NEW: congressmen Paul Gosar and Barry Moore are slated to speak alongside the leader of an Austrian radical right party founded by Nazi SS officers: https://t.co/xctSYIyVpP
— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) May 3, 2023
Rightwingers praise free speech at CPAC Hungary – then eject Guardian journalist
— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) May 5, 2023
US Republicans and their European allies tore up news headlines and ejected a Guardian journalist from a conference of radical rightwing activists, on the same day that they highlighted the importance of free speech.
Speaking at the second annual meeting in Budapest of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), Kari Lake, a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate, said that “truth-tellers and peacemakers” were being destroyed by “fake news”.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, delivers the keynote speech in Budapest on Thursday.“It’s always opposite day in the media: if they’re telling what you’re doing is bad, it’s probably good,” said Lake before tearing up a sheaf of printed articles about the conference aimed at cementing radical rightwing ties across the Atlantic…
The CPAC audience also watched a recorded message from Donald Trump in which the former president said conservatives were “fighting against barbarians” and listed freedom of speech as one of the cardinal virtues of the far right…
Enmity towards the media has been a constant theme at CPAC’s Hungarian iteration. Last year the organizers refused entry to journalists from all US media outlets, including Vice, Vox, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and the Associated Press.
This year, most independent journalists were refused accreditation for the event, held in a country where the IPI has said media freedom “remains suffocated”…
I Was Banned From Entering CPAC Hungary’s ‘Woke Free Zone’ ?@ccaryl? ?@EdwardGLuce? ?@gideonrachman? ?@SCClemons? ?@mattduss? ?@DrDominicGreen? ?@sbg1? ?@ThePlumLineGS? https://t.co/rF7iNY4n17
— Jacob Heilbrunn (@JacobHeilbrunn) May 6, 2023
… I came to Hungary to witness the not new, yet still astonishing enmeshing of the populist-nationalist American right and its European counterpart, and I didn’t have to wait long. There was Orbán endorsing Donald Trump’s 2024 bid on the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference taking place here. Some in the audience wore T-shirts depicting Orbán and Trump as “saviors of the world.”
I was supposed to be watching all this from inside the conference, within the gleaming Bálna, or whale center, along the Danube. Instead, I was livestreaming it from my hotel room — barred from entry as a member of the media.
When I tried to attend the event earlier that day, I ran into a barrier that seemed almost as formidable as the old Berlin Wall. Two security guards loomed large before a gateway arch in front of the center entrance, which was festooned with the slogan “Woke Free Zone.” More guards and metal detectors were downstairs in the registration area…
Once upon a time CPAC, which hosted its annual flagship event just outside Washington two months ago, was eager for media attention. But lately, CPAC officials have developed an aversion to the press, restricting many reporters and denouncing its critics as “fake journalists.” That seems particularly true as the MAGA movement has embraced Orbán and his agenda.
Hungary is now the global epicenter of the new right’s crusade against liberal democracy. It serves as an alluring model for many conservatives — a country that’s successfully neutered the media and the judiciary as well as passed an anti-LGBTQ law that’s supposed to protect the traditional family. And don’t forget Orbán’s reluctance to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s brutal invasion.
This is the second year in a row that CPAC came to Budapest, and Trump and his allies rejoiced in the blossoming relationship. In a Friday video address to the conference, Trump hailed the “freedom-loving patriots” at the conference and declared that it was imperative to “stand together to defend our borders, our Judeo-Christian values, our identity and our way of life.” …
As I livestreamed the event, it quickly became clear that the Bálna center was functioning as a kind of mega-church for the Trumpian right. There were sermons and homilies and exhortations. There were warnings about satanic forces. And there were promises of redemption and salvation. One speaker talked about being crucified for politically incorrect views; others worshipped at the altar of Orbánism, praising Hungary as an outpost of Christianity that was beating back the infidels and heretics.
“I stand in awe,” declared Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, who has appeared at white nationalist events in the past, agreed. “Hungary,” he said, “is a beacon.”
In fact, the MAGA faithful flocked to the event to profess their admiration for the Hungarian miracle. Former Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake recently declared on Steve Bannon’s show that “Hungary is doing things right.” One thing Orbán is apparently doing right is cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday morning, Lake announced at the conference that there was a simple solution to ending the Ukraine conflict — sellout Kyiv to the Russians. “The only way to stop this war,” she said, “is to turn off the money spigot. I say we should invest in protecting our borders, not Ukraine’s.”
