Hungary, America and the Rise of the National Conservative

The National Conservatives have gained political ground in America, but their platform of far-right policies – covering everything from inhumane immigration stances to the denial of human rights for many in society – is straight out of Viktor Orbán’s playbook and should be challenged by all democratic voices across the globe.

It was a busy year for Viktor Orbán and his conservative regime. Back in May, Budapest hosted an eclectic mix of U.S. right-wingers at a mini-Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the first of its kind on European soil. A few months later, Orbán made headlines for a controversial speech in which he declared that Hungarians shouldn’t become a “mixed race” and rejected multiculturalism as a suicidal ideology.

The independent Hungarian press and various foreign pundits quickly denounced this language as outright racism and one of Orbán’s former advisors, Zsuzsa Hegedüs, called it a “straight Nazi text, worthy of Goebbels.” Despite the outrage, in August, Orbán was given red-carpet treatment at CPAC’s main event in Dallas. He delivered a keynote speech in which he laid out how his government had achieved total victory over the left-liberalism in Hungary, and he counselled U.S. conservatives to learn from his example.

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