Hungary and the Right's Embrace of Orbán's Budding Autocracy

[LFC]

I've posted multiple things about Rod Dreher's adoration of the budding autocracy in Hungary. As expected from him anymore he can excuse away almost anything if he feels it benefits his side, with all the right caveats the occasional "tsk tsk." But the fact is that he is clearly more comfortable with an autocratic gov't that protects his preferred religion at the expense of others than the democracy he lives in.

TPM points out that although it took him a while Tucker Carlson is now on the Orbán train. What I never realized is that the embrace by America's right is at least a decade old and it's getting stronger. It's also interesting that an Republican strategist who grew up Jewish (I looked it up) named of Arthur Finkelstein should have so thoroughly embraced many of the same techniques promoted by Joseph Goebbels.

Carlson is actually a latecomer to the American right’s love affair with Orbán, even though he shares common cause with the demagogue who has claimed Hungarians oppose immigration because they do not want their “own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed by others.” The American right’s love affair with Orbán dates back at least a decade, and was cultivated by top strategists and lobbyists in the Republican Party, as well as leading figures in the religious right.

In 2008, Orbán, who had served one term as prime minister from 1998 to 2002 and was plotting a return to power, retained the Republican political strategist Arthur J. Finkelstein, mentor to such luminaries as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. In the United States, Finkelstein’s signature advice to clients was to adopt messages that would “polarize the electorate.” Two years later, Orbán was again prime minister. His Fidesz-controlled government promptly undertook a host of anti-democratic measures, including requiring media organizations to register with the government, eroding checks and balances, constitutionally mandating a “right to life” from the moment of conception, and defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The party also redrew parliamentary districts and changed the process for allocating parliamentary seats, further cementing its hold on power, and stacked the courts with loyalists. Along the way Orbán engaged in a relentless anti-Semitic campaign against George Soros, demonized immigrants, and closed Hungary’s borders.

Finkelstein reveled in that kind of divisiveness. In rare public remarks in Prague in 2011, the strategist enthused about strongmen on the rise around the world, exploiting the refugee crisis to manufacture anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim animus. “Anti-Muslim parties become important in developing coalitions for their governments,” he said, with a message of, “they’re taking our jobs. They’re taking away our way of life.” That kind of scapegoating, he said, “is creating an energy source around which these movements take place.” A political consultant’s job, said Finkelstein, is to tell people what they should know because “no one knows anything about anything,”

Finkelstein is dead. Good.

[LFC]

As expected Carlson is now lying for Orbán (or perhaps "just asking the question"), just like he lies for the GOP and right-wingnuts here at home.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Hungary this week to meet with far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is now floating the notion that President Joe Biden might just meddle in Hungary’s election to prevent Orbán from being reelected.

During a softball interview with Orbán, Carlson noted that Biden called the prime minister, who has touted “illiberal democracy” as his leadership approach, a “thug.”

“Are you worried that there will be international interference in your election in Hungary?” Carlson asked Orbán.

“That will happen,” the Hungarian leader responded. “We’re not worried. We’re prepared for that. Obviously the international left will do everything [that] they can do, probably even more, to change the government here in Hungary. We are aware of that.”

“When the president of the United States describes you as a totalitarian thug — it’s a very serious thing to say about somebody, I would note — that suggests why wouldn’t the Biden State Department work to prevent you from being reelected?” Carlson opined.

“I think sooner or later, the Americans will realize that issues in Hungary must be decided by the Hungarians,” Orbán said.

Carlson’s leading questions echoed the rhetoric flowing from ex-President Donald Trump on the 2020 U.S. elections, which Trump continues to falsely claim was “stolen” from him (a narrative Carlson has boosted on his program).

[LFC]

This is a paywalled TPM piece on how Dreher actually helped Tuckums get over to Hungary to speak. The fascist and the religious zealot, what a team. (FYI if you want to know how far Dreher has gone down the drain with Tuckums he has actually taken the suggestion of Carlson as a presidential candidate seriously in the past.)

