CPAC's Orban Fandom in Context

Why American Conservatives are Embracing a Hungarian Autocrat

Ibram X Kendi’s paperback introduction to Stamped From the Beginning, written right after the 2016 election, uses a historical metaphor that I find very useful. He wrote that Trump’s election confounded Americans raised on pre-established historical narratives about race in America. They said that we had progressed beyond open racism in politics, or that racism ended in the 1960s and that Obama’s election proved this was a “post-racial” nation.. Kendi countered that the history of race in America is not a story of constant progress or even of two steps forward, one step back. Rather, it was a never-ending battle between opposing forces constantly changing with the times. In his formulation, “racial progress” was always countered by “racist progress.”

As Kendi reminds us, American racists don’t need white sheets to be racists. Racist politics takes many forms, adapting to the times but never leaving us. The same goes for authoritarian nationalism. Nationalists don’t need to wear uniforms and march in goosestep to be a threat. We have been deluded by the idea that fascism was some kind of unique phenomenon located at a particular point in the 20th century that was defeated once and for all in 1945. Viktor Orban’s rise and his embrace by the American Right show how authoritarian nationalism adapted itself to current realities. (I don’t always invoke the “f word” for this phenomenon but there’s a reason that neo-Nazis flocked to Trump in ways they didn’t to other Republicans.)

Taking Kendi’s lead, we should see the current wave of authoritarian nationalism in its longer historical context. In nineteenth-century Europe, after the era of revolutions, reactionaries realized they had to recruit the masses to have power, and nationalism made it possible. In France, Napoleon III created an authoritarian state with the trappings of democracy, like referendums, that combined free market economic modernization with militarism and consolidation of power. Bismarck, whose war against France both unified Germany and ended Napoleon III’s reign, erected a similar system in Germany. He instituted universal male suffrage, drastically increasing the participation of the masses, and also supported a social welfare state. At the same time, representational bodies had little power in the system, which rested in the Kaiser and his advisors.

The mix of authoritarianism, nationalism, capitalism, and trappings of representation was called “Bonapartism” after Napoleon III. The new version today is something I dub “Orbanism,” although it thrives well past Hungary's borders. It has many of the old ingredients but with a modern twist. It explicitly rejects liberalism, involves the masses in politics while rigging the system for favorable outcomes, and gets its power from resentment of marginalized “outsiders.” In the last regard, it also shows its debts to the fascist movements of the twentieth century.

Many have been asking why the conservative CPAC conference invited Orban to speak at their national convention. That question has gotten more intense after a speech he gave attacking intermarriage. Some naive liberals have been tweeting things like, “now that the mask is off how can his American supporters stay loyal to him?” Such statements completely miss how Orban’s anti-mixing stances are exactly why American conservatives love him in the first place.

Orbanism, like Fascism 1.0, is seductive to many because it radically simplifies politics. Until the last seven years or so, conservatives supported discriminatory policies while still needing to pay lip service to the language of rights and freedom. Orbanism’s anti-liberal nature ends that difficult juggling act. By rejecting the notion that every person deserves rights, immigrants and LGBT people can be attacked and driven out of the polity without any justification other than “we don’t want them.” Instead of trying to find ways to dodge accusations of voter suppression and election rigging via gerrymandering and the electoral college, American Orbanists can simply say they are doing those things because majority rule should not exist. To them, only the people “like us” count, and if a majority of those people vote for someone (even if they are in the minority), that person should be in power.

At base, American movement conservatives embrace Orbanism because they know the winds have shifted. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, including the last four. Belief in God and church attendance have rapidly plummeted. Gay marriage is overwhelmingly accepted, and gay and trans people are far more visible. Cannabis is being legalized and de-stigmatized across the country.

In Orban’s Hungary, American conservatives see what they want: a white, Christian, native-born nation that loudly and boldly proclaims its rejection of liberalism. It is not what the majority of Americans want, but Orban has provided the blueprint of how to get there, as much as Bismarck and Napoleon III provided a blueprint for reactionaries to maintain power in the nineteenth century.

When Orban attacks interracial marriage, they only love him more. Not so much for the idea as for his willingness to state it so nakedly. Lest we forget, this factor powered Trump’s appeal as well. His supporters revel in seeing him invoke the type of political hate speech that had long been banned from polite society. They long to so use racial slurs and tell anti-gay jokes, and feel oppressed because they can’t. Orban’s ideas are appealing but do not underestimate his shamelessness.

One last reason for the public embrace of Orban is that America’s own examples of white nationalism, the Confederacy and Jim Crow, are far too toxic to be invoked in public. The Confederacy is an obvious one, but it lasted only four years. Jim Crow lasted for decades and didn’t end until just over fifty years ago. Many people still alive today lived under it. The American Orbanists in that sense are the return of the “Redeemers” who put Reconstruction to a violent end. Just as in the 1870s, their ultimate goal is the destruction of multiracial democracy. Embracing a foreign leader makes this look vaguely cosmopolitan rather than a return to a regime abhorred by most Americans.

For decades liberals have comforted themselves with a historical narrative of forward-moving progress. Facsism, Jim, Crow etc. were things relegated to the dustbin of history, never to return. This false narrative has led to an unacceptable complacency. To defeat Orbanism, both in the US and worldwide, liberals need to understand that “history” is not ever trending upward, that the “arc of justice” does not move unless we force it to. Change is not inevitable, it requires a fight. The Orbanists seem to understand that, the rest of us desperately need to see it, too. Orban’s words at CPAC aren’t going to alienate conservatives, but they should get liberals motivated.