[Amid rising German anti-semitism, official warns Jews not to wear skullcaps in public.]

A hero to many far-right nationalists in Europe and the United States, Mr. Orban won a major public relations prize on Monday: an Oval Office meeting with President Trump. The two men gushed over each other. Mr. Trump described the Hungarian leader as “controversial,” but he clearly meant it as a compliment — Mr. Trump said some people considered him controversial, too.

The meeting itself caused controversy, as critics accused Mr. Trump of coddling a neo-authoritarian leader accused of rolling back democracy in the heart of the European Union. Nine Democratic members of Congress had demanded that Mr. Trump cancel the meeting because of Mr. Orban’s record of alleged anti-Semitism, as well as his remarks critical of Muslims.

But if anything, Mr. Orban and Mr. Trump have followed the same playbook, with each leader navigating to his own political advantage the confusing and contradictory ways in which anti-Semitism has resurfaced in Europe and North America. It is a point of overlap for both the far left and the far right, for Islamists and Islamophobes, for those who revile Israel as well as those who support it.

Mr. Orban is the apogee of these contradictions: He is a far-right leader of a country whose Jewish citizens say they face less harassment than Jews in any other part of Europe. Mr. Orban and his party, Fidesz, have used anti-Semitic tropes to promote his vision of Hungarian nationalism, and have been accused of trying to understate Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust — even as he has bankrolled many Jewish institutions and causes.