How did Tucker Carlson end up in Budapest?

I wrote yesterday about Tucker’s trip to Hungary. At least from the outside, it seems to be focused less on wild boar and more on the effort to build a transnational nativist right.

Carlson will be speaking at MCC Fezst, a gathering put on by Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium. As I wrote, the university has received $1.7 billion from the Orbán government, billed as part of an effort to train a new generation of conservative elites.

What’s emerged over the past day, however, is the interesting background to this story: Orbán, with his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” has long served as a kind of avuncular figure to some segments of the American right, who look to his disregard for democratic norms, ostentatious traditionalism, and religiosity for a model.

This has manifested itself in a few ways.

One is MCC itself, the recipient of largesse from the Orbán government.

It’s held a number of conferences devoted to the right over the past few years, which have attracted several high-profile American conservatives.

That’s included Harlan Hill, the MAGA commentator, Christopher Buskirk, editor and publisher of the pro-Trump journal American Greatness, and Ilya Shapiro, a VP at the Cato Institute.

“What is it the job of government to do?” Buskirk asked during the conference, speaking on a panel entitled “Patriotism in the light of Globalization.”

“Is government’s job to serve the interests of its citizens in particular? To put the interests of the citizens — of, for instance, Hungary — first above the interests of the citizens of any other country? Or of the American government to put its citizens first?” he continued rhetorically.

“I think obviously, yes,” he concluded, contrasting the two countries’ regimes with the “push for a globalist utopia.”

“That’s why we’ve seen an increase in popularity for leaders who are sometimes called ultra-nationalist,” Buskirk added.

There are other, more concrete reasons that may account for Hungary’s popularity on the right.

Sarah Posner, a journalist and author, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday about how Orbán’s government had bought its way into the good graces of the GOP through a skillful use of hired hands in D.C.

That effort, Posner wrote, began in 2010 — when Orbán took power as prime minister.

That resulted in admiration for Orbán from the religious right, Posner wrote.

Rod Dreher, the conservative evangelical writer and paid-up member of said religious right, is a regular at the MCC conferences, as he noted in response to our story from Monday, decrying it as “typical US media bullshit about Hungary.”

Brian Stelter
@brianstelter
"Fox News host Tucker Carlson is billed as a speaker at a far-right conference in Hungary on Saturday, according to a flier for the event. The appearance will come days after the Fox host met with the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán."

Rod Dreher
@roddreher
Ridiculous. It's not a "far-right conference". It's a conservative student festival. Typical US media bullshit about Hungary. I'm speaking on a panel with a prominent Orban critic. See for yourself here how "far right" it is: mccfeszt.hu/en/

“Head East, Conservative Intellectual,” Dreher intoned in a June column. Not too far east, though — you can stop along the Danube.

Fascinatingly, Dreher later claimed credit for introducing Carlson to Hungarian conservatism.

In an update appended to a Tuesday column that Dreher wrote, fuming about Western coverage of Hungary, he recounted texting Carlson in April, telling him to “come over to Hungary and take a look.”

Carlson purportedly replied that he’d “had his eye on Hungary for a while,” but things hadn’t come together for a trip to work.

Dreher said that he met with an unnamed senior Hungarian official afterwards, and casually name-dropped Carlson to the person, telling him that “red tape” had been blocking the visit.

This is an aside, but: to what red tape could Dreher (and Carlson?) possibly be referring here? Americans don’t need a visa to travel to Hungary — could it have been COVID-related? A special business or media visa needed to work as a journalist? Dreher doesn’t elaborate.

Instead, he says only that the unnamed official confirmed that he was familiar with Carlson, “and would work to clear the red tape.”

“Now Tucker is here,” Dreher wrote. “Just that simple. Nothing sinister about it.”

A few things. First Rod doesn't grasp or is lying about the fact that he IS a member of the far right and a very poor judge of what is or isn't far right. Of course that's shifting but the neo far right is still congealing, like drying sludge.

