Over the weekend I finished, Silent Invasion; The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late, by Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the former White House coronavirus task force coordinator. However, something else caught my attention and I decided to write about another, and I think more deadly virus that is threatening to take down or greatly alter the future political landscape of this country.
As you may or may not know, the American Conservative Political Action Conference just took place in Hungary. Yes, you read that correctly – Hungary! This is the first time it has ever been held outside of the United States and the country they chose, Hungary, is run by Viktor Orban, an authoritarian leader who seems to be the idol of Tucker Carlson and many on the far-right side of the GOP. This conference was attended by former President Trump who has possible aspirations to run again in 2024. Think about that. A man who aspires to be the next president of the United States attended a conference where the keynote speaker, Viktor Orban, has been dismantling democracy in Hungary for the last 12 years!!
Viktor Orban was the keynote speaker but there were other outrageous people on the stage. “A notorious Hungarian racist who has called Jews “stinking excrement”, referred to Roma as “animals” and used racial epithets to describe Black people, was a featured speaker at a major gathering of US Republicans in Budapest.
Zsolt Bayer took the stage at the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Hungary, a convention that also featured speeches from Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.”2 Isn’t that just great. We have a former (and possibly future President) and his Chief of Staff speaking at the same event as these bigoted racists. This truly boggles the mind.
According to Kim Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who is an expert on Hungarian politics, “All of the international democracy rating agencies agree that Hungary is no longer a democracy”1 So why the hell would the CPAC and Mr. ‘Make America Great Again” himself even associate with this thug? “According to Matt Schlapp, the chairman of CPAC, says there’s a lot about Orban and Hungary for American conservatives to admire. He has embraced their Christian heritage, and if Christian societies want to have their values reflected in government, that’s a good thing.”1 So, there you have it. The MAGA crowd and these ‘American conservatives’ basically are basically willing to undermine/destroy democracy so we can all live in an authoritarian theocracy.
Who is Viktor Orban and why should Americans care.? Viktor Orban assumed his current position of Prime Minister in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014, 2018 and 2022. He is the longest serving leader in the European Union.
“Orban has been criticized as a white ethno-nationalist authoritarian. He’s restricted Muslim immigration and LGBTQ rights while building a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many American conservatives, however, see Orban’s Hungary as a kind of anti-woke paradise”.1
According to Scheppele, “Right now, both American conservatism and Hungarian politics are driven by cultural issues — like immigration, gender identity and abortion.
“All the culture war campaigns have been used to disguise the fact that, by law, Orban has been limiting the democratic space. And he’s done that particularly by rigging the election laws and then capturing all of the independent agencies that could tell him no.”
Think about that last statement in the context of all of the States that have passed voter restriction laws and the ongoing gerrymandering which are simply efforts by conservatives in this country to ‘limit the democratic space’. Trump tried very hard to install nothing but loyalists in Federal agencies regardless of the actual qualifications for the job. The primary criteria were that they were 100 percent loyal to Trump and whatever he wanted to do – legal or illegal. This is exactly what Orban has done in Hungary.
Orban has been so effective at dismantling democracy in Hungary that there are very serious conversations in the EU about kicking Hungary out of the union.3 Is this really the direction we want to take this country? This kind of thinking by the MAGA movement and the Trump wing of the GOP should scare the hell out of any American who gives a damn about democracy. Unless the moderate wing of the GOP can regain control of their party and if the MAGA Republicans regain control of the House and Senate in November, we will be yet another step closer to the United States following the path of Viktor Orban into the abyss of authoritarianism.
I’m sure there are already plans underway to hold the next CPAC event in Moscow – probably at a newly constructed Trump hotel!!
Nothing says MAGA quite like holding hands in one of Russia’s few remaining supporting countries.