BUDAPEST, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- The far right was gaining momentum in Hungary since winning seats in the European Parliament in June elections, an analyst for the Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute said Wednesday.

    Addressing a conference organized by the Hungarian Antiracist Foundation in Budapest, Attila Juhasz said political support for the far right was equivalent to that of a medium-sized political party, even though the radical right Jobbik Party -- the Movement for a Better Hungary -- currently had no seats in the Hungarian Parliament.

    In June's European Parliament elections, Jobbik garnered 400,000 votes, which suggests that the far right managed to win over many people who have become disillusioned with the parties currently in parliament.

    Saying that the economic downturn or the opposition center-right Fidesz Party's political strategy of blurring the boundary between moderation and radicalism is what strengthened the far right was an oversimplification, Juhasz asserted. Instead, he saw a social demand for more extreme political responses to events in Hungary that meshed with the Jobbik party's policies, with the two trends mutually reinforcing one another.

    Juhasz saw two reasons why many voters were drawn to extremes: their disillusionment with the changes offered by the market economy and the politics of the past twenty years.

    Juhasz cited the symbolic power of Jobbik's language. Its use of certain symbols combined with the inability of its political rivals to counter its openly anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy rhetoric with any attention-getting slogans or strong arguments of their own had worked strongly in Jobbik's favor.

    Despite the banning of Jobbik's paramilitary arm, the Hungarian Guard, it was still a presence and had been an effective tool in building the party organization, Juhasz noted. According to Political Capital data, the Jobbik Party, which was established in2007, now had nearly 180 local units in the country.