C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
‘Until this weekend, Orbán had ruled Hungary for 16 uninterrupted years, for most of that time with an unassailable legislative supermajority. As reporters have told us endlessly over the past decade or so, he was “Trump before Trump,” and the truism is at least partly accurate.
As Hungarian journalist Ivan L. Nagy puts it, Orbán survived for so long through an ingenious pattern of “shadowboxing” against an ever-shifting cast of “make-believe enemies,” telling the conservative and nationalistic elements of the Hungarian public that only he can save them from dark-skinned immigrants, European bureaucrats, meddling American liberals, the globalist plots of Hungarian-born George Soros, LGBTQ activists, “gender ideology” and wokeness. It isn’t entirely fair to say he built his regime on veiled or coded racism, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia and trans panic; for the most part, it wasn’t coded at all.
For the American right, Orbán’s Hungary was a template for realizing fundamental conservative goals, including oppressing diversity and individual liberty, advancing a racist, bigoted anti-immigrant agenda, and undermining democracy to establish the tyranny of Republican minority rule.
As Hungarian journalist Ivan L. Nagy puts it, Orbán survived for so long through an ingenious pattern of “shadowboxing” against an ever-shifting cast of “make-believe enemies,” telling the conservative and nationalistic elements of the Hungarian public that only he can save them from dark-skinned immigrants, European bureaucrats, meddling American liberals, the globalist plots of Hungarian-born George Soros, LGBTQ activists, “gender ideology” and wokeness. It isn’t entirely fair to say he built his regime on veiled or coded racism, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia and trans panic; for the most part, it wasn’t coded at all.
For the American right, Orbán’s Hungary was a template for realizing fundamental conservative goals, including oppressing diversity and individual liberty, advancing a racist, bigoted anti-immigrant agenda, and undermining democracy to establish the tyranny of Republican minority rule.
