Racism, Hate and Mysogyny Reign at CPAC

If one wants to see the true extremism of today's political right in America, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas offers a window into a world dominated by racism, homophobia, religious extremism and general mysogyny.  The contrast from the days of the so-called country club Republicans of my youth and young adulthood could not be more stark.  Things that would once have never been mentioned are now shouted and embraced publicly.  Sadly, far too many older Republicans remain locked in a fantasy that their party has not morphed into something unrecognizable and down right ugly.  One of the stars of this year's gathering - a coven of extrmists - is Hungary's dictator in all but name Viktor Orbán (pictured above left) who has largely destroyed democracy in his country and eliminated a free press (which explains why Orbán remains a fan of Vladimir Putin).   Indeed, Orbán's racist views are so extreme that he'd like support a ban on interracial marriage (Clarence Thomas are you paying attention?).  As for gays, he'd simply eliminate us if given the opportunity. A piece in Salon looks at the poison Orbán is peddling which the right is lapping up.  Here are higlights:

The Democratic Party and "globalist ruling class" both "hate and slander" conservatives in the U.S. and abroad. "Progressive liberals and communists are the same." The U.S. presidential and European Parliamentary elections in 2024 are "the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization." So the right must boldly fight immigration, LGBTQ rights and "the clash of civilizations," secure in the knowledge that "a Christian politician" can never be racist.

That, effectively, is how this week's three-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the most prominent gathering of the American right-wing, began in Dallas yesterday afternoon. While the first speaker on stage, out of deference to its host state, was Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott . . . . the clear commencement of the conference came with the speaker who followed him: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Over the last two years, Orbán has become an icon of American conservatives rivaled only by Donald Trump himself. That's so much the case that this week's CPAC is bookended by Orbán's opening speech and Saturday night's closer by Trump, who earlier this week posted pictures of him and Orbán meeting at his New Jersey golf course along with the caption, "Great spending time with my friend." Thursday's opening speech was the most high-profile appearance Orbán has made since igniting international controversy two weeks ago over comments he made condemning the notion of "mixed race" nations as an "ideological ruse" of the "internationalist left," and urging supporters to read one of the most infamously racist books of the last 50 years.

In May, the group held its first-ever European conference in Budapest, where Orbán, serving as host, offered a 12-point "open source" plan for Americans to emulate Hungary's "Christian conservative success" and reject "progressive dominance." (Among Orbán's recommendations were that conservatives commit to playing "by our own rules," embrace the values of "national conservatism," build their own media, and "expose the intent" of their enemies.) In Dallas, Orbán struck a similar tone . . . .

While Orbán and his administration frequently adopt a posture of modesty — what could their small Central European nation possibly teach the U.S.? — in reality, the mantle of authority the right has conferred upon him is no surprise to anyone who's watched American conservatives' deepening love affair with Hungary's proudly "illiberal democracy." . . . . Fox News' Tucker Carlson devoting multiple specials to the Hungarian miracle and rank-and-file conservatives calling for "nothing short of an American Orbánism." 

As New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book "Strongmen," noted this week on Twitter, "Orbán's appearance today at CPAC is the outcome of a carefully cultivated relationship. He can be the Big Man mentoring the GOP in how to wreck a democracy."  And so he did.

Declaring Hungary "the Lone Star state of Europe," Orbán assured CPAC that, "We Hungarians know how to defeat the enemies of freedom." Politics, he said, were not enough. "This war is a culture war." . . . . The only thing we Hungarians can do is show you how to fight back by our own rules." 

In large part, apparently, that means dismissing all criticism out of hand. Telling CPAC attendees that his presence was surely confounding "the leftist media" ("I can already see tomorrow's headlines: 'Far-right European racist and antisemite strongman, the Trojan horse of Putin, holds speech at conservative conference'"), . . . Orbán suggested that any such critiques were invalid on their face. 

All of this is happening in the aftermath of the international scandal Orbán caused in late July when he said, during a speech in neighboring Romania, that "we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race." Invoking the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional effort to replace white populations in Europe and North America with non-white immigrants . . . . Any liberal claims that Europe is, and for centuries has been, "mixed-race," Orbán argued, are "a historical and semantic sleight of hand" conflating the notion of intra-European migration with "a world in which European peoples are mixed together with those arriving from outside Europe." The difference, Orbán continued, is "we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race."

In promoting Hungary's pronatalist family policy — which includes provisions like tax amnesty for women who bear four or more children — he's long argued that Hungary doesn't merely "need numbers" but rather "Hungarian children," and that Hungarians "want our children, not foreign children, to inherit this country." 

Yet the length at which Orbán spoke against "race-mixing" in July — as well as a joking aside about calls to reduce energy consumption that some interpreted as making light of Nazi gas chambers — prompted unusually sharp condemnation across Europe and America, with Jewish leaders warning that he had invoked "dangerous" historical ideologies and journalists comparing the remarks to the Nuremberg Race Laws of Nazi Germany.

On Facebook, Orbán's predecessor, former Hungarian prime minister and opposition member Ferenc Gyurcsány, wrote that "Orbán is the tragedy of Hungary. We will die if it stays this way. We're going to be pariahs. A nation with no morals." Days after his remarks, one of Orbán's longest-serving advisors, Zsuzsa Hegedüs, quit, writing in a resignation letter published by the Hungarian press, "I don't know how you didn't notice that your speech you delivered is a purely Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels." 

He would go on to assure CPAC that his, and their, Christian faith precluded their being racist. "If you believe in God, you also believe that 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 civilizations. Don't worry. A Christian politician cannot be racist, so we should never hesitate to heavily challenge our opponents on these issues. Be sure Christian values protect us from going too far." 

The intended takeaway, Perry explained, is that "When Orbán says that 'a Christian politician cannot be racist,' he's saying that if we conservatives have the right values, the Christian values, then we don't have to second-guess our hard stances on things like immigration, transgender issues or other culture war issues. We're the good guys. We're on the right side." 

All the "good German Christians" who supported Hitler and the Nazi regime show the lie to this bogus claim.