Second hanging around with a professional liar like Carlson and quoting him approvingly in your articles pretty much destroys your own credibility and moral standing.

Third Rod is a religious zealot, just a little more smoothly packaged, but look back a decade and see how far he's slipped. I predict that a decade from now he'll have descended even farther. He'll be writing approvingly of the next incarnation of Trump and the My Pillow guy.

Finally I predict that there is virtually nothing Orbán could do that would make Rod or the Republicans turn their back on him outside of deciding to persecute Christians. This he won't do because they help him maintain power. Religion as a weapon. What a shock.

[goldenvalley]

If they think Hungary is doing it right, then let them move there...and give up American citizenship. The US used to be a place to move to for religious freedom...now Hungary can be the refuge for disappointed American right wingers.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 9, 2021 23:26:04 GMT goldenvalley said:

If they think Hungary is doing it right, then let them move there...and give up American citizenship. The US used to be a place to move to for religious freedom...now Hungary can be the refuge for disappointed American right wingers.

Ya know, if the line “Love It or Leave It” was good enough for the Archie Bunker types to throw around in the early 1970s, … sauce for the goose and all that…

[LFC]

What the history of this shows me is that the America's right-wing in general and the Republican Party specifically has been working towards turning our nation into an autocracy for a long time. This isn't a spur of the moment thing triggered by Trumpmania. This has been carefully planned and pushed. I knew that the current GOP hated democracy, I just didn't know quite how long the party hated democracy.

[AnBr]

Aug 10, 2021 13:56:13 GMT LFC said:

What the history of this shows me is that the America's right-wing in general and the Republican Party specifically has been working towards turning our nation into an autocracy for a long time. This isn't a spur of the moment thing triggered by Trumpmania. This has been carefully planned and pushed. I knew that the current GOP hated democracy, I just didn't know quite how long the party hated democracy.

Quite fits the documentary from the late '80s to early '90s called "Rise of the Right" that documented it starting right after the Goldwater landslide loss. I really wish I could track down a copy.

[LFC]

Hungary is no longer considered to be a functional democracy so it's the exact model that Republicans are looking to reproduce here in America. Dreher has a major woody for Orban since he places Christianism into an elevated role, exactly what he desperately wants but won't quite say out loud. (He's a classic case of believing that being treated equally is persecution.)

As we approach the one year anniversary of Donald Trump’s failed coup attempt and violent insurrection in our nation’s capital, the GOP remains zealously committed to ensuring minority rule. They’ll do it by following the playbook established by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authoritarian rule in Hungary.

Hungary, the bête noire of the European Union, is no longer considered a normal democracy and is referred to as a “hybrid regime” after a decade of Orban and his Fidesz party systematically chipping away at democratic institutions and freedoms.

Naturally, this “backsliding democracy” is seen as a blueprint for the GOP and conservative activists who want to preserve power in the hands of a white Christian minority.

The United States was designated as a “backsliding democracy” for the first time by a European think tank this year in its annual review of democracies around the world, in part thanks to Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie. So it was only fitting that earlier this week Trump pledged his “complete support” to Orban, currently running for re-election, and praised him as a “strong leader” who has “done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary…” Orban had praised and supported Trump in 2016, and again in 2020. Birds of a hateful, vulgarian feather flock and feast together.

Like Trump, Orban’s “wonderful job” includes ginning up political support by going all-in with xenophobia, anti-Muslim bigotry, and antisemitic conspiracy theories while telling his white Christian base that brown-skinned immigrants were going to “replace” them. In 2015, Orban installed a fence on Hungary’s border with Serbia and Croatia to protect his country and its civilization from “Muslim invaders.” In 2018, Orban declared, “We must state that we do not want to be diverse.” He added: “We do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others.”

In Hungary’s updated eighth-grade history textbook, students are taught that “it can be problematic for different cultures to coexist,” and that refugees are a threat.

