Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán publicly endorsed Donald Trump Monday, underscoring the need for right-thinking politicians and academics to reject cancel culture and groupthink.
Hungary is “very familiar” with the foreign policy of U.S. administrations under the Democrats, “built as it is on moral imperialism,” Mr. Orbán said in a bracing essay in the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet. “We have tasted it – albeit under duress. We didn’t like it, and we don’t want a second helping.”
The struggle for spiritual sovereignty and intellectual freedom launched years ago “is gradually bearing fruit,” Orbán said. “Rebellion against political correctness, against the dictates of loopy liberal doctrine, modes of expression and style is flowing in an ever broader channel.”
“Ever more people are showing increasing courage in freeing themselves from the shackles of the suffocatingly restrictive, single approved mode of speech, the only approved concept of democracy, and the only approved interpretation of Europe and the West,” he said.
In Monday’s message, which overlapped significantly with President Trump’s powerful Independence Day speech from Mount Rushmore, Mr. Orbán urged conservatives around the world to reject a liberal worldview that presents itself as the necessary foundation for modern democracies.
“The escape attempt itself is not simple, and the risk of punishment is high: expulsion from academic life, loss of employment, stigmatisation, running the gauntlet at universities,” he said. “Examples of this are becoming almost daily occurrences.”
But even if we manage to escape the systematic patrols of well-paid “liberal border guards,” we must still struggle against “the deeply embedded reflexes of ever so well-meaning public opinion,” Orbán added.
As is his wont, the Hungarian prime minister did not hold back his criticism of liberal regimes within the European Union, especially that of his German neighbor.
“Sophisticated arguments get one nowhere: if one praises nationalism, Germans will suffer stomach cramps,” he said. “And however silkily we speak about illiberal democracy, the term is appallingly harsh to German and Anglo-Saxon ears.”
On an optimistic note, Mr. Orbán noted that the “rebellion against liberal intellectual oppression” is growing in length and breadth, with “an increasing number of persuasive essays, thorough studies and indispensable monographs.”
“We can already see that the Emperor has no clothes – despite the refusal to admit this in the Brussels bubble,” he said.
“The doctrine that ‘democracy can only be liberal’ – that golden calf, that monumental fetish – has been toppled,” he added. “Now we only need to wait for the dust to settle and we will not only know it, but also see it.”
Mr. Orbán warned against the temptation for conservatives to allow themselves to be dragged “into the big tent of liberalism.”
It is a common and pernicious error, he insisted, to believe “that the separation of the branches of power, civil and political freedoms, the protection of private property and governance within boundaries – meaning the rule of law – can only be conceived within the intellectual confines of liberalism, and can only be implemented through liberal democracy.”
Even among his compatriots this temptation exists, he added, because even some Hungarians who have figured out this puzzle, have simultaneously “realised how much more pleasant it is to gather pats on the back in Brussels and friendly smiles of acknowledgement in lukewarm liberal salons than to huddle like black sheep at home in Budapest.”
At the core of his address, Mr. Orbán declared liberal thinking is the enemy of everything that conservatives hold most dear.
“The basic tenets of Christian democratic and liberal thinking are diametrically opposed to each other,” he said. “In their attacks liberals take aim at the very things that are most important to us, the cornerstones of the political order we wish for, the values at the core of conservative-Christian democratic heritage – such as the nation, the family and religious tradition.”
Christian-conservative forces must unite and rebel against “the weakening of nations, the elimination of religious traditions, and the debasement and mockery of the family,” that is at the heart of the liberal project, he said.
“Here in Central Europe this recognition has risen to the level of public and state policy,” he said. “Here the red warning light has lit up, we have activated the emergency brake, and – primarily in Poland and Hungary – we have rung the alarm bells.”
In his address, Mr. Orbán said that liberals tend to lump together all those unenlightened political leaders who do not adhere to their globalist agenda, from Ayatollahs to Donald Trump.
“The political strategy of liberals is based on dividing the world of politics into two parts, Orbán said, with good, honest, reasonable liberals pushing for world peace and world governance on one side and ignorant bigots on the other.
“Therefore, from the viewpoint of loopy liberals, a single group is formed by the following: Trump and Johnson; Christians standing on the foundations of the New Testament and Jews standing on the foundations of the Old Testament; all kinds of ayatollahs; dictators of every rank and order, communists and Nazis; and, without any doubt, we Central European Christian democrats,” Mr. Orbán said.
“This is parroted by 90 per cent of the Western media,” he added.
“The only chance for Christian democracy is if it engages in an open intellectual and political fight,” he said.