“The globalists can go to hell,” thundered Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “I have come to Texas.”
This from msn.com.
Orban was delivering what was essentially the opening keynote of the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas—the preeminent convening organization of the American right-wing movement.
In his remarks, Orban laid out the clearest platform yet for what some analysts have dubbed “the far-right international,” a notional alliance between far-right and ultranationalist parties on both sides of the Atlantic.
The conference Orban helped kick off will conclude in part with a speech from President Trump. And the message the Hungarian leader sent was one that united Republican anger at “liberal hegemony” with his own narrative of illiberal triumph.
Orban promulgated:
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His hard-line stances against immigration,
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His staunch Christian nationalism,
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His opposition to “gender ideology,” and
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His indifference to those who view his quasi-autocratic rule as a threat to democracy in the heart of Europe.
Is this not a Hungary First initiative, much like Trump’s America First initiative?
Orban made no bones about his contempt for U.S. democrats and the liberal media.
He said of democrats at CPAC:
They hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you. We should unite our forces.
Orban added, gesturing to the upcoming U.S. midterm and presidential elections and European parliamentary elections in 2024:
We must take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels … we must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenges.
These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.
Orban chose to gloss over the outcry that followed a major speech he made last month. Just across the border in neighboring Romania, in a picturesque town, home to a considerable ethnic Hungarian population where Orban delivered an annual address, he warned, among other things, that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race.”
Many called his words Nazi-esque and hateful. However, Orban’s supporters say that he was speaking principally about simply limiting migration and preserving European “civilization.”
Whatever the case, Orban’s rhetoric now is a sign of an ideologue who is increasingly unrestrained on the world stage.
No matter the geopolitical feebleness of Hungary in its own right, Orban and his allies see themselves as standard bearers for an illiberal future.
Miklos Szantho, director of the Center for Fundamental Rights, a Hungarian think tank believed to be funded by Orban’s government, said at a CPAC gathering organized in Budapest in May:
We do hope that you can learn from us the political mind-set how to be a successful conservative, as we also learn from you, and from Ronald Reagan.
As he put it so many years ago, ‘We win, they lose.’ That is what the Hungarian right has done.
Orban told the CPAC crowd on Thursday:
In order to win, it is not enough to know what you’re fighting for.
You should also know how you should fight: My answer is play by your own rules.