Like Trump, Orban also has a fondness for indulging in antisemitic conspiracy theories, often blaming George Soros, a Jewish American billionaire born in Hungary, for supposedly leading a “globalist” conspiracy to assault their society. The delicious irony is that Orban, like Trump, is actually an elitist—he studied civil society at Oxford University, funded in part by a Soros grant.

Unlike Trump, however, Orban has succeeded in retaining power since 2010. This, in part, explains why Steve Bannon sees Orban as a “hero,” who he said in 2018 was “the most significant guy on the scene right now.” Bannon also referred to Orban as “Trump before Trump” for his successful ability to merge white Christian nationalism and anti-immigrant populism into a mobilizing political force.

Last year, former Vice President Mike Pence visited Hungary to attend a conference on conservative values. The American Conservative Union is planning to host a version of its influential CPAC conference in Budapest. Tucker Carlson hosted his top-rated Fox News show from Budapest last year, and praised Orban’s leadership. The Fox News demagogue loved Hungary’s barbed-wire fence and said the border area was “perfectly clean and orderly,” and free from the “chaos” he sees in the United States. He glossed over all of the horrific human rights abuses that have been documented. Enamored by Orban’s Valhallah, Carlson told his American viewers that Hungary offers a “lot of lessons for the rest of us.”

I wonder what those lessons could be?

Orban’s commitment to the antisemitic “replacement theory,” xenophobia, and promotion of white Christian nationalism were enough for Carlson and conservatives to overlook his coziness with China and promotion of vaccines. Rob Dreher, the conservative writer who currently attacks the windmill of “wokeness” and suggested to Carlson that he visit, admires Orban because he takes “hard stances” to protect the “stability and cultural continuity of the nation,” which is doing a lot of work to simply say he’s keeping the Muslims, gays, feminists and liberals at bay.

[LFC]

Hungary just had an election. It was everything you'd expect in an autocracy.

On Sunday evening, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won reelection for the fourth time — emerging with control of over two-thirds of the country’s parliamentary seats in defiance of close pre-election polls. This fourth consecutive victory means he will remain the third-longest-serving current leader in Europe at nearly 16 years in power, behind only Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko (28 years as president) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (23 years as president or prime minister).

That Orbán’s peers in longevity are outright dictators is appropriate, as Sunday’s election was anything but free and fair. For the past 12 years, Orbán has systematically worked to turn Hungarian democracy into a sham: one where elections seem fair, but take place on uneven playing ground. Through tactics ranging from extreme gerrymandering to media control to unfair campaign finance rules, he has made it unthinkably difficult for the opposition to defeat his Fidesz party at the ballot box.

Sunday’s results reflect this undemocratic reality, with his party once again winning enough seats to unilaterally amend Hungary’s constitution.

“It is doubtful that in free and fair elections, with a more proportionate electoral system, he would win a parliamentary majority, let alone such a large one,” Cas Mudde, an expert on European politics at the University of Georgia, writes in the New Statesman.

Orbán does have a real constituency. Many Hungarians, especially cultural conservatives outside of the capital Budapest, find his political style genuinely appealing. His system is built on amplifying the influence of these supporters, convincing others to join them through relentless propaganda, and starving his critics of the resources they need to compete.

It should not be a surprise that Hungary has been Putin’s best friend in the European Union and NATO during the Ukraine crisis, with Orbán’s regime broadcasting pro-Russian propaganda and banning arms transfers to Ukraine from Hungarian soil. In a truly democratic system, this stance likely would have been an electoral liability: Hungarians have a vivid national memory of the 1956 Soviet invasion of their country.

But Hungary is not, in reality, a democracy. And the durability of its regime poses a problem for Europe — an insidious internal threat that compliments Putin’s more brutal external one.

Details follow. Orbán’s regime is effectively using the same tactics that Republicans are pushing for all over the country.

