“The Right Wing’s muse makes it clear”

Maybe, I have not been looking hard enough with regard to information on Vicktor Orbán, his views, and his impact on Hungary and Europe. It appears our Republican leaning buddies have invited Viktor to come to Dallas, Texas. There he will address CPAC and a large gathering of American conservatives.

Earlier this year, Viktor had told a bunch of Republicans to:

“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”

Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’ | CPAC | The Guardian

Supposedly, the US media is dominated by Democrats. I always thought it was the other way around.

Digby at Hullabaloo had this article up on Viktor and the mixing of races. Found her take to be interesting . . .

The Right Wing’s muse makes it clear

Published by digby on July 25, 2022

Viktor Orbán on race

I wrote about “The Orbán System” the other day, featuring a long piece by Kim Lane Scheppele on the influence of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán on the global right and particularly here in the U.S. In case that was too esoteric, perhaps this latest report on Orbán brings the point home more clearly:

Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has lashed out against the “mixing” of European and non-European races, in a speech immediately drawing outrage from opposition parties and European politicians.

“We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race,” said Orbán on Saturday. He added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations”.

Orbán has been making similar claims for years, but these comments were couched in stark far-right terms.

Katalin Cseh, an MEP from the opposition Momentum party, said she was appalled by the prime minister’s speech. “His statements recall a time I think we would all like to forget. They really show the true colours of the regime,” she said.

[…]

Orbán made the remarks during a showpiece annual speech in Băile Tuşnad, Romania, where he has previously floated major policy ideas or ideological directions. It was there, in 2014, that he first said he wanted to build an “illiberal democracy” in Hungary.

This year, Orbán gave an apocalyptic speech predicting the decline of the west and prophesying “a decade of peril, uncertainty, and war”. He also sharply criticised western military support for Ukraine, positioning himself as Moscow’s foremost ally inside the European Union.

“The more modern weapons Nato gives the Ukrainians, the more the Russians will push the frontline forward … What we are doing is prolonging the war,” said Orbán during a speech on Saturday.

Hungary is a member of Nato, but the far-right Orbán has long had warm relations with Putin, and spent five hours in Moscow talking to the Russian leader in February, shortly before the Russian invasion. The speech came two days after his foreign minister made a surprise trip to Moscow for talks, and puts him far outside the European consensus on the war.

Orbán said the job of the west should not be to hope for a Ukrainian victory, but to mediate a peace deal. “We shouldn’t be on Russia’s side, or Ukraine’s side, but between the two,” he said, adding that the policy of imposing sanctions on Russia had not worked.

Oleg Nikolenko, spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, described Orbán’s claims as “Russian propaganda”.

[…]

Orbán won a fourth consecutive term in office in an election earlier this year, with his government accused of stifling media freedom and backsliding on democratic norms since his Fidesz party won power in 2010. Since the 2015 refugee crisis, Orbán’s government has used far-right anti-migration rhetoric as its main talking point.

On Saturday, he made frequent nods to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims there is a plot to dilute the white populations of the US and European countries through immigration. He said it was “an ideological trick of the internationalist left to say the European population is already mixed race”.

He named demographics, migration and gender as the main battlefields of the future, on the same day that thousands of people rallied in Budapest for the city’s annual Pride march.

He’s coming soon to America to share his vision with eager allies:

Orbán will be hoping for Italian elections in September to return a rightwing coalition, and is also rooting for the return of Donald Trump in 2024. Next month, he is due to travel to Dallas, Texas, where he will address CPAC, a large gathering of American conservatives. Earlier this year, CPAC hosted a special session of the conference in Budapest.

Orbán has shown how to institutionalize the culture war. America isn’t exactly the same, of course. Hungary, for instance, has a much more liberal abortion policy. Religion plays a different role. We have our own priorities and our history of racism is unique. But essentially America’s culture wars are the same — race, demographics, migration and gender. This is the battlefield.