Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Orbán’s speech in Texas, opens with lots of flattery and a few jokes, but it soon settles into a rhythm more familiar from his last speech to CPAC. He is:

A leader of a country that is under the siege of progressive liberals day-by-day.

Obviously there is a huge army of progressive liberals outside the gates. Like Russia in Ukraine???

I can already see tomorrow’s headlines: “Far-right European racist and anti-Semite strongman, the Trojan horse of Putin, holds speech at conservative conference.” But I don’t want to give them any ideas. They know best how to write Fake News. 

He was pretty accurate, but the level of reportage seems to have been pretty low key, just as it was when CPAC went to Hungary. My experience then was that many on the US right had no idea it was happening, and regarded reports as fake news “why would CPAC go to Hungary?”. On the whole, the US media likes to pretend that authoritarian pro-corporate governments are not a threat.

The Obama Administration tried to force us to change the Fundamental law of Hungary, and delete Christian and national values from it.

I’m guessing they tried to support some group which was being declared non-human, but I’ve no idea, he does not say. An accusation is always better if its too vague to be denied, or you don’t look bad making it.

Progressive liberals didn’t want me to be here because they knew what I would tell you. Because I am here to tell you that we should unite our forces.

Fair enough. If you are going to tell lies about progressive liberals and declare war on them, they probably won’t be happy you are here, but it does not prove your virtue.

If somebody has doubts whether progressive liberals and communists are the same, just ask us, Hungarians. We fought them both, and I can tell you: they are the same.

So the technique is as before, try to combine different groups in the one smear of guilt by association. Is it possible that communists and progressive liberals both opposed Orbán for different reasons and did not join together?

political life is ruled by liberal hegemony

If only it was. This is about scare mongering, and suggesting the right has been stripped of rightful power.

So, first and foremost: we need to trust our Judeo-Christian teachings. They help us decide what actions are right and what actions are wrong. If you believe in God, you also believe that we humans were created in God’s image. Therefore, we have to be brave enough to address even the most sensitive questions: migration, gender, and the clash of civilisations. Don’t worry: a Christian politician cannot be racist. 

Interesting. Presumably this statement above means that racism is bad, but if you are Christian you just can’t be racist and don’t have to trouble your conscience about it. Which given his speech just before he came in which he supposedly said, seems to be what he thinks.

There is a world in which European peoples are mixed together with those arriving from outside Europe. Now that is a mixed-race world. And there is our world, where people from within Europe mix with one another, move around, work, and relocate. So, for example, in the Carpathian Basin we are not mixed-race: we are simply a mixture of peoples living in our own European homeland. 

 Conor Friedersdorf Why Viktor Orbán’s Racism Matters in the U.S. The Atlantic 4 August 2022

In Texas he said:

I’ll tell you the truth: in Hungary we introduced a zero-tolerance policy on racism and anti-Semitism, so accusing us is fake news, and those who make these claims are simply idiots.

The idiots obviously include writers on the Jerusalem Post, who report that an official report on anti-Semitism is just a press release with no information on how the data was compiled, that the government has effectively censored Holocaust museums and that:

a European Union survey finds that 40% of Jews in Hungary have thought about leaving the country because of antisemitism, [so] it’s hard to swallow that Hungary offers a high quality of life for Jews.

He implies that mixing is about culture…. ?

Don’t be afraid to call your enemies by their name. You can play it safe, but they will never show mercy. Consider for example George Soros, as you call him here…. He is my opponent. He believes in none of the things that we do. And he has an army at his service: money, NGOs, universities, research institutions and half the bureaucracy in Brussels. He uses this army to force his will on his opponents, like us Hungarians. 

George Soros’s army is a recurring figure in his speeches. Indeed there are huge billboards in Hungary which attack Soros. Soros wants an “Open Society,” with many opinions, something which authoritarians do not want. He has not been very successful given the supposed reach of this army. I suspect that Soros’s prime crime, is that he has not believed in the ideology that the free market always delivers the best result, or that corporations don’t have power. But I suspect that Orbán does not believe in a free market either. I don’t know, but he probably believes in a market which cronies with business to make what looks like the best result for Hungary.

