To Win Over Hungary, Don’t Fight A Culture War

Recently in Budapest, right-wing activists from around the world gathered for CPAC Hungary. Speakers included not only Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, but also American politicians such as failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and far-right congressman Paul Gosar. 

Why did all these C-list rightwing celebrities converge on this small Eastern European country? Because Hungary has become a proxy in the West’s culture war. 

Orban and his party Fidesz became a flashpoint because of their hardline stances on social issues and immigration. The Western left looks on his regime in disgust, repelled by what they consider backward social policy. The Western right, on the other hand, has turned Orban’s Hungary into a partisan cause célèbre – for some, it seems that nobody “owns the libs” better than Orban. In both cases, Hungary is treated less as a real country and more as a stand-in for nasty domestic fights. 

Unfortunately, treating Hungary as a culture war proxy undermines Western security interests. Hungary is an essential part of the coalition that will effectively defeat the new revisionism on the march in Russia and China. But the Western left’s aggressive social liberalism is alienating the country from the Atlantic alliance, and the Western right’s partisan embrace of Orban is encouraging his bad behavior.

Read more in 19FortyFive.