The GOP is Hungry for Hungary: Where does that Flavor Come From?
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Introduction
We have seen recently that the Republo-fascist Trumpites are ever-so-hungry for Hungary. First, as is well-known, their Mouthpiece-on-the-airwaves-Numero-Uno, Tucker Carlson, spent a week broadcasting from Budapest last summer. (By the way, that beautiful reproduction-Gothic-Cathedral style building in front of which he was filmed [or at least he appeared to be in front of] is part of the Hungarian Houses of Parliament and Government Center. The building was completed in 1902, when the country was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (also known in its latter years as "The Dual Monarchy"). It was partially destroyed during World War II and subsequently reconstructed.
The next major "love-love-love-from-the-Trumpist-Republo-fascists-for-Hungary" was the holding of a "CPAC" (Conservative Political Action Conference) meeting in Budapest this past May, at which Trump spoke, attacking "socialism" and "communism" "taking over the United States." (Apparently, he couldn't decide which, or perhaps his speech-writers just don't know the difference.) Then there was the other of the CPAC 2022 Annual(sic) Conferences, held just a couple of weeks ago in Dallas, also featuring Trump. And of course, Carlson and the two CPACs featured the current Hungarian Dictator-in-everything-but-title, the "former liberal-who-got-swept-up-in-the-quest-for-power" Viktor Orban. All three times he laid out his dark worldview to the American right, and "his form" of [fascist] government is needed " and of course they loved it.
Why are the Republo-fascists so hungry for Hungary? Well, that answer is pretty straight-forward. Orban runs a country which has a pseudo-parliamentary governmental façade but in function is a dictatorship-in-practice. If course this is exactly the model that the Republo-fascists would like to emulate in the United States, with Trump as their leader. (And if they can't get Trump for one reason or another [like his having been convicted of a federal crime], as is well-known there are a bunch of would-be-Trumps in waiting.) Orban"ism" features a government over which he has virtually complete functional control, as well as a healthy serving of racism in his policy, as he has recently made clear in a speech in Romania which featured a strong dose of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and again in his speech to CPAC-in-Dallas .
In the eyes of the MAGA-cultists, a perfect model for a Trump Restoration. As the author of the column just cited said: "Viktor Orban laid out his dark worldview to the American right " and they loved it." Orban also threw in the "we're-anti-Semitic-too" code word: "George Soros," which does appear regularly in the rhetoric of folks like Tucker Carlson. It was in the former speech that Orban made his now-famous "not-us-mixed-race" remark. The CPAC/Republo-fascist type love this stuff enough to eat it, along with their Hungarian goulash. OK.
Hungary is a relatively small, land-locked country in East Central Europe. It is bordered, believe-it-or-not, by six countries: Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia and Ukraine. So why should it have become sooo right-wing and thus why should it, at least as it now constituted, have become such a darling --- with item present leader --- by the U.S. Right? Well, not by happenstance, but at least in part by its history.
I had the good fortune to visit Budapest in its halcyon, post-"Soviet sphere-"but-before-Orban times. I was there in 2010 for the International Triathlon Union Age-Group World Championships (for which you do not need to be fast back home to qualify. You simple need to old enough so that there isn't much competition for the available slots) For the uninitiated, "triathlon" is the swim-bike-run racing event that had been originally developed in Hawaii in 1978 and since has become widespread all around the world at a variety of event combinations and distances. I published the first of my own four books on the sport and its variants in 1986.
I was there with my late wife, who happened to be an enthusiastic tourist, so we easily did as much touring/sight-seeing as I did racing. (Actually, I didn't race. While we had been told that the water temp. for the swim would be 68F. it was actually 53F. Much too cold for me!) And I also added to my knowledge of the history of the country, which has made it such a natural for an authoritarian leader like Viktor Organ to arise. What became Hungary was founded by a King Stephen around 1000A.D. He was later canonized and is known now as St. Stephen. Thus, there are statues of me (ho, ho, ho) all over the place. No wonder I liked it so much.