You also have to know how you should fight. My answer is: Play by your own rules! But how do you do that? It is as simple as it sounds. You must play to win. ‘You cannot expect victory and plan for defeat.’ You have to believe that you are better than your left-liberal opponents are. And don’t care what the liberals say! They always say you will lose. They say it cannot be done.

You also have to know how you should fight. My answer is: Play by your own rules! But how do you do that? It is as simple as it sounds. You must play to win. ‘You cannot expect victory and plan for defeat.’ You have to believe that you are better than your left-liberal opponents are. And don’t care what the liberals say! They always say you will lose. They say it cannot be done.

You just have to prove them wrong. 

Again we learn that in war anything goes. Presumably a Christian not only cannot be a racist, they also cannot play dirty, or destroy tradition or principle in their politics; whatever they do is justified by victory.

this war is a culture war. We have to revitalize our churches, our families, our universities and our community institutions. Hungary is an old, proud but David-sized nation standing alone against the Woke Globalist Goliath. 

I’ve already stated many times that the right engages in culture wars, because its real agenda would not be popular and Orbán seems to run similar culture war memes to those of the US Right. Some say he has pioneered the vote rigging the Republicans seem to be engaged with [1]. But that makes sense: if your opposition is evil, you cannot afford the risk of them winning. Again we have the idea of the “Woke Globalist Goliath”. Whatever wokeness is, its not that big a movement, but presumably its an evil giant. Always magnify your enemy while making them look weak?

His next point is that they built a wall and kept out migrants. The corresponding point that Trump said he would build a wall, and failed at enormous cost, after 4 years, is not made.

Progressives claim all over the world that families should not be protected. In Europe they say there is no such thing as family, because love is love and family is family. If you cannot define family, nothing is a family.

This is simply not true. Most progressives do not want violence in families, rape in families and so on. They want families to be protected. This has sometimes been seen as an attack on families, by those people who support violence in families. Who says there is no such thing as family? People do say, however, that there are more complicated families than a married man and woman and their children by that marriage. This is reality, and those more complicated families need protection.

All subsidies are already available to families following conception. Families automatically get tax breaks, the state takes over your student loans after your third child. Women are exempt from paying personal income tax for life after the birth of their fourth child. And we are fighting to extend the same zero tax policy for mothers with three children.

Sounds like communism 🙂 Mother Heroines of the Soviet Unions etc.

He also boasts that children should not know about non-straight people.

We decided we don’t need more genders; we need more rangers. Less drag queens, and more Chuck Norris. We believe there is no freedom without order. If there is no order, you get chaos… In Hungary you will only hear: “more funds to the Police!”

Sometimes you get more chaos the more you try and impose order. But let us remember why people in the US said things like defund the police. This was because many black people, respectable middle class black people, are still treated like criminals by police, even without any criminal record or criminal behaviour. It was because black people are convicted for crimes which are ignored if you are white. It was because black people where killed by police out of proportion to their numbers. It is because police are frightened they are going to be shot if they don’t shoot first. If you can sort out the police, then the police will be more popular. There is no sign that Republicans want to deal with these problems, and maybe they are happy with those problems, and happy to blame the people being shot and arrested. Orbán gives no hints how to solve those problems.

we introduced a flat tax on personal income, which is currently 15 per cent. In just 10 years-time we reduced the tax wedge by 10 per cent, which was the biggest tax cut in Europe. We have the lowest corporate income tax in Europe, which is a flat 9 per cent. With this low corporate income tax last year, we had a 27 per cent investment rate, which was among the best in Europe.

Should it surprise us that corporations pay a lower tax rate than workers? Probably not. That would possibly be pleasing to Republicans as well. The only question is whether corporations pay that 9% or not, or manage to get out of it. If a flat tax works then good.

