Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Convergence of Republican Party and foreign authoritarianism in democracies under attack

ACUF is the American Conservative Union Foundation

American anti-democratic authoritarians are merging 
with those in Hungary


Acknowledgement: The following is copied and lightly edited from a comment PD posted in another discussion thread yesterday. PD synthesizes complicated things extremely well into coherence. Better than me, that's for sure. I appreciate his time and effort here a great deal. This is quite timely and informative.

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Initial comment: Hungary and Poland are not the USA. Again, I'd compare us to England, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Maligned as the Anglo-American world, although I very much admire it.

PD's response: When I mentioned Orban's Hungary as an example of bloodless de-democratization, you said,

Hungary and Poland are not the USA.

Orban is now going to speak alongside Trump and Steve Bannon at CPAC in Texas next month. As the articles and video linked below report, the GOP and the Hungarian autocrat are becoming much closer. As you know, I don't think interwar Germany is a good point of comparison with the US. But I do think the democratic backslide in Hungary is much more relevant than that.

Apparently the GOP elites agree. There is now a Hungarian version of the US-based Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) which opened in May, with Orban as the main speaker, of course. CPAC US and CPAC-Hungary have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding"-- note the American and Hungarian flags waving harmoniously behind Orban as he states that,

We need to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We need to work with friends and allies. We need to coordinate the movement of our troops, because we have a big challenge ahead of us. 2024 will be decisive.


See also this ABC News article: Hungarian nationalist PM Orban to deliver speech at CPAC, which includes these comments: "BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Hungary's nationalist prime minister will speak at a conference of prominent U.S. conservatives this summer, the latest sign of tightening relations between Hungarian and American conservatives."

While speaking on the theme of "God, homeland and family" (as shown in the video), Orban speaks of the need to have government control the media, something he has managed to do in Hungary, to a great extent. Speaking of Washington and Budapest as the "two fronts of the War for Western Civilization," he said:

Dear friends, let's have our own media. The madness of the progressive left can only be demonstrated if there is media to help us do so.

As I also told you earlier, this is why I don't talk about "wokeness" anymore. It is being used as the main bait for radicalizing disenchanted citizens who used to be mainstream, but got upset about the culture wars. Of course, once you take the bait there comes the switch: you let Dear Leader ( Orban? Trump? DeSantis? Pres. Tucker?) "run the show"-- literally and figuratively. And what a show it is, with 24/7 fear-mongering about non-white immigrants, LGBTQ causes and the like. We learned from 1/6 Select Committee testimony yesterday that Twitter was cowed by Trump for months. "If that account had belonged to anybody else it would have been deleted long before 1/6" said a lead moderator for Twitter in testimony. Fox, OAN, and others already thrive as, essentially, GOP propaganda outlets with almost no regard for evidence based reporting. Do we even want to imagine emulating the Hungarian model of state controlled media?? (see, e.g., New Report: Hungary dismantles media freedom and pluralism)

This is not good news, IM. The GOP and far Right parties in Europe are becoming more and more cooperative. Just a couple of months back, Steve Bannon was in France sharing the stage with then-presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen (leader of the National Front or National Rally). Thankfully, she lost. But that's not my point. What the GOP is becoming/has become here has its analogues in much of Europe where reactionary, and often bigoted parties have been growing alarmingly over the past 5 or 6 years (esp. since the refugee crisis and Brexit). Seeing a European iteration of CPAC in this context is alarming. Jonathon Krohn, one of the few journalists allowed to cover the opening of CPAC-Hungary writes:

BUDAPEST, Hungary — European and American conservatives descended on this city Thursday morning to bemoan the supposed ‘suicide’ of Western civilization. The impending cultural death was blamed on a variety of causes, including immigrants who were “replacing” native-born workers; communists and “progressivists” pushing “gender madness”; and liberal democracy, which was creating a new “civic religion” out of the rights of man. Speakers, ranging from the CEO of Parler to the Prime Minister of Hungary, railed against the ‘woke’ media and the “unified troops of the international left” during a series of programming blocs with titles like “Western Civilization Under Attack,” “In God We Trust,” and “The Culture Wars in the Media.” It was the opening day of CPAC Hungary, the first European edition of the American Conservative Union’s flagship confab, and dark clouds were forming over Hungary....

What were those ideas and how could [Europe and America] be salvaged?

The answers proposed by an international slate of nationalist speakers betrayed a growing affinity between American conservatism and illiberal authoritarians in Europe. Immigration, gender identity, abortion rights, foreign culture, and the media all needed to be heavily controlled by stronghanded politicos in order save the native (white) population, the Church, and ‘Western civilization.’

“Hungary is the laboratory where we have managed to come up with the antidote for progressive dominance,” said right-wing Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orban. “The nation comes first: Hungary first, America first.”

The full article, CPAC Europe is a Safe Space for Authoritarians -- and the Republicans Who Love Them, is here.

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I've said it before here and say it again: The intolerant, anti-democratic authoritarianism that the Republican Party, T**** and their dark free speech Leviathan (Faux News, etc.) have fomented and unleashed has taken on a life of its own. Things are spinning out of control and the odds of partisan social violence continues to increase with time.



This is what fascist Republican 
talking points actually mean

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