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DALLAS — Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has consolidated autocratic power with hard-right opposition to immigration and liberal democracy, will address an adoring crowd of thousands of Americans in Dallas on Thursday.
His speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) continued despite Orbán’s latest controversy: a speech in which he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed race”, saying Europeans did not want to live with people from outside the continent. One of his close advisers resigned in protest, calling the speech “pure Nazi”.
But Orbán has found supporters among prominent American conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance. On his way to Dallas, Orban stopped to visit Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. In a statement, Trump called Orbán his “friend” and said he valued his perspective. “Few people know so much about what’s going on in the world today,” Trump said.
On Wednesday, Karlsson defended Orbán against negative media coverage of the speech.
“So Viktor Orbán is now a Nazi because he wants national borders?” Carlson said. Carlson helped raise Orbán’s profile in the US with a special broadcast from Budapest last year, during which he praised Orbán’s Hungary as a role model for Americans.
“It’s a disgrace,” said Al Cardenas, a Republican operative who previously ran the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, and has been critical of the group ever since. “In the midst of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, it is inexcusable to invite a pro-Putin leader.”
Matt Schlapp, who heads the American Conservative Union, defended Orbán’s invitation in the name of free speech.
“Let’s listen to the man speak,” Schlapp told Bloomberg News. “We’ll see what he says. And if people disagree with something he says, they should raise it.
Some at the convention Thursday said they were eager to hear Orbán clarify his remarks about race.
“As a person who, I’m mixed race, I’m mixed race, I’d like to see what he has to say to that, to put something positive into it,” said Raven Harrison, an unsuccessful congressional primary candidate from outside Dallas. “I don’t want to blame him for it at this point.”
Orbán’s appearance in Dallas comes after a CPAC event held in Hungary in May that featured a videotaped address from Trump in which he said he was “honored” to support Orbán’s recent re-election bid.
In power since 2010, Orbán has managed to dominate and reshape Hungary’s political system not through a Soviet-style police state, but rather through constitutional changes and the weakening of civil society. He has alienated NATO allies with opposition to punishing Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. Orbán’s growing isolation in Europe has added urgency to his long-standing efforts to strengthen relations with the United States through the Republican Party.
CPAC Hungary was a celebration of Orbán’s policies, including his sidelining of the mainstream media. Several media outlets that applied to cover the conference were denied credentials. Schlapp said it didn’t do much to change coverage.
“I went out and gave a press conference, but they still called me a white nationalist,” Schlapp recalled. “I thought, I don’t know if there’s any point, if that’s what their editors intend to write.”
In his own speech at CPAC Hungary, Orban did not discuss race and focused more on the celebration of national identity and traditional values that excite American conservatives. The Hungarian leader called his country “the laboratory where we tested the antidote to the dominance of progressives,” listing twelve points for conservative success, from prioritizing economic growth to “exposing[ing] the intentions of your enemies.”
This approach appealed to American conservatives. Under Schlapp’s leadership, the American Conservative Union organized more CPACs around the world and also invited right-wing populists to address crowds in the United States.
A year before UK voters voted to leave the European Union, Brexit Party founder Nigel Farage was given a prime spot to speak at CPAC. Three years later, the crowd got to hear Marion Marechal-Le Pen, politician and niece of Marine Le Pen, the standard-bearer of the French far-right party. After the 2018 election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Schlapp’s group began holding conferences in Brazil where politicians from the leading right-wing party discussed how to defeat a left that “denies family values.”
Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a Republican candidate for the Ohio Senate, told a conservative science conference last year that “childlessness” was undermining America, and he pointed to Orbán’s policy of generous tax breaks for parents of three or three children. more children.
“Why can’t we do that here?” Vance asked. “Why can’t we actually encourage family formation?”
After Orbán’s party won this year’s election, One America News anchor Jack Posobiek celebrated in a podcast hosted by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. “He supports nationalism. He protects the borders,” Posobiec told Kirk. “He defends the sovereign national identity of his people and defends a new kind of conservatism that is not about cutting taxes for corporations; [it’s] about taking the family unit and centering it.’
Both Vance and Posobiek will speak at the conference on Friday.
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