With the war in Ukraine. He argues that America and Russia need to negotiate peace. I don’t know whether his statement implies that the Ukrainians have a say in this. If they don’t then its a betrayal of peace.

only strong leaders are able to make peace. We in the neighbourhood of Ukraine are desperately in need of strong leaders, who are capable of negotiating a peace deal. Mayday, mayday! Please help us! We need a strong America with a strong leader.

He may just want Russian gas.

We in the West have not faced a crisis like this for a long time. The ideological wars of the twentieth century – against the totalitarian powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – were terrible, but democratic West rallied, and defeated them both. Now the West is at war with itself.

He does not mean the crises of climate change or ecological destruction. It would seem he means people being gay and disobedient, not being professed Christians, having complicated families, resisting being beaten up by police for no reason, or wondering why they are paying higher rates of tax than corporations.

All pretty trivial compared to the challenge of Hitler and Stalin. And let’s not forget that many Christian Churches supported Hitler, and went out of their way not to attack his policies, or refuse to teach “Aryan Christianity.” Hungary might be said to have gone along with Hitler as they later went along with Stalin.

We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another. We must coordinate the movement of our troops, because we face the same challenge

Again its a war. And its a war for ideological space and power. There is no compromise. Only the extinction of liberals having any basis for power. Its a war based on a claim of religious tradition to get some religious bodies onside. It is a war based upon a claim about family and being straight. It is a war based on disliking difference. It is a war in which fixing elections, controlling the media and controlling supposedly independent institutions is considered normal.

Everything is to be held in check and made the same.

People may know that the important US rightwing Organisation CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) is courting Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán, and getting his advice on how to proceed to win victory in the USA. CPAC has both formally gone to Hungary to observe the results and invited Orbán to speak to them in Texas. So this is not a bit of random noise. This is saying that the USA has no ideas of its own, and it’s a bit like inviting Mussolini to speak to them in the 1930s. It indicates what the US right is looking for, if we did not already know.

So its worthwhile looking at Orbán’s two speeches to them. Some of what he says is probably good advice for everyone, and people who are not authoritarian right wingers should pay heed, not only to the authoritarian advice, so they know what is being done against them, but to find out what they might learn.

The first was given in Hungary, when CPAC visited him. It was called “The cure for progressive dominance was invented in Hungary.” Some of us may dispute the idea of progressive dominance, but the idea that progressives are dominant is important to right wing ideology, it makes a good excuse to justify unethical action. Orbán says

four days ago I formed my fifth conservative, Christian government

I guess we can guess that this means he is hostile to non-Christians, and is full of self righteousness, because he has God on his side, and can punish the heathen, or other people he does not like. Some claim that he expelled many Christian denominations from Hungary, so American people should be worried about what Republicans think is Christian. But this might be a bit premature.

How can I contribute to today’s gathering? Perhaps if I tell you how we won: how we first defeated the communist regime; then how we defeated the liberals; and then, most recently, how we defeated the international liberal left when they combined their forces against Hungary in the election.

International people are bad unless they are right wingers, obviously the right is international, but it again conjures the idea that the left is powerful and stretches all over the world.

This problem – if I am not mistaken, both in America and Western Europe – is the domination of public life by progressive liberals. The problem is the fact that they hold the most important positions in the most important institutions, that they occupy the dominant positions in the media, and that they produce all the politically indoctrinating works of high and mass culture. 

He offers no evidence of course, again the point is to officially claim that right wing politics is fighting against a monster. It is hard to believe that Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson are dominating the media as progressive liberals, and its hard to pretend that there is not a large body of right wing literature, rightwing publishing houses, or rightwing corporately sponsored think-tanks, or that the right does not feature in many important institutions (including universities), unless you refuse to look, or unless you consider that everyone that disagrees with you is a progressive liberal, and should be removed or censored.

