At the American Fascist Fest in Dallas, Texas, -Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)- Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has consolidated autocratic power with hard-right opposition to immigration and liberal democracy, addressed a crowd of thousands of American admirers.
Orbán’s speech to the American Fascists came after a recent and controversial speech he gave on ‘mixed race’ saying that Europeans did not want to live with people from outside the continent. One of his own close advisers resigned in protest, calling the speech “pure Nazi.” His speech included the usual radicalized right talking points: globalists, progressives, communists, and “fake news.”
Orbán has found defenders among prominent American conservatives, including former president Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. On his way to Dallas, Orbán stopped to visit Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. In a statement, Trump called Orbán his “friend” and said he valued his perspective. “Few people know as much about what is going on in the world today,” Trump said.
On Tucker’s Wednesday evening’s show, he defended Orbán from the negative media coverage of the speech.
“So Viktor Orbán is now a Nazi because he wants national borders?”
Orbán did not address his controversial speech at the Fascist Fest but defended himself by saying, “Don’t worry, a Christian politician cannot be racist,” and falsely portraying the Nazis as having been anti-Christian, another radicalized right attempt at rewriting history.
“I can already see tomorrow’s headlines: Far-right European racist, anti-Semite strongman — the Trojan horse of Putin — holds speech at the conservative conference,” Orbán said. “They did not want me to be here, and they made every effort to drive a wedge between us. They hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you.”
According to Bloomberg:
Orbán opened the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Thursday by urging the right-wing Republican crowd to follow his example in Hungary. He struck many of the same themes they would find in a typical Trump speech. Indeed, the former president is taking center stage on Saturday.
“The mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our kids alone. Full stop, end of discussion,” Orbán said, rejecting sexual orientation programs in schools without parental consent. It’s what he labeled “gender ideology” in a now-familiar stump speech.