And of course, the food. If you like the food in a Hungarian restaurant in the U.S., just try it there. And remarkably (well, not so remarkably because it is the historical "race-mixing" that Orban rales against over-and-over again, to the total delight of audiences such as those found at CPAC), it is the mixing-of-nationalities-over-time that resulted in the incredible variety of just great eating that you can experience in Budapest.
But getting back to fascism, it was not brought to Hungary simply by the Nazis. In fact, it can be argued (and I have) that the world's first fascist government was established in Hungary in 1919. The definition of fascism that I use is:
"There is a single, all powerful executive branch of government, in service of a capitalist ruling class that controls for the most part the functions of production, distribution and exchange. There is no separation of powers [one of James Madison's signal contributions to the then-unique form of government established by the Constitution]. Thus, there are no de facto independent judicial or legislative branches, at any level. There is no independent media. There is a single national ideology, based on some combination of racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and authoritarianism, homophobia, and xenophobia. There is a state propaganda machine using the big and little lie techniques. There may be a full-blown dictatorship, a charismatic leader, engagement in foreign wars, and the use of the mob/private armies."
A major element of that definition is that there be an absolute ruler, with no separation of powers. After the conclusion of World War I, of which the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the losing side, there was a brief communist revolution in Hungary (following the Russian model). With significant help from the Romanian Army, the communist government was put down. After a very complex series of events, by 1920 the post-war Hungarian King had been forced into exile and the parliament of the time (representing bourgeois forces) placed into power as Regent one Miklos Horthy. He had been the commander the Austro-Hungarian Empire's navy towards the end of World War One.
By one means or another, Admiral Horthy quickly was able to establish himself as the sole ruler of Hungary. Of course, from the time of the Roman Empire there had been sole rulers-of-countries. But from the time of the establishment in the Middle Ages of the establishment of the institution of monarchy as the form-of-government, it has always been the King or other "royal" person who held the reins of power. Horthy was the first layman to hold supreme power (at least at the titular level, as with Emperor of Japan) in any country. Since dictatorship is a central element of fascism, Horthy can be regarded as the first fascist dictator in history. His rule lasted from 1920 to 1944.
He ran an iron-fisted regime which became allied with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Horthy's regime was "moderately" anti-Semitic (see the Holocaust Museum in Budapest). But it was not anti-Semitic enough for Hitler, who in the waning days of World War II wanted all the remaining Jews to be rounded up and sent off the extermination camps. The Horthy government was succeeded by one run by the even-more violent Arrow Cross Party, which enthusiastically rounded up Jews for the Nazis as well as doing home-grown killings on their own. A favored way for doing this in Budapest and its surroundings was to round up Jews and push/dump them into the Danube River, either shooting them first, or not. This action has been memorialized by the famous "shoes-monument" on the banks of the Danube, not too far from the famous Chain Bridge which is featured in so many of the travel-photos of Budapest.
Of course, after the end of the War, like Ukraine's Azov Battalion, the Arrow Cross Party did not just go away. Although one cannot know for sure, members certainly participated in the "Hungarian Uprising" of 1956, and were likely among those who took captured members of the Hungarian Communist Party and hung them from light-posts in downtown Budapest. And certainly their descendants live on in Hungary, although apparently not as openly as does the Azov Battalion (and similar) in Ukraine. It should then come as no surprise that Orban has been linked to the Arrow Cross, certainly in terms of its racist policies (if not in that Party's open participation in the attempted extermination of the Hungarian Jews).
And thus, we get back to the original premise of this column, that it should come as no surprise Orban represents the most open form of fascism in modern Europe. For he fits right into the Hungarian fascist tradition, going back to the very first fascist dictator in history, Admiral Miklos Horthy. No wonder then that certain Republo-fascist leaders, like Trump and Carlson, and a major Republo-Fascist organizations like CPAC, like Orban so much. He is, indeed, one of them. And indeed further, that's where their hunger for Hungary comes from.