One way you can detect authoritarianism, is a refusal to admit the other side could win legitimately, and to suspend all restraint against that other side, while pretending to be victims to justify whatever steps you might take.

He talks about the revolution against the communists

We thought we had finally got what we wanted, but we were wrong: under the dictatorship liberals and conservatives entered into an anti-communist pact, but at the first subsequent opportunity the liberals sided with the communists. It turned out that in fact they were natural allies. If I am not mistaken, this kind of sinful covenant has also been seen in the United States.

I’m not familiar with Hungarian history, but talking of “sinful covenants” should ring alarm bells, especially as there is no evidence that current day “progressive liberals” have much more in common with communists than the conservative right.

And then, between 2002 and 2010, we saw what generally happens in such circumstances: the socialists spent the people’s money. Hungary sank into debt, the economy fell into recession, inflation ran out of control, unemployment rose and people were unable to pay their bills. Street violence broke out and paramilitary groups were on the march. It was a long time ago, but let us not forget: strings of ethnically-motivated murders outraged public sentiment. 

We might wonder which side these paramilitary groups were supporting.

the fruit of progressive government speaks for itself: economic ruin and street violence. When a left-wing government comes to power, the story almost always ends in the same way.

Again there is not even an attempt to justify this. There are plenty of governments that he would call left progressive that don’t encourage street violence and that don’t leave economic ruin. More modern street violence occurred under Trump than under Obama, including the attack on the Capitol and the BLM riots in response to police violence, and Obama started the US economy on a road to recovery from the crash of 2008. Biden seems to be doing ok on the US economy as well. Under Trump the U.S. national debt increased by 39%, reaching $27.75 trillion; the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio the highest since WWII. When he left office there were 3 million fewer jobs in the U.S. than when he took office, which is something of a surprise given the increase spending. However, being able to condemn street violence is probably a good place to be. Most politicians have developed the art of excusing violence by their own.

The first point in the Hungarian formula is to play by our own rules. The only way to win is to refuse to accept the solutions and the paths offered by others.

Another way of expressing this, is don’t play by conventions, don’t play by the rules, don’t heed tradition. Let the rules inhibit others. Never agree with the others. Politics is total war. There is no reason not to encourage violence in the Streets, or violence against opposing politicians. Stochastic Terrorism is great, if you don’t want to risk normal terrorism.

The second point: national conservatism in domestic politics. The cause of the nation is not a matter of ideology, nor even of tradition. The reason that churches and families must be supported is that they are the building blocks of the nation. This also means that one must remain on the side of the voters….. One must find the issues on which the Left is completely out of touch with reality and highlight them – but in a way that can be understood by people who are not eggheads

Churches are good sources of ideology, and they will support people who go along with them and support them. No immigrants. Walls on borders. Lie about what your opponents want.

Third point: the national interest in foreign policy…. the Nation First! Hungary First! America First!

You might wonder what groups are being identified with the Nation, but people will want to know what is in the policy for themselves and their associates. This is reality. Always portray wars in the national interest, or not being involved in a neighbouring war as in the national interest.

Fourth point, Dear Friends: we must have our own media….  My friend Tucker Carlson stands alone and immovable. His show has the highest audience figures. What does this mean? It means that there should be shows like his day and night – or, as you say, 24/7. 

There should be no media, other than media which supports the right. This is pretty much the case in Hungary, nearly all the media is owned by supporters of Orbán. But yes, the left needs to heed this and build its own media. Hard, when media requires money and there is an established corporate media which generally ignores the left, but it used to be possible: unions could own media.

Fifth point: expose your opponent’s intentions. As a condition for victory, media support is necessary, but not sufficient…. Here in Hungary we expose what the Left are preparing before they even take action. At first they will deny it, but success is all the sweeter when it emerges that we were right all along. For instance, there is the issue of LGBTQ propaganda targeting children. This is still a new thing over here, but we have already destroyed it…. to quote General Patton again: “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

Invent stuff about your opponents, and keep repeating it until it is believed, and then act against what you said they were doing, violently. This can be done by any side that does not believe truth is relevant, or who is prepared to say some minor groups of the opposition represent the whole group of the opposition.

