Neo-Nazi meeting disguised as a sports event will take place in Budapest

Violent key figures and groups from neo-Nazi communities in several European countries are expected to come to Budapest this weekend to a major radical nationalist gathering disguised as a sports event.

The European Fight Night event is considered by the far right as the biggest radical nationalist gathering since Covid. It will be held in Budapest, Hungary, this weekend on May 6, reports the tev.hu. According to Telex, a Hungarian news portal, analysts have long warned that the international far-right is using combat sports as a means of preparing for physical confrontation and attacks against perceived enemies.

European Fight Night publicly names three main organisers: the Hungarian Legio Hungaria, the German Kampf der Nibelungen („Battle of the Nibelungs”) and Pride France.

Legio Hungaria, a relatively small, far-right group in Hungary, has managed to attract attention through its actions, including the vandalising of a Jewish community centre in 2019, the destruction of a Black Lives Matter statue in Budapest in 2021, and the alleged attack of journalists covering a far-right event in 2023.

Pride France’s leader, Tomasz Szkatulski, is a Polish-born French neo-Nazi who was sentenced to a year in prison in 2008 for assaulting a man of African descent with a bicycle chain; he is also accused of involvement in other acts of violence, including attacks on LGBT+ facilities.

„Key violent figures and groups from neo-Nazi communities in many European countries are expected to come to Budapest,” said German author Robert Claus, who has written a book about the far-right militant sports scenes in Europe.

„They are basically fascist activists with a violent ideology who use martial arts to train themselves for racist attacks and other violent acts.”

By holding concerts and other events alongside the fights, the international neo-Nazi scene gets the combination of violence and sport, political hatred and music, the cultural package that neo-Nazism in its pre-terrorist form offers, Claus warned.

The police have not yet responded to the question of whether they are aware of the event and whether they have taken or plan to take any action to prevent it.