Conservative group welcomes autocrat Orbán at conference
DALLAS — It was a Trump rally with a Hungarian accent. 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 in Dallas on Thursday with a redmeat speech that could have easily been delivered by any Republican candidate on the campaign trail this year.
Orbán presented the two countries as twin fronts in a struggle against common enemies he described as globalists, progressives, communists, and “fake news.”
“The West is at war with itself,” Orbán said. “The globalist can all go to hell. I have come to Texas,” he added, stumbling over a famous slogan attributed to Texas legend Davy Crockett.
The speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, went ahead despite Orbán’s latest controversy: a speech in which he railed against Europe becoming “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.”
But 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.
Orbán spoke to a half-full but enthusiastic ballroom, receiving a standing ovation and frequent bursts of applause and cheers. “Welcome to Texas!” one attendee shouted when Orbán took the stage. When he described himself as the “leader of a country that is under the siege of progressive liberals day by day,” someone in the audience called back, “Yes!”
Orbán’s speech was peppered with pop culture references, quoting Clint Eastwood’s dialogue from “Unforgiven” and describing Hungary’s stance against LGBTQ content for minors as “less drag queens and more Chuck Norris.” There was loud applause when Orbán described the surge of Syrian refugees toward Europe in 2015 as an “invasion of illegal migrants” and likened them to the armies of Genghis Khan. (Orbán did not mention which nation the migrants were fleeing or the conflicts driving them abroad.)
“To stop illegal immigration, we have actually built that wall,” said Orbán, who referred only briefly to the negative coverage of his CPAC appearance.
The crowd booed when Orbán brought up George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor who is one of the Democratic Party’s largest donors. The applause was even louder when Orbán talked about traditional families, and the fact that Hungarian women, upon the birth of a fourth child, paid nearly no taxes for the rest of their lives.
Later, he read from the country’s updated constitution, as amended in 2011.
“The mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our kids alone,” Orbán said, cracking a smile as many in the crowd got up and cheered. “Full stop. End of discussion.”