In a video message presumably taped before his abrupt ouster, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson told the Americans who were in Budapest that they were “very brave” as the State Department was “keeping track, you went to a forbidden country.” Later that day Orbán hosted Lake, Gosar and more than a dozen other American conservative activists and politicians for a photo-op at his office, including the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and former Sen. Rick Santorum. Hungary, Orbán said, has become an “incubator where the conservative policies of the future are being tested.”…
CPAC has been good for Orbán. A return by Trump would be even better. “A Republican president,” Balázs Orbán said, “is in Hungary’s interest.”
A different American newsreader, however (per the Daily Beast)…
In a pre-recorded message aired at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary on Thursday, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson told the crowd that he’d “be there with you” if “I ever got fired.”
The irony, of course, is that since Carlson recorded the video—which was filmed in his old Tucker Carlson Tonight studio—he was shockingly fired by Fox News, meaning he possibly could have made time to attend the right-wing confab…
Carlson has long been a vocal advocate of Orban and his right-wing government. The conservative host has broadcast his primetime Fox News from Hungary, given Orban sycophantic interviews, produced an antisemitic documentary targeting Orban foe George Soros, and appeared at far-right conferences tied to Orban in Budapest. He has also repeatedly implored the American government to implement Orban’s strict immigration and anti-LGBTQ policies while downplaying the Hungarian leader’s anti-democratic rhetoric…
Carlson, meanwhile, is scheduled to make his first public appearance since his Fox News ouster on Thursday, speaking at a fundraiser in Alabama.
Along with Jack Posobiec and NYYRC’s Gavin Wax, @newsweek will be represented at this event through Josh Hammer.
This is the second event he’s attended with FPÖ party members present in under six months. https://t.co/xm98qnKFpi
— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) May 3, 2023
hahaha this is really something elsehttps://t.co/I2pOqZI5sF pic.twitter.com/bMkI1t6XZP
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 4, 2023
I guess Rod wants to be the successor that vanquishes the Weimar. Wonder what that was, historically? https://t.co/4GLbOOr8t3
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) May 4, 2023
There is making yourself a hostage to fortune and then there is this… I won't even ask what the average American defender of Orban would say or do if Biden endorsed a candidate in a foreign country in such unambiguous terms. https://t.co/iS01VjbWW4
— Michael D. Weiss (@michaeldweiss) May 4, 2023
so i was just ranting the other day about gay sailors to the hungarians i left my family to hang out with and they all agreed i was being very normal and it's everyone else who's weird
— flglmn (@flglmn) May 5, 2023
Landlocked countries just don't get it
— Devin Shelly (@DevinShelly) May 5, 2023
rod dreher et al: look at those beautiful unwoke men in russian army ads. what must they think of our decadent weimar military
prigozhin, standing over a pile of charred wagner corpses: please help, we've been using large boulders for artillery shells https://t.co/FDaLz7G53k
— Seva (@SevaUT) May 5, 2023
opiejeanne
My.
God.
I am frightened for the world.
Dirk Reinecke
Greedy people, and shortsighted. They would not want to live in the world they are striving to create
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Dirk Reinecke:
They want to lead the world they create so that the rules they make won’t have to apply to themselves, just the suckers… I mean believers. If these people got their way and eliminated everyone that they hated, they would just turn inward and destroy themselves by attacking each other.
These people need an enemy for their belief system to work.
Shalimar
@Odie Hugh Manatee: They wouldn’t be able to eliminate everyone they hate, but they would definitely enjoy their jobs eliminating people. Sadists are like that.
SpaceUnit
Disturbing as it is, the fact that these nazis are being forced to shut out mainstream media and spew their propaganda in an ever-more opaque and protective bubble may bode well for us in the long term. It suggests a movement in retreat, even if they’re incapable of grasping that possibility while in the throes of their hateful fever and bloodlust. Hope I’m right.
But then again it’s late, and I’m up well past my bedtime. Good night all!
NotMax
“Soundbite macht frei.”
//
Aussie Sheila
So Nationalists host and partake in internationalist conferences. Hmmmm.
I suspect the ‘globalism’ they speak of doesn’t necessarily mean ‘other countries I like and want to visit’. I suspect it doesn’t mean ‘we shouldn’t trade with other countries’.
I can’t think what they really mean. Can you?
Looks like C21st fascism is just like the C20th version, but this time with ‘transgressive sex’ as the trigger for eliminationist fantasies, together with Ukrainian nationalism for the Russians.
Talk about ‘second time as farce’. Except there is nothing farcical about the intent to physically eliminate your enemies, whether political or cultural. Looks like the old lessons have to be learned again. My worry is that the people who understood that in their lived experience are now nearly all dead, and the second generation after them believe history teaches nothing.
