Which Hungary?
On the ground nationalist conservatism looks more liberal than you might think.
The Hungarian capital has changed a lot since it became a Mecca for global right-wingers—it’s more international and lively than ever. Most striking is the flourishing of the former Jewish quarter, home to Europe’s largest synagogue and now one of its most hopping bar scenes. Just as populist economics do not immediately cause market mayhem, rule by Christian nationalists doesn’t necessarily make everything drab and provincial.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
In almost every respect, it is vitally important to note, the Hungarian government is profoundly anti-conservative. It is deeply corrupt, treating the free market as a joke, with one man directing vast amounts of state funds to his friends and cronies in return for their support. Its free press is under siege, with “nearly 80 percent of the market for political and public affairs news … financed by sources decided by the ruling party.” State advertising is a huge part of media budgets, and Viktor Orbàn ensures it goes to his outlets. Its government monitors the Internet for violations of the moral order, forcing one university to leave the country entirely, while setting up a heavily subsidized complex of pro-Orbàn right-wing institutions to rival the left’s.
D’Amato has the better take.
It’s funny seeing one of the architects of the destruction of traditional marriage warning about Hungary being ‘anti-conservative’. Being anti-conservative is probably a good thing for Hungary, as conservatives seem unable to conserve anything except low marginal tax rates on the oligarchy.
Sullivan almost immediately starts whining about ‘illiberalism’ in his piece, and says –“When I think of the soul of Anglo-American conservatism, I think of limited government, incremental change, a concern for social cohesion, and a defense of old-school liberalism — a free press, free speech, free association, free markets, freedom of religion.”–
In case he hasn’t noticed, most of those things have been lost to greater or lesser degrees in America and the rest of the English speaking world. Limited government? Social cohesion? Free association? Free speech? Are you kidding me?
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if was revealed one day that he was being paid to act as controlled opposition.
Sullivan is using a private definition of ‘conservative’ which is ideologically convenient for him because he wants to use the label for self-identification, but which really just confuses everything. He certainly doesn’t mean ‘socially conservative’ as Sullivan has progressive views on all those social / ‘culture war’ questions, at least, judged by the pre-wokepocalypse standards of 2012.
Half the problem is the age-old split between the American and European conceptions of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, with European conservatives being much less averse to using state power to achieve social and moral objectives (which used to be the fully-constitutional role of the police power of US states until 20 years ago.)
But the other half of the problem is just pure Sullivan embracing ahistorical and intellectually inconsistent and incoherent definitions of convenience as he likes for the sake of his posturing, as in the old ‘wolf wearing sheep’s clothing’ joke.
Look, Hungary is a pretty ordinary country governance-wise in the region with regards to governance issues, popular views, tension with EU mandates on culture and immigration, hence the existence of the “Visegrad Group” including Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia. The criticism of corruption and cronyism is the pot calling the kettle black, as American elites are now incredibly corrupt and cronyist and brazenly for sale, it’s just “high class, sophisticated people” forms of subtle, plausibly-deniable, laundered corruption* instead of old-fashioned crude bribery.
The point is, no one would be caring at all Hungary or any of those countries, or about any of those fraudulent claims Sullivan is hyperventilating about, were it not for the fact that Orban is actually serious (i.e., willing to use political tools) about doing something about leftist cultural hegemony and the long march of woke views in terms of capitulating in every detail to progressive demands on LGBT and immigration which were the actual mainstream GOP establishment positions just the day before yesterday, and if that’s not “””conservative”””” enough for Sullivan because it’s 1996 actual conservative instead of 2021 Sullivan-‘conservative’ , then too bad for his baloney private definitions.
*For example, Janet Yellen personally pocketed over $7 million last year, getting paid by a few big banks to give brief, inane Zoom speeches from her home.which go – no joke – from $1,000 to $3,000 *per minute*. Hong Kong Development Council got her IIRC, for two hours – with a break! – for $270,000. She continued to collect these vast sums after she started consulting for Biden and lobbying – with big bank help – for the Treasury job regulating the same folks who were paying her 50 time more than one of the top salaries in the government. I bet you if you added all the corrupt proceeds every member of Fidesz received in 2020, it doesn’t add up to one Yellen. And, duh, everybody’s doing it, because that’s how elite corruption is done in the good ‘ol U. S. of A.
Sullivan is a textbook example of Michael Malice’s definition of a conservative: “a progressive driving the speed limit”.
I was going to say it would seem more likely Orban’s sympathizers on the American right are false flag efforts to discredit the right as sympathetic to quasi-fascist aspiring dictators, if I didn’t read the comments sections and see the support was quite organic.
How likely do you think it is that values of allegedly fascist Hungary actually overlap pretty considerably with the nations that fought actual fascism in the 1940s? I’d say pretty likely.
While there are certainly reasons to be concerned or even critical of Orban’s Hungary, this sort of “Brown Scare” rhetoric has no place in intelligent conversation.