No word from Rod Dreher over at TAC yet. He loves Orbán due to his consistent political weaponization of Rod's preferred brand of organized religion. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Rod can justify an enormous amount of brutality in exchange for political power.

[pnwguy]

Apr 4, 2022 21:58:11 GMT LFC said:

Hungary just had an election. It was everything you'd expect in an autocracy.

Details follow. Orbán’s regime is effectively using the same tactics that Republicans are pushing for all over the country.

No word from Rod Dreher over at TAC yet. He loves Orbán due to his consistent political weaponization of Rod's preferred brand of organized religion. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Rod can justify an enormous amount of brutality in exchange for political power.

Any wonder the GOP and their right wing media salivates about Hungary and Orban? They can hardly wait. Perhaps Orban will have a statue of him put up in Washington by Republicans, and he'll be invited to speak before a joint session of Congress after the 2022 GOP power sweep.

[LFC]

This is the authoritarian regime Rod loves so much because it's leader has found it helpful to use the church for political gain. He is protecting the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the man giving religious air cover to an immoral war, the shelling of women and children, and blatant war crimes. The moral corruption is staggering but not unexpected. Religion poisons so much.

EU ambassadors on Thursday dropped the leader of Russia's Orthodox church from a proposed blacklist, allowing them to agree a new round of sanctions after opposition from Hungary, diplomats said."

Another strong package of sanctions was agreed today against Putin and the Kremlin," tweeted EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

"This will reduce Russia's capacity to finance its war."

Budapest had stalled final approval of the fresh wave of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, including a ban on most Russian oil imports, by demanding that Patriarch Kirill be taken off the list.

EU leaders on Monday thought they had clinched agreement on the new measures after giving in to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban's demand to exempt Russian oil arriving via pipeline.

But the other 26 nations had to buckle again to wrap up the package in the face of Orban's obstinacy after he insisted the Russian church leader's name also be removed.

An EU diplomat said there was "some frustration and disappointment" with Hungary, but an acceptance that securing the broader measures after weeks of haggling was more important.

Maybe they should kick Hungary out of the EU and let them depend on Russia instead.

[LFC]

CPAC is hosting fascist quickly becoming dictator Viktor Orbán. Vik just came out with a real white supremacist whopper, right out of Nazi Germany. CPAC's organizer decided it was no big deal. It is probably more accurate to say that CPAC folks in general approve but they don't want to be too obvious about it.

CPAC Shrugs Off Orbán’s Attacks On ‘Race Mixing’

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) organizer Matt Schlapp isn’t all that bothered by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declaring that he wanted to prevent the Hungarian population from becoming a “mixed race,” and still plans on unrolling the red carpet for the anti-democratic leader as a keynote speaker at CPAC anyway.

Following that first link it appears that Orbán's blatant racism isn't even going over well with his own people. But CPAC? No problem!

Barbed warnings of “Nazi” rhetoric went flying Tuesday as the controversy over Viktor Orbán’s “mixed race” remarks breached rare territory — the Hungarian prime minister’s own circle.

Just four days after Orbán startled European leaders by declaring countries were “no longer nations” after different races blend, one of the prime minister’s own longtime advisers, sociologist Zsuzsa Hegedüs, quit on Tuesday.

And she didn’t do so quietly.

Hegedüs’s resignation letter — filled with ire — was instantly leaked, turning it into a public excoriation of Orbán’s speech.

“Worthy of Goebbels,” she said in the letter, which was seen by Hungarian magazine HVG.

A “pure Nazi text,” she added.

“That you are able to deliver an openly racist speech would not occur to me even in a nightmare,” marveled Hegedüs, who has been working for Orbán for over a decade.

And it didn’t stop there.

Within hours, Orbán had published his own letter, claiming to have “a zero-tolerance policy” toward anti-Semitism and racism. Hegedüs shot back with a second letter, invoking her parent’s experiences as Hungarian Holocaust survivors. Others died, she said, because too many people stayed silent when hate first emerged.

