Why is the American right obsessed with Viktor Orban? Hungary’s prime minister will speak at CPAC, a big conservative conference

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  1. On august 4th the top brass of the American right will gather in Dallas, Texas, for the start of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (cpac) first launched in 1974. Donald Trump will be its keynote speaker. On Tuesday, Mr Trump entertained Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, at his golf course in New Jersey. Mr Orban will not meet President Joe Biden during his trip to America—but he will take to the stage in Dallas. In May, cpac gathered in Budapest, the Hungarian capital. Prominent American conservatives have been wined and dined by the Hungarian government. What does the American right see in Hungary?

    Mr Orban provides a model of what right-wing populism can achieve. He has been prime minister since 2010, having previously served between 1998 and 2002. During his most recent stint he has championed conservative values, turning Hungary into the “illiberal democracy” he promised voters in 2014. He has wiped gender studies from university curriculums, built a border fence to keep out refugees from war-torn Syria and elsewhere and written Christain values into the constitution. He has gerrymandered electoral laws grossly in his favour. Having packed the courts and the media with his allies, he controls Hungary’s institutions. That has cemented his power and eliminated an effective opposition. He has put swathes of the economy in the hands of cronies; his friends and family have grown rich. Much of that appeals to the American right.

    Mr Orban has been able to do this because his party, Fidesz, won the popular vote in 2010, landing his alliance a supermajority in parliament. He wooed voters with a culture-war narrative that exploited their fears. Mr Orban paints his country as a victim. He makes much of Hungary’s Christian identity (around three quarters of Hungarians say they are Christian, though only 15% attend church on a weekly basis). He claims the country has suffered because its territory was catastrophically reduced after the first world war, and because it was yoked to the Soviet Union for decades. He now casts the eu (of which Hungary is a member) as an existential threat. But the spectres he conjures are mostly imagined. He rails against “Muslim invaders” and on July 23rd he told crowds that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” even though Hungary’s population is at least 84% white. In 2021 he banned “homosexual and transsexual propaganda” in schools and the media, adding insult to injury in one of the most homophobic countries in the eu. These tactics continue to bear fruit. In elections this year, Fidesz won 53% of the popular vote.

    Hungary provides American conservatives with a model of a Christian, ethno-nationalist state with limited checks and balances, where one party always wins, but which still appears to observe the rituals of democratic governance. It also shows how successful populist fear-mongering can prove with voters. In this year’s election Fidesz triumphed against a muddled left-wing alliance of socialists, liberals and nationalists. The Republican party hopes it can achieve a similar result in mid-term elections in November by harnessing culture-war issues to divide the Democrats. It has already stoked fears about the teaching of critical race theory and gay and trans rights in schools, and made inroads with minority voters, particularly Hispanics. Mr Orban’s speech at cpac, titled “How we fight”, may well provide more inspiration.

  2. >Why is the American right obsessed with Viktor Orban?

    Because he’s a European leader who really, *really* doesn’t like Muslims, Jews, feminists and Gays.

  3. Exactly he is a white supeprimist nationalistic leader spurting christian fundamentalist dogma to excuse his grab for power greed and curruption. A perfect rolemodel for any GOP politician.

  4. In all honesty, you can ask conservatives who this man is and I’d bet 90-95% of them will have no idea.

  5. Between the massive gains for Le Pen in French parliament, the imminent ascension of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy to Prime Minister and the ongoing American carnage I say that one thing is clear. It is time for politicians to wake up. We need a powerful European federalism.

  6. I thought the title could’ve read ” Why the American right is obsessed with Orban”.. An answering title instead of a questioning one. haha

  12. He’s currently the white leader the most aligned with their views and having a foreign head of state as a guest give them a feeling of legitimacy

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