As Vladimir Putin grows increasingly isolated, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán becomes the chief conduit to the West for Putin-style authoritarianism and corruption.
Come May 18, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), for nearly 50 years the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world, will assemble in Budapest, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as its keynote speaker.
That means leading American conservatives who are supposedly deeply committed to the ideals of personal liberty, limited government, free markets, human dignity, and the like will be joining forces behind one of the most authoritarian and antisemitic heads of state in the world. The speakers reportedly will include Orbán, who won his fourth term as prime minister on April 3; Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazil’s president; and Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party.
In recent months, however, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson, have all made highly visible appearances on the Orbán bandwagon, with Carlson repeatedly extolling the virtues of the Hungarian strongman to millions of viewers on Fox News.
The hard-right’s growing affinity for Orbán’s Hungary should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed how the Republicans became Putin’s Party and how they have responded to the ongoing Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Think of Hungary in terms of Russia’s trajectory in recent years, during which Putin ushered in an era of global theft on an unimaginable scale, putting together a mafia state in which his handpicked oligarchs had monopolistic control of Russia’s strategic resources—an authoritarian kleptocracy in which billions in dark money were stashed in anonymous shell companies. As has been widely reported, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard “Len” Blavatnik, a naturalized American citizen, has contributed millions to leading GOP candidates, including Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham. Similarly, as I reported in House of Trump,House of Putin, and American Kompromat, Russian oligarchs have paid countless millions to huge white-shoe American law firms representing their banks and energy companies and have plowed millions of dollars into supporting right-wing, populist movements elsewhere in the West.
Whether Carlson shows up in Budapest or Marjorie Taylor Greene comes with her Jewish space lasers, CPAC’s expansion into Hungary and other countries—it has similar events planned in Brazil, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and more—raises a number of troubling questions.
However successful they turn out to be, it will be important to keep an eye on Hungary. Because it is integrated into both the EU and NATO while Orbán maintains his loyalty to Putin, the conference in Budapest provides fertile breeding ground to resurrect Putin’s most effective influence operations. As the only Putinist in power in the EU, Orbán is a pivotal force promoting Putin-style authoritarianism in the West.
https://newrepublic.com/article/166154/2022-cpac-conference-budapest-hungary-orban