It was a remarkable turn of events in the widening fallout over Orbán’s speech, in which he took aim at the “internationalist left” for portraying Europe as inherently “populated by peoples of mixed race.”

While the remarks drew the predictable opprobrium from a smattering of other European officials, Tuesday’s backlash from within the close ranks around Orbán was unexpected. Resignations are uncommon in Orbán’s circles, and open dissent from allies is even more unusual.

But Orbán’s speech also represented a change for the Hungarian leader.

While the far-right prime minister has long faced criticism from political opponents and civil society for fanning the flames of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, his weekend speech was more explicitly racial than earlier remarks.

“We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become mixed race,” Orbán declared, referencing the region that covers Hungary and Romania, where he was speaking.

[pnwguy]

Jul 27, 2022 19:00:49 GMT LFC said:

CPAC is hosting fascist quickly becoming dictator Viktor Orbán. Vik just came out with a real white supremacist whopper, right out of Nazi Germany. CPAC's organizer decided it was no big deal. It is probably more accurate to say that CPAC folks in general approve but they don't want to be too obvious about it

Maddow highlights the same mindset among those claiming Christian Nationalism

[LFC]

The European parliament, in an overwhelming affirmative vote, just declared that Hungary is no longer a functional democracy. I expect Dreher to have a full fledged meltdown over the obvious being called out.

Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy, the European parliament has said in a powerful symbolic vote against Viktor Orbán’s government.

In a resolution backed by 81% of MEPs present to vote, the parliament stated that Hungary had become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”, citing a breakdown in democracy, fundamental rights and the rule of law.

While the vote has no practical effect, it heightens pressure on EU authorities in Brussels not to disburse billions in EU cash to Hungary that is being withheld over concerns about corruption.

Hungary is battling to persuade the European Commission to release €4.64bn in Covid recovery funds, frozen for more than a year. Budapest is also trying to stave off a separate legal procedure that could lead to deductions from €24.3bn of cohesion funds, money for infrastructure and economic development.

The European Commission is expected to propose cutting 70% of Hungary’s cohesion funds on Sunday, but will also open the door to a compromise, according to two MEPs familiar with discussions. “More or less what we hear is that the commission will propose … these sanctions or financial measures,” said Moritz Körner, a German MEP, who has been briefed by the commission.

In a recent internal paper, commission officials suggested there was a “very significant” risk over Hungary’s management of EU funds, citing breaches in public interest rules and an unusually high number of contracts awarded to a single bidder – a red flag for transparency watchers. The paper, which has been removed from the commission’s website, suggests a 70% cut in funds as “proportionate” to the risk.

Hungary will be given until mid-November to get its house in order. After a charm offensive in Brussels, Hungary’s government is expected next week to propose a raft of laws to combat corruption. Critics fear the commission is ready to accept cosmetic changes to defuse the conflicts over EU funds.

[LFC]

Hungry may be in the EU but that doesn't mean other nations have to be friendly and helpful to his fascist regime. I suspect that Viktor Orban, like all tinpot dictator wannabes, will simply dig in and make himself an even bigger thorn in everybody's side. It will be interesting to see what moves countries might actually make against them. I suspect being in the EU limits their options quite a bit.

Ulrich Speck
@ulrichspeck

Hungary isolated.

Jakub Janda 楊雅嚳
@_JakubJanda

Speakers of Czech (@vystrcil_Milos & @market_a) and Polish Parliament refused to attend Visegrad Meeting since they did not want to sit next to the Hungarian Speaker due to Hungarian support for Russian war in Ukraine.

Slovak hosts cancelled it all then
seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-politika-pekarova-s-vystrcilem-bojkotovali-schuzku-v4-nechteji-za-jeden-stul-s-madary-

[LFC]

Orban is plenty ready to allow Ukrainians to die in order to get that big, fat cash. No shock there. He was already more philosophically aligned with Putin than Europe.

Sadly this is the predictable problem any organization of democratic states faces when one or more of their members become hostile to democracy itself.