? Why didn’t we? Because we did not want to say anything that would give aid and comfort to actual bigots.

This was cowardice masquerading as virtue. Most of us made a point of avoiding majority-black neighborhoods, not visiting them, and certainly not living in them, because we knew perfectly well that those places were violent. We middle-class, educated whites made sure that we lived in safer, predominantly white neighborhoods, even as we passed judgment on working-class white people who lacked the discretion to avert their eyes from the ugly truth and to keep their mouths shut.

Today in America, in the aftermath of the Great Awokening, we have a new problem. The Great Awokening, which began around 2010 and lasted until Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, the media, universities, and all the institutions of American life taught young whites, especially white males, that they are uniquely evil. That they are what’s wrong with America. That their purpose in life is to be scapegoats for the failures of black America.

Many of them have not only refused that evil narrative—which is a good thing—but have overcompensated by becoming actual racists. If I’m honest, older people like me bear some of the blame for this terrible development. We saw, or should have seen, what was happening, but we said nothing, both out of fear of being called racist and out of fear of actually being racist. These kids grew up seeing that liberal whites joined in the bigotry against them, and far too many of us conservative whites stayed silent, too ashamed or embarrassed to speak out.

I realized that it’s easy for me, as a foreigner, to see the problems with migrant crime and dysfunction in Europe and say what is plain. I wasn’t raised in Europe, so I have not absorbed the bourgeois taboos against noticing. But when something similar was happening in America over my lifetime, people like me behaved like ‘respectable’ Europeans do today: we averted our gaze, shut our mouths, and looked down on white working-class bigotry.

That has not worked out well for America. And it will destroy Europe—indeed, it is destroying Europe. Those native Europeans who do notice it, and speak out against it, face both social and criminal sanctions. Those European leaders, like Viktor Orbán, who see what has happened to Britain and Western Europe, and who fight to preserve the peace of their own countries by keeping disruptive migrants out, must face the full force of militant Brussels technocrats.

For now, Hungary is the Israel of the Magyars. Slovakia is the Israel of the Slovaks; Czechia is the Israel of the Czechs. Poland is the Israel of the Poles. And so forth. If they can keep it. To keep it, Central Europeans—both leaders and voters—must never be like 1971 Cleveland’s Father Michael and his contemporary analogs (including the pope) and refuse to “pinpoint the problem.”

In Vienna, a Turkish Muslim city councilor from the Socialist Party is now denouncing a proposal to erect a monument to King Jan III Sobieski, the Polish monarch who led the Christian armies to victory against besieging Ottoman forces in 1683. She calls it “Islamophobic”—as if the people of Vienna at that time had no reason to fear the Islamic armies trying to conquer them! This councilor’s protest is outrageously insulting, and the mindset behind it, if not defeated, will allow the sultan’s descendants to accomplish peacefully what his armies could not do.

‘Respectable’ liberals and conservatives of Europe had better not leave it to the so-called ‘far right’ to defend Vienna’s culture and heritage. If they do, then these timid middle-class Europeans will bear some fault should a truly racist extreme right arise to do what any patriot with common sense would do: defend the neighborhood and the homeland from those who seek to change it beyond recognition.

Viennese have this problem. Budapesters do not. Europeans should ask themselves why.

Message from Jim Robinson:

Dear FRiends,

We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.

If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:

Click here: to donate by Credit Card

Or here: to donate by PayPal

Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794

Thank you very much and God bless you,

Jim

Even during the fall of the Roman Empire, there were a number of eras of renaissance/renewal prior to the final collapse. We are experiencing one now. There may be more in the future, meaning America doesn’t have to cease in our time. But we will never be what we have been, and the world will long regret what it did to us, with our own reckless consent.

I lived in Budapest twice in 97-98 and again in 2003-2004. I learned the language and kept up with the country since then. I too am from the South. He's 59, I'm 55. My parents were from Akron which experienced the same things Cleveland has.

His experiences and mine were different. I rejected the obvious racism and discrimination directed against White men right from the start. I said so in college and said so again in Law school. So-called "affirmative action" IS racial discrimination and is wrong. It is also unconstitutional whether SCOTUS would admit it or not. All my life I have been discriminated against for being born a White Male....and no I don't give a DAMN if Leftists try to mock me for saying it. Its undeniably true.

Oh, and I'm openly proud of my heritage - European, American and Southern, too. I don't begrudge anybody else being proud of their heritage but don't even try to tell me not to be proud of mine.

And yes, I've had the same conversations about Viktor Orban/Hungary with some of my family who are also quite ignorant believing the BS spewed about him/them by the lying leftist Corporate Media. As I tell them and everyone else Legalabb otven ev a jovore maygarorsag meg magyar lesz. Hala Istennek! Lehet as ugyanaz mondani nemetorsagrol? Franciarol? Angliarol? Biztos hogy nem.

At least in 50 years Hungary will still be Hungarian. THANK GOD! Is it possible to say the same about Germany? France? England? Certainly not.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.