Hungary Is No Model for the American Right

The new right's infatuation with Viktor Orbán places the culture war over the common good.

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If you don’t spend much time online, diving into the deep waters of the civil wars on the right, you might not be aware that Hungary is having a Moment. My friend Rod Dreher has been staying there for weeks, filing dispatches. Tucker Carlson has been broadcasting from Budapest, declaring that “if you care about western civilization and democracy and values and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here, right now.” 

Carlson has interviewed prime minister Viktor Orbán, Dennis Prager is reportedly set to give a speech in Budapest, Patrick Deneen has visited (and also met with Orbán), and National Review’s John O’Sullivan serves as president of the Danube Institute, a think tank based in Budapest. I could go on, but you get the idea—think of Hungary as the Scandinavia of the new right. 

If you’ve been a conservative for any length of time, you’ve likely had what I like to call the “Sweden conversation,” or perhaps the “Denmark debate.” A socialist-leaning progressive friend will wax eloquent about the Scandinavian countries that combine high standards of living with generous welfare states and ask, “Why not here?” 

Setting aside that nations like Denmark are not quite the democratic socialist paradise that many progressives imagine—my friend Kevin Williamson is fond of pointing out that Denmark enjoys more economic freedom than the United States—the discussion has always suffered from a rather fundamental flaw: Scandinavian countries aren’t much like the United States. 

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  1. Kurt Von Fuchs

    The best and brightest are leaving hungry as fast as they can. Things will only get worse

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  2. Kurt Von Fuchs

    The best and brightest are leaving hungry as fast as they can. Things will only get worse

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    Ben Connelly

    David, this was really excellent. Even by the New Right’s own standards, Hungary doesn’t measure up. Lower birth rates than the rest of the EU etc. Truly it just is about trolling the other side. Which is no reason at all. Dreher continues to slip in my estimation. I never cared about Tucker but this just goes to show his true colors I guess.

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  4. Ben Moser

    So… we gonna get a part 2 where Rod Dreher makes retweets an article written by a guy who got fired from NR for being too racist, from an avowedly white nationalist website?

    Kinda feels like he made the subtext text there and we can stop giving him the benefit of the doubt about why he and other race baiting cons love Hungary so much…

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    Alain

    I visited Budapest three years ago. I also rode out into the country with my private guide. Outside of Budapest the country is what you expect of a country that endured communism for 50 years, it's all crumbling. Budapest is nice, but it's fake, it's a fake Prague. All the "old" buildings were rebuilt after the war. Now, missing from all this talk is an important figure, George Soros. Soros is Orbans boogeyman, Soros gets the blame for everything that goes wrong in Hungary and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, there you have the rights love affair with Orban.

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  6. Alex DeLarge

    Jonah's essay did a good job of convincing me that I shouldn't care about Hungary or anything in the essay. It was thus self-negating and yet totally effective. A rare combination.

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  7. Vitaly

    For me, Hungary is an example of liberal democracy gone wrong. In the 80th, the Hungarians were among the most innovative Eastern Europeans (Rubik's Cube is brought to us by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian engineer, and there is Katalin Kariko, one of the inventors of the mRNA therapy for vaccination and treatment). The Communists there gave up their power without much fuss; and Hungarians enthusiastically embraced liberal democracy in the 90s. I think there was a certain weariness of the heavy-handedness of the EU; coupled with concerns about immigration that the populists exploited (Orban comes from the same anti-Communist movement as his opposition; he is also a member of the elite, just a different one).
    I agree with David that once a country begins to backslide on democratic norms, its standard of living starts to diminish. Innovation does not flourish in conformity (that applies both to the Left and the Right). I hope that liberal democracy will return to Hungary soon.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Ah, "common good" constitutionalism rears its ugly head again and again lately. Seems that the "conservatives" never really were such. It was all an act to get to authoritarian dictatorship.

    Just like the left said it was all those years ago when Reagan became president.

    Someday, you all will learn. The liberals are ALWAYS right.

    There is no such thing as a "conservative", not really, at least among leadership in the Republican party. It has always been about getting to an authoritarian, fascist (I will say it if David won't) state.

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  9. M M (Lee)

    Hungary's national mythology is tied to two historical events.

    In the 16th and 17th centuries, Hungary was invaded, destroyed, and occupied by Turkey.

    Hungarians are taught apparently that single-handedly they fought back the invading Turks for centuries (prior to the 16th century), building dozens of forts across the nation to repel what they saw as the Muslim invaders, thereby saving the rest of Europe was being overtaken by the Muslims.

    Secondly, Hungary lost some two-thirds of its territory (including its most scenic mountainous areas) after WW2. Northern Hungary was given to Czechoslovakia. And Eastern Hungary (Transylvania), which had been part of the kingdom of Hungary since the 10th century, was given to Romania.

    Therefore Hungarians' perspective is that after heroically fending off the invading Muslims for centuries, and thereby sparing the rest of Europe from attack, the thanks they received from the rest of Europe was having two-thirds of their territory stolen and given to other countries.

    These historical events explain the reason that rural Hungarians especially are susceptible to nationalist ideology. Orban lost the election handily in thriving Budapest, but three-fourths of the nation's population lives in the largely empty rural areas outside Budapest, with the exception of a few affluent cities near Vienna and cities where the nation's top universities are located.

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  10. Sprat

    If the comments I'm seeing on Twitter are any indication, the new Right (Trumpist, quasi-Trumpist, and otherwise) is taking a "why are you guys so OBSESSED with Hungary all of a sudden? So Tucker stayed there a couple days, who cares?" line. They can't/won't defend Hungary on the merits, so they've switched to sneering at the people who dared to notice. Very typical.

    E.g.:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/Maarblek/status/1423460271998316546

    https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulHartyanszky/status/1423647448753336325?s=19

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      Greenknight

      They did the same thing when people pointed out that the CPAC stage last year was shaped like an Odel rune (a Nazi symbol adopted by American white supremists).

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