What a place to be in.
mrmoshpotato
CPAC Hungary?
So have all Rethuglicans denounced US citizenship, or can we strip it from them?
CPAC – Too Fascistic To Hold Our (Nuremberg) Rally In The US
NotMax
Springtime for Orban and Hun-ga-ry
Winter for reason and sense
…
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Triumph of the shrill.
//
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila:
The baddies did that last time, too. The famous Nazi bookburning photo was taken outside the Berlin Institute of Sexology (which provided services to LGBTQ folks during Weimar) in 1933.
First the came for the trans folks …. last time around too.
sukabi
@mrmoshpotato: oh they have one here too…much smaller the last couple of years but with concentrated crazy…they also limit press access…although the last 2 years it hasn’t been as much of a draw for some of our “elite” journalists looking to promote repubs….plus Matt Schlapp kinda soured the experience with his unwanted groping of young men….
Cameron
I don’t like feeling that I Just want to say ‘fuck it ‘ and split for the Old Country, but I don’t see how America gets it together.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy:
Yes, that’s right. Eliminationism was also directed at the disabled. The thing that rattles in my mind is the disastrous consequences of Stalin and the effects of his wretched politics on the western Left. I am highly alert these days for any sniff of similar ethical and political backsliding and perfidy.
Apart from the online US left (which is uniformly stupid and corrupt) and crumbs of the UK Left that can’t accept that Corbyn had good ideas, but couldn’t lead the proverbial horse to the trough let alone make it drink, I think the left overall are not making the same mistakes this time around.
I hope for everyone on planet earth I am right.
Chetan Murthy
@Cameron: If I could get myself a passport to some safe country, I’d do it. Problem is, the only one that’d be doable is India, and it’s arguable that India is heading down the shitter too, and faster. If you can get a passport to some calm and peaceful Old Country, why not?
different-church-lady
So. Sick. Of. Crazy. People….
hells littlest angel
Gosar, Lake, Carlson, Santorum. Just the absolute cream of the crop of America’s shittiest human beings.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy:
Australia is calm and peaceful. It was a conservative government that cracked down on guns and the emerging gun culture here after a massacre in 1996. There is no appetite, none whatsoever for loosening the laws.
Over 40% of households have a person born overseas living in the household. 25% of Australians were born overseas. The political culture can seem a little dull, but dig underneath and you’ll find mad RWNJs facing a broad egalitarian middle and working class that can’t stand pretension of any kind, and won’t stand for any voter suppression. Conservative rural voters legislated for compulsory voting in an attempt to out organise the rural working class of the early 20th century who were organised by the biggest union in the country at the time, the Australian Workers Union.
It was a conservative union by comtemporary standards, but was indefatigable in organising electorally against the conservatives, particularly in NSW and Queensland.
Its efforts guaranteed that no government had an interest in trying to restrict the franchise, except by various state based gerrymanders.
Women secured the vote federally in 1901 at federation because South Australia had already granted it in the previous century.
For that, I am truly thankful.
lowtechcyclist
Too bad we can’t just tell our homegrown fascists that since they like Orban’s Hungary that much, we’re not letting them back in: they’ve found their true spiritual home, let them stay there.
Tony Jay
Nice to see that a few words wingnuts paid attention in history class and understood how badly lack of international cooperation hurt the Axis last time around.
There’s the value of a good education, Morans!
Dirk Reinecke
@Aussie Sheila: I visited Australia in 2009 for a friends wedding. Landed in Perth and travelled across the continent to Syndey
It is a lovely place where things tend to work.
Aussie Sheila
@Dirk Reinecke:
Yes things do tend to work, but to be fair, although it is a huge landmass as big as the USA, most people live in 8 cities in the six states and territories. I am convinced it is compulsory voting that makes governments usually attentive to people’s needs. There is neglect, sure, but sooner or later, the voters catch up to you. And when they do, you are out, no ifs no buts.
You are unelected so fast, it happens within 48 hours of an election.
Gvg
@Cameron: Splitting for the old country isn’t safe. It’s everywhere. And America is very powerful in the world. Everyone else is safer if we fight and succeed here, in fact it may not even happen to break out again if we really succeed here. A lot of people may have forgotten history but not all. We are really not the only little group around who has noticed all this historical parallels.
you do what you can, but in general I don’t see anywhere to run to.
Chris T.
@Dirk Reinecke: I like Oz-stralia, except:
It’s hot. Waaaaaayyyyy too hot.
