The Hungarian Model

During his recent weeklong visit to Hungary, FOX News host Tucker Carlson told his listeners that they should pay attention to Hungary “if you care about Western civilization, and democracy, and family  -and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by leaders of our global institutions-.”

Carlson is a vigorous defender of former President Trump and of the extreme wing of the Republican party. He uses his platform to espouse most of the ex-president’s conspiracy theories and lies, as well as his own racist and radical view of liberal democracy. Hungary’s extreme right wing Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, represents much of what is holy to Trump and, by extension, to the Trumpian Republican Party of today.

Orban is strongly nationalistic and nativist. He is firmly against globalization and what he sees as its role in sublimating national identity and culture while melding ethnicities and societal values. He also stands against representative democracy and sees authoritarianism – illiberal democracy as he calls it – as the only way for national cultures to survive in today’s global economy. 

According to journalist Zach Beauchamp writing in VOX on August 5th, “a 2021 report from V-Dem, the leading academic institute assessing the state of global democracy, found that Hungary crossed the line into autocracy in 2018. In March, Orbán’s Fidesz party was pushed out of the European Popular Party (EPP), an alliance of center-right European parties, because its European peers felt it had strayed too far into authoritarian territory”.

Since returning to power in 2012, Orban has pursued his vision of a white Christian Hungary, railing against immigration and any form of multiculturalism, muzzling the opposition parties and media, and closing liberal universities. He is in the midst of a fight with the European Union as Brussels struggles to find a response to his autocratic ways. 

Orban claims that he leads a Christian or illiberal democracy – one with free elections but whose political system is stacked against truly democratic institutions so that it all but guarantees that his Fidesz party will remain in power for years to come. 

In addition, Orban stands for “family values”, and against LGBT, progressive, and women’s rights. 

All of this is music to the ears of the current U.S. Republican Party, firmly under the Trump’s control. Republican legislatures in many states have passed laws aimed at ensuring a strong Republican presence in state legislatures and the House of Representatives. These include, restricting voting right for non-whites, to ensure an ongoing Republican presence in state legislatures and the House of Representatives, all while advocating anti-Muslim, anti-Latino, and anti-black policies to establish white superiority in today’s multicultural and multiethnic United States. 

The Republican right advocates a white Christian United States that displays a hatred of the liberalism that permeates the overall mainstream culture of the United States. They see Hollywood, intellectuals, artists, and academic institutions as the real enemies of traditional American values; enemies that must be fought at every turn.

Rod Dreher, a senior editor at American Conservative magazine, wrote that the state is the only power capable of standing up to “Woke Capitalists”, as well as to illiberal leftists in academia, media, sports, cultural institutions, and other places. He reasons that this is why American conservatives should be beating a path to Hungary. 

He argues that the liberalism Americans have known is probably dead and that the future is almost certainly going to be left-illiberal or right-illiberal. He suggests that right-of-center thought leaders who want to figure out how to resist effectively go to Budapest to observe, to talk, and to learn.

Carlson’s embrace of the Hungarian leader will undoubtedly stimulate the Republican Right to continue believing that theirs is a global movement. This is fuel for them to continue their attacks on liberal democracy worldwide much as Trump did while in office – praising autocrats and criticizing harshly liberal democratic leaders.

It remains to be seen how liberal democrats in the United States and elsewhere stand up to this global threat to their political and social brand.

Edición: Laura Espejo