Conservatives Want the US to Become Hungary - A Proper Resistance is Needed
CPAC platformed an antisemite and a tyrant and the former president issued a thinly veiled call to violence.
We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movement of our troops.
Viktor Orbán addressed Republicans last week from Budapest, advising them to follow the Hungarian model for attaining power. That is, undemocratically, and with the help of a state media apparatus.
Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left. The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.
Of course, the GOP has its media allies, but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson, is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say, 24/7.
It’s telling that the American Conservative Union would seek to host a conference in a country whose democracy has already backslid into authoritarianism. After all, the US itself is already considered a backsliding democracy, and one with increasingly dire conditions thanks to their exploits.
Carlson, of course, groveled to his foreign patron.
I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not. What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.
The last thing they want is any kind of signpost to a better way, and Hungary certainly provides that. A free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families, and the physical landscape.
In case you take anything Tucker Carlson says at face value and were living under a rock for the past twelve years, Hungary is not a country to aspire to, and yeah, people going hysterical about wanting to model yourself after a self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy” (one of the finest examples of doublespeak I’ve ever seen) is warranted.
Carlson has been obsessed with Orbán’s Hungary for years, culminating in a recent “documentary” (read: propaganda film) titled Hungary vs. Soros: Fight for Civilization where Carlson portrays Hungary as standing up to threats of liberalism and “open borders” funded by the Jewish billionaire in a vast anti-Christian conspiracy.
It’s not exactly surprising that Carlson uses Soros as a boogeyman attacking Hungary (and, through comparison, the US). Soros hate is a stand-in for antisemitic beliefs, which checks out with the fact that a known anti-Semite and racist, Zsolt Bayer, was, alongside Carlson and T****, a featured speaker at CPAC Hungary.
Bayer, a far-right journalist and co-founder of Orbán’s Fidesz ruling party, once referred to Jews as “stinking excrement called something like Cohen”. He has also said of the Roma: “They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals, and they behave like animals… These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved – immediately and regardless of the method”.
It disgusts me to have even copied such Hitlerian speech here, but it’s important to truly understand who the Republican party is seeking to platform and emulate. And it probably shouldn’t surprise you, either, to know that Bayer and other state-linked Hungarian media has pushed pro-Russia narratives about the invasion of Ukraine, because of course they have.
As I have previously written, the United States is seeking to model the types of Christian nationalism after the identifiably fascist regimes in Russia and Hungary, including by openly embracing antisemitism, racism, and conspiracy.
The “great replacement” ideology, spread by Carlson and other GOP congresspeople, that fueled the loss of ten lives in Buffalo earlier this month has been openly embraced by Orbán, who said ahead of CPAC:
I see the great European population exchange as a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with adults from other civilizations – migrants.
Orban, who “won” a fourth consecutive term and a supermajority in the Hungarian parliament in April, has managed a stranglehold on power thanks to extensive gerrymandering that has given outstanding vote share to his own party, making it all but impossible to mount a fair opposition despite ostensibly holding “democratic” elections.
Sound familiar?
Taking advantage of the COVID pandemic, the tyrant also passed laws in March 2020 to grant him the power to indefinitely rule by decree, outlawing special elections, allowing for the suspension of enforcement of certain laws, and jailing any individual who publicizes “untrue” or “distorted facts” about the government.
With his power, he has created an authoritarian kleptocracy, and Europe has mostly stood on the sidelines, tolerating the rise of an anti-democratic leader in the EU and NATO without repercussion.
This is the blueprint for the Republican Party, and they’re laying it bare right in front of our eyes, similarly expecting pro-democracy Americans (I can’t believe I’m having to create this subclassification) to be too cynical, apathetic, or ignorant to care.
On Truth Social over the weekend, former president T**** “ReTruthed” a post that advocated for or otherwise predicted civil war breaking out in the US.
Yes, that’s abhorrent, if unsurprising (as is the media freaking out about it, as if giving the man more free news coverage worked out so well last time). Did we not watch pro-Trump crazies already try to violently overthrow the US government? Why would anyone think they would stop there, especially as the perpetrators that called for the violence have yet to be held accountable?
But at least the post implies the rest of the country is willing to put up an armed fight against the openly hostile Republicans who are trying to make our country as illiberal as Hungary’s.
If and when the Republican Party tries to force us into a Christian nationalist, antisemitic, authoritarian regime, then I would hope that prompts such a resistance.