CPAC Hungary was worlds apart from the typical CPAC gathering. Keynote addresses were about immigration and demographics rather than limited government and taxes. The conference celebrated nationalism rather than condemned it. And the event played host to speakers willing to address race rather than banning them. It’s a surprise that the American Conservative Union held this conference at all. It was far superior to the recent CPAC and shows what American conservatism could be if it ditched the cuckery.
You can tell CPAC Hungary was a good event based on the hysterical headlines in the mainstream media. Here are some examples:
With these headlines, you know the conference was superior to the usual CPAC fare. The most recent CPAC in America, held in Florida in late February, was notable for its lack of anything particularly interesting. Amren.com’s Jared Taylor offered a good summary of the bland event in Orlando:
Many of the people on stage denounced our “open Southern border,” but only as part of a list of Biden sins, no different from vax mandates or a flabby foreign policy. There was not a single panel or speech on immigration. There was plenty of brimstone for “the woke Left” but nothing about where it comes from, other than the decline of Christianity. Conservatives, as they incessantly call themselves, don’t know what to conserve. They see symptoms but not causes, and as I discovered through my informal CPAC poll described below, they have been neutered psychologically even before the real battle begins [The Great Wasted Potential of CPAC, by Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, March 1, 2022].
Here’s Taylor’s informal poll:
The answers were nowhere near as “based” as they would be at an American Renaissance conference—or at a VDARE.com conference either. A majority answered “yes” to question one, for example.
Mr. Taylor found nothing in CPAC Orlando to suggest “white nationalist authoritarianism” or whatever buzzword the media prefers. He found a standard conservative event where immigration was only mentioned in the context of the border crisis and race was never noticed.
So what made CPAC Hungary different?
Namely, the openness to nationalism.
Over the past few years, CPAC defined itself not only by not featuring nationalist speakers—but not even allowing nationalists as audience members. In 2019, the conference banned Nick Fuentes, Patrick Casey, and other America Firsters from attending. They did the same thing again in 2020. But at CPAC Hungary, they allowed a speaker who says very politically incorrect things to address the audience from the main stage.
Hungarian television personality Zsolt Bayer was one of the touted speakers at the conference. The western media labels him a “racist” and an “anti-Semite” for his past comments about gypsies, American blacks, and Jews. He once wrote: “a significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals and they behave like animals.” Even though the media fixated on Bayer’s appearance, CPAC didn’t remove him from the lineup or apologize for his appearance. “We reject the reporting of The Guardian and have been assured by our partners in Hungary that the substance of this attack is false,” the ACU stated. ACU chief Matt Schlapp, no one’s idea of a nationalist, actually defended Bayer: “We reject this unfounded reporting. We have many speakers with independent views” [How the GOP Allows Bigotry to Be Mainstreamed at Conservative Events, by Aaron Blake, Washington Post, May 24, 2022].
Compare Schlapp’s defense of Bayer to his 2019 statement repudiating the nationalists challenging Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA during the “Groyper War”:
While the CPAC stage is an opportunity to debate the issues, there is no disagreement among conservatives on the vile and disgusting topics of white nationalism and Holocaust denial. There’s no place in our conservative movement for those interested in fomenting hate, mob violence or racist propaganda [Far-right white nationalists fracturing Donald Trump’s conservative base, by Dave Boyer, Washington Times, November 28, 2019].
What a difference the Hungarian example makes.
The keynote address from Prime Minister Viktor Orban underscored the major difference as well. “Hungary is the laboratory where we have managed to come up with the antidote for progressive dominance,” Orban declared. “The nation comes first: Hungary first, America first.”
He offered a 12-point plan for how conservatives should take back their respective countries. Most of the points dealt with refusing to play by your opponents’ rules and serving the national interest rather than the global interest [Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the CPAC on 19 May 2022, Visegrad Post, May 24, 2022].
In a speech a few days before his CPAC address. Orban decried the “recurring waves of suicidal policy in the Western world.”
One such suicide attempt that I see is the great European population replacement program, which seeks to replace the missing European Christian children with migrants, with adults arriving from other civilisations. This is also how I see gender madness [CPAC Europe Is a Safe Space for Authoritarians, by Jonathan Krohn, Rolling Stone, May 19, 2022].
Other CPAC speakers echoed Orban’s allusions to the Great Replacement.
Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus said : “James Burnham said that civilization dies only by suicide. I’m afraid that our lack of activity could easily lead to such an end. I’m certainly not the only one here who feels that we have arrived at the turning point. We must actively start defending and promoting the ideas we inherited from our predecessors.”
Another person who shared these claims was Matt Schlapp, of all people. On the stage, he said: “For people that believe that we need to somehow replace populations or bring in new workers, I think it’s a nice and appropriate first step to enshrine in law the right to life for unborn children.”
To a reporter, Schlapp was more explicit about demographic replacement:
As you know, in many European countries, they’re not there—they’re not replacing themselves in the population. So there’s a decline in the population, which always results in stifling economic growth. This is not a religious idea; just an economic idea. And so, what they often say is, "Let’s turn to an immigrant population to kind of feed that economic need” [CPAC Europe Is a Safe Space for Authoritarians, by Jonathan Krohn, Rolling Stone, May 19, 2022].
The conference, unlike American CPACs, didn’t define Western nations as just defined by their ideas—they’re defined by their people. As Orban said in his speech:
The nation’s cause is not a question of ideology; not even of tradition. You have to help and support the Church and support the families because they construct the nation. They make up the nation. This means that you will always have to stand on the side of the workers. This is why we decided to stop migration and to build a wall.
The conference also featured American speakers it probably wouldn’t have allowed to address a crowd in Florida. They included media personality Jack Posobiec, who regularly shares Dissident Right ideas, and conservative scholar David Azzerad, who recently caused a controversy at a Catholic university for suggesting the real problem of black privilege [Saint Vincent Debates Whether Speech Was Racist, by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, April 18, 2022]. It was a more interesting, and gutsier lineup than the usual fare.
Why the difference? The easiest answer is “when in Rome.” Hungary is different from America. Its Right is fine with openly discussing demographic change and speaking of its people in ethnic terms instead of ideological terms. CPAC conformed to the mood of its surroundings. Talk of how immigrants are real Americans or Westerners would’ve been out of a place in a country that resolutely objects to that delusion.
But it’s not just the surroundings either. CPAC knew what it was doing by hosting an event in Hungary. Hungary isn’t popular with American conservatives because it has low taxes and business-friendly policies. Orban’s country is popular because it resists globalism, open borders, and the Great Replacement. This is an appealing program to millions of Americans who hope an Orban will emerge in our own country. Tucker Carlson, whom Orban praised in his CPAC, is now the most influential conservative in America. Tucker regularly talks about America First issues that conservatives would have ignored or condemned in years past. His nightly monologues set the tone for the American Right, and they make an impact.
The mainstream American Right is changing, as evidenced by CPAC Hungary. What needs to happen is for CPAC to host something like it in America. Middle Americans are done with Con Inc. talking points. They want Orbanism.
Washington Watcher II [Email him] is an anonymous DC insider.