At the very least, make sure you know how to actually apply the label before throwing it around. Here’s a helpful guide: https://web.archive.org/web/20210418103317/http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8310
Some of these debates about Hungary remind me about debates about Singapore. Does Singapore have free election and free press? Is it a free market? Kind of yes and kind of no. Misses the entire point though.
So Hungary is a lower IQ version of conservative semi-liberalism with leftover Warsaw Pact baggage.
You made me laugh, but that may be accurate.
I’m no expert. Here are a few observations in no particular order.
1. Hungary has faced various existential threats in the last 500 years. As Dreher notes in his blog, the Magyars are still pissed off about losing 2/3 of the old kingdom territory under the Treaty of Trianon.
I’d like to see Sullivan locked in a room with no phone or internet and required to take a “general knowledge” test on Danubian / Habsburg / Ottoman history . I don’t think he’d do well. Trianon…what-anon? I don’t think Sullivan knows enough to sympathize with the Hungarian point of view.
2. This seems a bit like a Rorschach Test. “Look at this small trans-Danubian country and tell me what you see.”
3. At times Sullivan really is a good example of Burnham’s observation that “Liberalism is the ideology of western suicide.” Sullivan is a pleasure to read and often perceptive, but he has a blind spot for threats. Perhaps he believes that serious threats to state autonomy / sovereignty / survival have gone away.
4. I am reminded of Dennis Prager’s observation that “Many good people don’t fight.” Prager also preaches the vital important of courage as the cardinal virtue. Orban fights. Sullivan seems to disapprove of this.
5. Disclosure. Some of my ancestors left the Carpathians for the USA in search of a decent meal. I can name the 11 official nationalities of the old Habsburg Monarchy from free recall. To repeat myself, I want to see Sullivan (and Dreher, too) take a proctored “general knowledge” exam on relevant facts. They should bet money on who gets a higher score, too.
Regarding the Dual Monarchy…
Technically it was the “Habsburg Monarchy” until the the mid-1800s. After the Compromise to conciliate the Magyars following the 1848 rebellion, the territory became known as the “Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
That happened in1867. It was then that the Compromise produced the “dual monarchy.”
What I’m trying to say is that the “Dual Monarchy” as we understand it only lasted about 51 years, thought the Vienna line of the Habsburgs had a much longer presence in Central Europe.
To repeat myself, I’m not an expert. I think I’d pass a “general knowledge test,” even if my grade was just a D or C minus. My inability to read German doesn’t help. color me a bookish dilettante.
If only Hungary had taken in all the muslim refugees the EU demanded they take in rather than fencing them out, Orban would be considered a hero in the media.
It all comes down to that one issue.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/hungary-andrew-sullivan-vs-viktor-orban/
I chose Rod Dreher on both my 15 & 5 person FI Teams – since he’s so good to read so often. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/
Getting a fair number of points. Rod getting Tucker Carlson to go visit Hungary for some interviews is why Hungary was getting into the news.
Interested reader notes Rod’s very comprehensive review & rebuttal to Sullivan.
And today Rod talks about the key points from D’Amato:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/why-hungary-matters-to-american-conservatives-viktor-orban/
This includes a Viktor Orban picture of 4 important books which include Rod Dreher’s own The Benedict Option
Rod considers these the most crucial of D’Amato’s points:
2. The lingering presence of Western-fêted ex-Communist elites was tragically corrosive.
5. Fears of demographic decline and “population replacement” should not be scoffed at.
7. It [Orban’s Party, Fidesz] will also co-opt minority groups.
8. …and speech curbs initially cheered by the Left.
10. The West’s own example hasn’t always been exemplary.
11. It takes good lawyers to really mess with the rule of law.
12. The efforts of Western NGOs and media can backfire spectacularly.
18. On the ground nationalist conservatism looks more liberal than you might think.
Rod believes:
strongly that the leaderless and depleted conservative politicians of the United States can learn a lot from studying this man, what he believes in, and how he has governed and campaigned. They can take the things he has done that have worked for Hungary, and figure out how to translate them into the very different American context, if that is possible. And they can discard the rest.
One of the first things they should do, though, is to look around them and to realize how broken our ruling class is, and how they continue to lead America into crisis.
For myself, the key item from D’Amato:
4. An overweening state fuels corruption and toxic politics.
Over the past few years, a better understanding has emerged of how the EU subsidies and foreign aid that pour into Hungary (and countries like it) can fuel a culture of graft, and make the competition for political power an existential struggle.
Gov’t money leads to corruption, both moral and financial. Boot lickers, in Hungary, Slovakia, or Afghanistan, get more money than those doing the good stuff. The USA sending money to Afghan gov’t boot lickers, rather than Afghan workers working, helped corrupt AND weaken the non-Taliban Afghan elites.
Gov’t aid usually does more to weaken than strengthen, in practice, the target population of the aid.