Sixth point: economy, economy, economy. We all know that the Left want to operate the economy according to abstract notions…. When we came to power, we decided that we must only pursue economic policies that benefit the majority of voters

This is probably borrowed from Bill Clinton…. not that he would accept of course. But sadly we know that with control of the media, then you can, like Trump, claim to have made economic progress and people will believe you for a while, and some will be able to truthfully say they are doing better.

Our seventh point: do not get pushed to the extreme. I say this because extreme conspiracy theories rear their heads from time to time on the right – just as extreme utopias regularly rear their heads on the left.

No objection to this, just wish it would happen, and that the right would not deny science, and invent imaginary conspiracy theories to attack their opponents. But I suspect he is saying try to keep the conspiracy arguments in bounds

Eighth point: read every day. A book a day keeps the defeat away. I know that this sounds strange. I am not an academic myself, but the fact is that no invention has yet surpassed the book as a vehicle for understanding and conveying ideas. The world is becoming increasingly complex, and we need to dedicate time to understanding it. I, for instance, set aside one whole day every week for reading. Reading also helps us to understand what our opponents think and where their thinking is flawed. If we know that, the rest is mere technique. 

Good advice for everyone. I doubt the Republicans will accept it they seem to be wanting to stop people reading anything that they don’t approve.

Ninth point: have faith. A lack of faith is dangerous. If you do not believe that there will be a final reckoning and that you will be held to account for your actions before God, you will think that you can do anything that is in your power

The problem with this is simply the obvious one that if you think everything you do is guided by God, then you may well think that you can do anything that is in your power.

Tenth point: make friends. Our opponents, the progressive liberals and neo-Marxists, have unlimited unity: they have one another’s backs. 

if only that was true 🙂 but it does make them a monolithic block capable of evil, and unprincipled.

if we want to succeed in politics, we should never look at what we disagree on, but instead look for our common ground. 

another likely truth. This is why Libertarians and Evangelical Christians can live with pagan fascists.

Eleventh point: build communities. My Friends, over the years I have also learned that there is no conservative political success without functioning communities.

This is true for every politics. Politics must become communal. It must build relationships, identity, mutual support and mutual dedication to the cause. However, he also suggests taking over community organisations to gain influence. For the righteous, communities must have no voice of their own.

the twelfth point: build institutions. For successful politics, one needs institutions and institutes. Whether they are think tanks, educational centers, talent workshops, foreign relations institutes, youth organizations or whatever, they should have a political aspect. Let us not forget: politicians come and go, but institutions stay with us for generations.

This is also true, and follows that only the righteous should have a voice, and there should be no institutions which do not support the righteous and their government. No pluralism. Authoritarians see this uniformity as paradise – an echo of the unity in God.

Few people can stand against this gentle coercion.

Now we see that the progressives are threatening the whole of Western civilization, and the true danger is not from without but from within….

We are dealing with the same people: faceless, ideologically trained bureaucrats sitting in Washington DC and Brussels. Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists intoxicated by the dream of wokeness, those in the pay of George Soros, the advocates of the open society. They want to abolish the Western way of life that you and we love so much: what your parents fought for during World War II and the Cold War, and what we fought for when we drove the Soviet communists out of Hungary. 

Again we have the inflation of the progressive evil, to make the fight existential and unbounded. Remember your opponents are evil and faceless. They are completely hostile to civilisation, and they must be removed and driven out. We are right. They are wrong. There is no common point. You might build commonality with those you share goals with, but your defined opponents have nothing in common with you. They must be exterminated. This really is war. And if democracy involves disagreement, and acceptance of disagreement, this is a war on democracy.

continues… the US right and Hungary 2