Trump Republicans Have Found A New Authoritarian To Love In Hungary’s Orban

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10/3/21

Having lost their leader in Washington, Donald Trump-supporting Republicans appear to have settled on a new authoritarianism-curious leader to admire: Hungary’s anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-free press Viktor Orbán. From a full week of programming by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson from Budapest to a Conservative Political Action Conference event in Hungary next spring to a visit by a former Vice President Mike Pence to a “demography summit” last month, American conservatives are lavishly praising a former Soviet satellite sliding back into autocracy. “These days, all roads lead to Viktor Orbán’s Budapest for the GOP and its American media and political allies…. It’s crazy that CPAC will be there,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor who has been warning for years of the Republican Party’s drift toward authoritarianism under Trump. “Destroying democracy at home goes hand in hand with making America a partner of autocracies abroad.” The new outright admiration of Orbán’s rule is worrisome, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is certainly a shared agenda between Orbanism and some elements of the Republican Party. Both have instrumentalized faith and traditional values for political mobilization and gain,” she said. “But what should be of the greatest concern is that [the] anti-democratic nature of Orbanism is now becoming more attractive as well.” Human rights and democracy advocates roundly condemn Orbán for his efforts to take over Hungary’s independent judiciary, stifle the free press, attack institutions like universities, and vilify immigrants and the LGBT community. Human Rights Watch writes of Hungary: “The government has made access to asylum close to impossible, interferes with independent media and academic freedom, and undermines the rights of women and LGBT people, including blocking the implementation of the Istanbul Convention that aims to prevent violence against women.” And the think tank Freedom House gives Hungary a “partly free” rating — making it the only member of the European Union in that lower category, a ranking it shares with nations including Pakistan and Albania.

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