MAGA Meets Magyar
A new article illuminates the American right's romance with Hungarian authoritarianism
I’ve been posting regularly about the burgeoning alliance between American right-wingers and their East European counterparts, an important development I think needs analysis and exposure. So I wanted to flag a very well-reported and illuminating article in The New York Times Magazine by Elisabeth Zerofsky titled “How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary.”
It’s a very nuanced piece based on interviews with figures like Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari. Zerofsky’s explanation for the Hungarian turn focuses on Catholic or Catholic sympathizing intellectuals, usually grouped as integralist or post-liberal, who are upset at the triumph of social liberalism. They reject the standard fusionist model of post-war American conservatism, seeing it as shunting out traditionalists concerns for preserving cultural patrimony in the name of embracing a market capitalism that is in fact extremely disruptive of settled mores and hierarchies.
The story Zerofsky tells is of a group of conservatives reacting the failure: the earlier failure of mainstream conservatism but also the failure of Donald Trump’s brand of populism to fulfill his promises. These post-liberal right-wingers admire Viktor Orban of Hungary and the Law and Justice Party of Poland for delivering the goods: actually rolling back LGBTQ rights, limiting immigration, and pursuing pro-natalist policies that have actually raised the birth rate.
Much in Zerofsky article is spot on, but I want to register a suggest the story should be augmented in a few directions. The Catholic angle is true enough but there are also evangelical Protestants who have made the similar pilgrimage to Budapest. In an earlier podcast I talked to Sarah Posner about some of these groups.
More reporting needs to be done on the role of Orban’s regime in promoting this alliance. It’s clear that the Orban government sees the American right as an effective counterweight they can use to challenge foreign critics (especially in the EU but also in the United States).
Finally, this is a story that also includes South America, with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro being equally admired by the global right. A recent Jacobin piece, which should be read in conjunction with Zerofsky’s article, called attention to the South American connection.
I’ll return to this subject in future posts.
This post is part of a series on the American right’s affinity for foreign autocracy. Previously in this series: Tucker Carlson and Authoritarian Tourism, Right-wing Junketeering: Funding a Cruise through Autocracy, Sarah Posner on the Hidden History of Religious Authoritarianism, Tilting at Franco and Nationalist Internationalism, Then and Now.
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Since the rise of MAGA and the QAnon movement, I'm having increasing trouble distinguishing religious from political cults of personality these days, and the boundaries have all but disappeared in Eastern Europe as well as some US states.
Just looking at Rhetoric and Policy, they are sounding nearly identical. (1)Democracy, (2)media and the well rounded educational background to understanding complex issues and (3)transparency (Three of the modern foundations of good government) seem to be their common enemy.