American fascists in the 1930s
The New York Times writes in an opinion piece by Jamelle Bouie:
This year, the American Conservative Union decided to hold one of its Conservative Political Action Conference gatherings in Hungary. The group met last week in Budapest, guests of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who — since winning back office in 2010 — has led the country away from liberal democracy toward a system he proudly calls “illiberal democracy.”
Of course, with its endemic corruption, repression of sexual minorities, de facto state control of media, constitutional manipulation and an electoral system designed to give supermajorities to the ruling party whether the votes are there or not, there is little that is democratic about Orban’s democracy.
For American conservatives, however, the degradation of Hungarian democracy is a feature, not a bug, of Orban’s rule.
Hungary isn’t a particularly large country (by population, it’s about the size of Michigan) or a particularly rich one (its gross domestic product puts it somewhere between Nebraska and Kansas), but it is a showcase for how a reactionary movement in an ostensibly free society might seize control of the state to reshape society in its own image. And the goal, for both Orban and his American admirers, is the suppression of wokeness, a pejorative term for a broad range of progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality. This includes, for some, the mere existence of L.G.B.T. people on an equal basis.
That shared goal of suppressing wokeness is why Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent conservatives in the United States, hosted his show from Hungary for a week last year. “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions,” Carlson told his audience at the time, “you should know what is happening here right now.” It’s also why Rod Dreher, a popular conservative blogger and author, wrote that his readers “ought to be beating a path to Hungary.” And it’s why Donald Trump endorsed Orban’s re-election campaign not once but twice.
Which is to say that this CPAC session may have been held in Hungary so that conservatives can learn a little more about how they might unravel American democracy in order to impose their cultural and ideological vision on the country. They even got a little encouragement from Orban himself. “We need to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels,” he said in opening remarks on Thursday. “We need to find friends, and we need to find allies. We need to coordinate the movement of our troops, because we have a big challenge ahead of us.” Attendees heard from Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Carlson himself, whom Orban singled out for praise: “His program is the most watched. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcast day and night. Or as you say, 24/7.”
What’s striking about this display of longing and affection for Orban’s regime — beyond the obvious spectacle of people who are ostensibly American nationalists working in concert with a foreign autocrat — is how it underscores a defining trait of conservative populists, if not conservative populism itself. For all the talk of “America First,” there is a deep disdain among members of this group for both Americans and the American political tradition.
The Republican Party neo-fascism, Christian nationalism and laissez-faire capitalism constitutes a deadly threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. The threat is obvious and undeniable. People either see it, or they cannot or could but won’t.
Going forward, additional evidence of neo-fascist intent probably will not chance many minds. After all that has gone before, it is hard to imagine that there are more a just a few open minds left, maybe ~5%, maybe less? The battle lines are drawn. War is coming to America.
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