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.
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