A far-right Hungarian party has elected Péter Jakab, a new leader with Jewish heritage who hopes to turn it away from its extremist past.

Jobbik, or The Movement for a Better Hungary, previously had a paramilitary wing called the Hungarian Guard, which has been described in the past as a neo-Nazi movement.

One of its MPs Marton Gyongyosi once suggested drawing up a list of Hungary’s Jews because they could pose a “national security risk.”

Mr Gyongosi later apologised for the remark, saying he was referring to citizens with dual Hungarian-Israeli citizenship, and is currently the party’s deputy leader.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Jakab has said that Jobbik “is not the same Jobbik it was five years ago.”

The 39-year-old’s first move as leader was to eject Gergely Kulcsár from the party, a former MP and member of a local parliament. Mr Kulcsár had previously spat on a Holocaust memorial in central Budapest.

Mr Jakab said that as a teenager he had discovered his great-grandfather had died in Auschwitz, along with other relatives from his mother’s side. “My grandmother was baptised and that’s how she was saved. She later married a Christian.”

However, in 2014 Mr Jakab claimed that “it is Jewish leaders who generate the prejudices that they can use to collect millions for more programmes fighting antisemitism.”

He later argued that he was referencing a commonly held view, rather than advocating it, and has criticised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for “inciting hatred” against Jewish Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

Mr Jakab is not the first Jobbik leader to promise a move away from the far-right. In 2017, former leader Gábor Vona told Associated Press that the party would no longer tolerate racist and antisemitic remarks by its politicians.

“The kind of antisemitic expressions which took place in Jobbik earlier are impossible to imagine,” he said. “Or if they did, they would naturally draw the most severe sanctions.”

However, in 2013, when the World Jewish Congress staged a meeting in Budapest, Jobbik protested the event.

Mr Vona told the rally: “The Israeli conquerors, these investors, should look for another country in the world for themselves, because Hungary is not for sale.”

At the time, WJC President Ronald Lauder said Jobbik's ideology was “close to that of the Nazis.”

Jobbik has been the second-largest party in the country’s National Assembly since 2018.