And humid, though Perth seemed less muggy than Sydney or Melbourne.
And yet, there’s no water!
And everything is out to kill you, even the plants. 😀
The food in Melbourne seemed especially good. Monarch Cakes on Acland St in St Kilda, ooohhh.
All in all I’d prefer to live in EnZed and to visit Oz regularly. But I’m too old for that now, probably…
Edit: fixing the link for Monarch Cakes destroyed all the bullet list item points for the “except” part, dammit. (And if you can’t stand the heat, which I can’t, there’s always Tasmania. Hobart is not bad. It’s not Melbourne food heaven though.)
Aussie Sheila
@Chris T.:
If you like cold weather, you have found a very good solution. But you could live in Tasmania, which is a similar climate to NZ, and a lot closer to Oz.
In any case the heat in Melbourne is a lot drier than Sydney, although its winters are truly terrible for my heat loving taste. Cold, with winds straight from Antarctica, no intervening landmass. Straight from the ice, at speeds that would get you booked on a highway.
Chris T.
@Aussie Sheila: I like … temperate rainforest-y weather. Nelson or Blenheim would be just about perfect (I prefer Nelson in general). Though NZ is getting walloped by the same climate change that’s decimating, well, everything now. Even here in the Pacific Northwet, things are changing fast.
Note: I was in Melbourne in February (part of the same trip where I went to Cradle Mountain in Tassie), which I guess is quite summer-y; I sweated like crazy while hiking, and even while just lounging around at the beach in St Kilda. I was in Sydney in August once though, and we were amused at everyone wearing parkas because it was maybe 61˚F (about 16˚C) that morning.
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg:
Yes it is the centrality of the US to the balance of world power that is so frightening. It is frightening that it seems to revolve around one nation, and frightening that the nation concerned is still only stumbling towards a notion of democracy that includes every citizen and which permits its High Court to rule over its elected Parliaments on matters of clear political and social policy.
We have a Constitution, written by men who partly looked to the US. But the reach of our Parliament is long and expansive, and the HC has been put in its place by the political process when it has seemed to want to override the will of the people as expressed by the Parliament.
As it should.
Aussie Sheila
@Chris T.:
16 C is cold to me. I would be rugged up because that is a winter temp. I feel comfortable at around 75-80 degreesF or 25-30 C. It’s what your body I used to I guess and what physical activity you are engaging in. In any case there are cool temperate climates in the South, ranging to tropics in the North. Plenty to suit all inclinations and body types. 😀
Matt McIrvin
@Cameron: While there are many wonderful countries that I’ve visited, they’re not mine. I’m personally probably in as safe a corner of the US as can be managed and leaving would accomplish nothing but symbolically washing my hands of the place while making it worse for everyone else here.
But it’s hard to watch things like this and not think the US is headed for civil war.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Tge current crisis in Israel provides a counter-argument to Parliamentary primacy. There, the right wing governing coalition seeks to give the Knesset the ability to override Supreme Court rulings, as well as concentrating the power to select judges within the Knesset majority. A left to center-right coalition is trying to stop this.
Netanyahu’s proposals are very unpopular. While the mechanics of the Israeli election system produced a 64-56 Knesset majority for the 4-party governing coalition,* its popular vote was close to tied with that of the opposition. Now though, polls show that the government would be crushed in a new election, and the judiciary controversy is the biggest factor here.
* Six opposition parties passed the 3.25% threshold to win Knesset representation. Meretz, however, fell short by a tenth of a per cent, and Balad came in at 2.87%. These votes were essentially lost to the opposition.
SFAW
@hells littlest angel:
Unfortunately, they’re far from alone at the “top.”
Marmot
Thanks for saying this. It happens to be true.
Also, defeatism is assistance for the bad guys,
Bill Arnold
@SpaceUnit:
The generally-used term of art is “Echo Chamber”.
Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (C. Thi Nguyen, Episteme 17 (2):141-161 (2020)) (pdf download button at link)
This means that they, the US far right, will make increasingly bad mistakes/misreads of the general polity. Democrats must prey on these mistakes without mercy.
kindness
What’s really bothering me is the asymmetric battle going on between the fascists/wannabes and us, the progressive folks that just want our governments to work for all of us. Here we have CPAC in Hungary lifting lines directly from the speeches Nazis gave in the 20’s & 30’s. Those authoritarian types have no intention of just letting us live our lives peacefully. They would fill the camps with us if they could. And we sit back and act as if it is just another tweet. At some point, we need to take it to them like they are doing to us right now.