Viewed from Hungary, Mr. Orban continued, the experience of multicultural living in Western Europe did not look appealing.

“We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country,” he said, but “we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see.”

Mr. Orban’s formulation echoed notorious remarks made by the poet T.S. Eliot in 1933, another moment in history when Europeans expressed fears of being overwhelmed by a “flood” of non-Christian immigrants.

“The population should be homogeneous; where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely self-conscious or both to become adulterate,” Mr. Eliot said in a lecture at the University of Virginia. “What is still more important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.”

There was quite a lot of condemnation on social networks for Mr. Orban’s frank remarks, but also some praise from nationalists and anti-Muslim bloggers.