ADMIRAL MIKLOS HORTHY, Hungary’s controversial wartime leader and an ally of Hitler, is enjoying something of a revival of late. The latest addition to the dozen or so commemorative plaques, statues and street renamings was unveiled on November 3rd at a Calvinist church in a central square in Budapest.

Hundreds of protesters, many wearing yellow stars, exchanged insults with those attending the presentation of a new statue supported by the far-right Jobbik party. Under its minister, Lorant Hegedus junior, the church has long been a place of pilgrimage for the far right. The Horthy statue has caused consternation and anger in the church. Istvan Szabo, the local bishop, called for an urgent inquiry. Reform church ministers should refrain from divisive and shocking behaviour, he said.

Antal Rogan, the local mayor and parliamentary leader of the ruling centre-right Fidesz party, condemned the statue as “provocation”. But so far the government has hedged its bets. Janos Lazar, the head of the prime minister’s office, said that Horthy’s rule should be assessed by historians not politicians. The government uses double talk about Horthy, says Krisztian Ungvary, a historian. “They have to win Jobbik voters so they will never openly and consistently condemn the Horthy era, as it would upset their supporters.”

Nonsense, say officials. A Fidesz government established the Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre in 2002. The government has set up a commission to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the mass deportations to Auschwitz. Speaking at a conference on anti-Semitism recently, Tibor Navracsics, the deputy prime minister, said in an unprecedented admission of wartime guilt that the Hungarian state had turned on its own citizens. “The perpetrators were Hungarians, it was Hungarians who fired the shots and it was Hungarians who died,” he said.

Admiral Horthy still arouses furious passions. He declared war on the Allies in 1941. Hungary’s war on the eastern front saw 200,000 soldiers killed or captured. Jewish servicemen and political prisoners were forced to march through minefields to clear them. Horthy passed four anti-Jewish laws, the earliest, in 1920, limiting the number of Jewish students at universities, the last, in 1941, outlawing sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews. After the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944, Horthy allowed 437,000 Hungarian Jews to be deported to Auschwitz in less than two months. Most were killed on arrival.

Horthy did his best, say his defenders, not all of whom are found in Jobbik. Until the Nazis invaded, Hungary remained a comparatively safe haven for its Jews. Horthy’s repeated refusal of Hitler’s demands to deport all of the Jews was one reason why the Germans invaded. His envoys were in secret contact with the Allies and he wanted to change sides, which is why he was deposed in October 1944 by Hungarian Nazis and their German allies, triggering a new round of terror against Budapest’s surviving Jews.

Meanwhile, says Fidesz, the left and far right work together when it suits them. Socialist leaders recently submitted a petition in parliament calling for an investigation into government interventions in the energy industry. The petition, now withdrawn, was also signed by 24 Jobbik MPs—including, as it happens, the wife of Mr Hegedus.