Hungary remained a conservative island in the progressive-liberal ocean

“Today, Hungary has a reputation in international politics. This is unusual. A country of ten million people, a modest army, a medium-sized GDP, it is not significant and not particularly interesting if you look at it from Washington, Brussels, Moscow or Beijing,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the CPAC Hungary conference on Thursday morning.

Still, Hungary has something attractive, something exotic, Orbán said. “Maybe the language no one understands”. According to him, the fact that the country remained a conservative island in the European progressive-liberal ocean, “which defies the liberal tide, the Brussels climate and the Washington hurricane, and indeed not only defies, but survives, even thrives, even succeeds, even wins again and again”.

As expected, Orbán spoke about the halted Brussels conference. In Hungary, there is a rule of law against all rumors, he said, since here everyone organizes the conference they want, everyone can say what they want and rent the place they want. “This is a conservative conference in Europe that they don’t want to ban and kick out overnight,” said Orbán, who then greeted his allies, including former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who “either arrived or he didn’t.”

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Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI/MTVA

He recalled that at the first CPAC he spoke about the Hungarian recipe for success, a year ago about Hungary being an experimental laboratory against the progressive-liberal virus. “These are all important, but rather theoretical questions. But this year, 2024, is not the year of theory, but of practice. There will be elections all over the world and we have to win those elections,” he said. “The order of the world is changing and we have to win our cause in the midst of the changes. Progressive liberals sense the danger. The replacement of the era also means their replacement, the end of the progressive world spirit” – he said, adding that they are still in power and that they are dangerous opponents who, if necessary, will also use the state bodies. “This is what happens to us Hungarians all the time in Brussels. This is what is happening to President Trump in America”.

He then spoke about how in the past the communists, now the progressives, “sing the cheese out of our mouths in five steps.” According to Orbán, first they “rephrase what is normal”, “they use state means to spread their ideas”, then “they spread the word that because you hold dangerous views, you are also a security risk”, “they incite the press against you”, and finally “the state bodies also take action”.

According to Orbán, the progressive-liberal world spirit has failed. “It has brought wars, chaos and unrest, collapsing economies and confusion into the world. Confusion in international politics, impoverishment of families, deteriorating public safety in the streets and squares. (…) When I listen to them, I think that they know more about world peace than these two-handed leaders, even in a beauty pageant.” – He told.

He spoke of the elections as the “unreturnable opportunity to replace the decaying progressive liberal world spirit with another world spirit, a sovereignist world order”. According to him, there is no global ideology in this, “national interest determines the movement of states, every independent nation acts on the basis of its own national interest”, and “not all kinds of NGOs, large companies, media centers, suspicious experts and wind-blown academics say what the right and what should be done, but then the representatives and politicians elected by the people”.

Finally, he spoke of the need to chase away the believers of the old world, so that the age of sovereignists would finally come. “Make America Great Again! Make Europe Great Again! Come on Donald Trump! Go European sovereignists!” he concluded.

CPAC Hungary is the big annual meeting of the American Republicans, primarily of the Trumpist right wing of the party, and two years ago the Center for Fundamental Rights first organized its outsourced European forum in Budapest. This year’s Hungarian event is also organized by the formally civil satellite organization of Fidesz.

The goal of CPAC Hungary is also now the building of international right-wing forces, the international cooperation of conservative forces and “repressing the deep states in Washington and Brussels”. In the spirit of the culture war, the mainstream press classified as woke will not be allowed to the event, but a number of Trumpist Republicans from Rick Santorum to Congressman Andy Harris to former cage fighter Markwayne Mullin will be there, but representatives of the more radical right in Europe will also be there, from the Dutch Geert Wilders to the Spanish to Santiago Abascal. The girls’ choir of the Kodály Zoltán Hungarian Choir School will perform at the dinner – although not in front of Donald Trump, according to the school, the dinner is not a political event