National Policy Institute’s European Congress Held Successfully Despite It All—Hall Packed

More than seventy people attended the National Policy Institute’s First European Conference in Budapest, Hungary, defying the efforts of the French, Russian, and especially Hungarian governments to ban the event.

The conference was held in a large hall at a restaurant in Budapest.  Registered guests were escorted from a meet-up point to the venue so as to prevent the government from forcing the venue to cancel the event.

Several journalists were in attendance, including several who had somehow found out the location of the meetup point.  Jared Taylor held an impromptu press conference with them at a nearby hotel.

Unfortunately for NPI, government pressure forced speakers from other European nations to cancel their attendance.   The two speakers who remained to address the event were American Renasissance‘s Taylor and former diplomat and professor Tomislav Sunić.

Sunić focused his talk on the technical failures of the European Union, especially its incoherent foreign policy and inconsistent development.  He also traced the failure of European institutions, especially the Catholic Church, to protect European identity.

Jared Taylor gave an emotional speech calling for unity between all European and European-descended populations.  He also paid tribute to the efforts of Hungarian and other Central and Eastern European nationalists, but warned them not to fall for the same temptation of mass immigration that is ravaging Western Europe and the United States.  His call for Europeans around the world to regard each other as brothers and sisters received a standing ovation.

The amount of attendees was surprising considering the raid on an informal gathering launched by Hungarian police Friday night, which one would think would have scared off most people.  There was plenty of gallows humor by organizers and guests about going to prison.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of those who registered for the event actually attended the event, despite the Hungarian government’s ban, rumors of cancellation, the police raid on a gathering of attendees, and the arrest and eventual deportation of the lead organizer.  If the Hungarian government was attempting to simply intimidate people from coming to the conference, it failed.

It also led to an unexpected side effect — most of the discussions after the event from the various national groups centered on which country would get to hold the European Congress next year.