CPAC Gives Standing Ovation to Autocrat Who Bashed ‘Mixed-Race’ Societies a Week Ago – Rolling Stone
The Conservative Political Action Conference opened its arms to one of Europe’s most notorious autocrats on Thursday, giving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a prime speaking slot on the first day of the prominent right-wing gathering. Orbán, who recently won reelection for a fourth term in office, has led a nationalist regime predicated on racism, seizing control of the press, and catering to the powerful. In other words, it’s exactly what Republicans want for the United States.
Orbán spoke for just over 30 minutes on Thursday, railing against taxation, refugees, and gender. He drew multiple standing ovations, perhaps none bigger than the one that came after he spoke about protecting same-sex families. “Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage, and the union of one man and one woman,” he said. “Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parent and children. The mother is a woman. The father is a man. Leave our kids alone. Full stop. End of discussion.”
Viktor Orbán receives a standing ovation at CPAC for expressing his country’s bigoted anti-gay marriage policies. pic.twitter.com/ldPjwQidoc
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) August 4, 2022
He also drew huge applause after bashing globalism. “Now the West is at war with itself,” he said after pointing out how the West took out the Nazis and the Soviet Union. “We have seen what kind of a future the globalist ruling class has to offer. We have a different kind of future in mind. The globalists can all go to hell; I have come to Texas.”
Orbán, during a speech in Romania last week, proclaimed “we do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” prompting his longtime adviser — who called the speech “pure Nazi text” — to quit. He also spoke at a CPAC conference in Hungary in May, crowing that Hungary “is the laboratory where we have managed to come up with the antidote for progressive dominance” before noting that other nations, including America, should follow his lead. He even unveiled a point-by-point playbook for how to do it, which reads like a list of MAGA ideals (except the part about needing to “read every day”). It’s no surprise, then, that former President Trump welcomed Orbán to the White House in 2019, lauding him for the “tremendous job” he’s done with Hungary.
Trump also met with Orbán this week, writing on Truth Social that it was “great spending time with my friend.”
Orbán’s appeal extends well beyond Trump. Tucker Carlson is such a fan that he has traveled to Hungary on multiple occasions, and earlier this year released a special praising how he has kept refugees out of Hungary taken on billionaire philanthropist George Soros. As Trump and Carlson go, so goes the Republican Party. The premier conservative conference rolling out the red carpet for an autocrat who just a week earlier bashed the idea of a “mixed-race” society is a terrifying sign of just how bad thing might get should the GOP take control of the country. Orbán concluded his speech on Thursday with a rousing call for the party to do just that.
“You have the midterm elections this year, and then presidential and congressional elections in ’24,” he said. “We will have election in the Eureopean parliament the same year. These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization. Today, we hold neither of them, yet we need them both. You have two years to get ready.”