by Mark Ivanyo
Viktor Orbán has now served 12 years as prime minister of Hungary, emerging as one of the most exemplary conservative leaders of our time. On Sunday, he again faces reelection as he seeks to lead Hungary for a fourth term. Although this is a pivotal election for Hungary and for Europe, it is also vital for American conservatives to hope and pray for an Orbán victory.
Orbán has shown what populist conservatives can do when given sufficient time and political capital to succeed. While it is true that Hungary’s system of government and its relatively youth as a democratic country have prevented the development of a U.S.-style “deep state,” Orbán’s refreshing willingness to use power for conservative ends has not only allowed him to deliver on ideological priorities but also to benefit the Hungarian people. His innovative family policies led to rising birth rates. His independent foreign policy has allowed his country to wield outsized influence with regional and world powers. And his fortitude on immigration has helped preserve Hungarian national identity.
Over the past two years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know several leading officials within Orbán’s government, including now-President Katalin Novák, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, and political director Balázs Orbán (no relation). Like Prime Minister Orbán, they are unabashedly patriotic, Christian, and antiestablishment, drawing the ire of globalists from Brussels to Washington. Nevertheless, Orbán’s government is standing strong, refusing to bow to the diktats of international organizations and safeguarding the Hungarian nation’s sovereignty and the Hungarian people’s traditional values.
Now, the globalists are striking back. As 2020 showed, the top threat to U.S. national security is not any foreign adversary, but domestic subversion by an unaccountable elite that includes the permanent political class, the intelligence agencies, and the fake news media. This enemy is currently at the forefront of the effort to remove Viktor Orbán. In Hungary, it seeks to oust a democratically elected leader simply for prioritizing his national interest over the “current thing.”
Using their vast NGO network, they have been funding and organizing subversive opposition groups in Hungary for years—much as they did during the Trump presidency in the United States. This year, they have helped assemble a ragtag coalition of all the various opposition parties behind Péter Márki-Zay, a fake “conservative” manufactured to appeal to the hardworking, small-town Hungarian voters who historically have supported Orbán. Márki-Zay’s motley crew even includes former communists and neo-Nazis. Yet, this coalition is laundered by globalist special interests and their allies in the U.S. media as an alliance for liberal democracy. In reality, these efforts expose the true face of modern “liberal democracy”—an authoritarian ideology hell-bent on world conquest and prepared to align with virtually anyone to achieve its goals before ultimately discarding them as unsavory allies.
This same “liberal democracy” encourages the brutal crackdowns on protesters that took place in Australia and Canada in the name of public health. It pursues an endless “war on terror” until it aligns with Islamists to wage war in the Middle East—before backing communists against those very Islamists. It questions the integrity of an election where a nonliberal candidate prevailed with vague insinuations of Russian interference or mass data manipulation, while simultaneously condemning any criticism of elections where a liberal candidate prevailed as dangerous to democracy. Should Orbán be reelected, expect to see the State Department, the fake news media, and international “observers” question the outcome’s legitimacy.
In addition, with the ongoing destabilization of neighboring Ukraine, a strong Hungary under Orbán is critical. A weak and chaotic government in Budapest is exactly what these globalists want, as it is more likely to do their bidding. This will come at the expense of the Hungarian people, who will face indecision and disarray, and the American people, who will lose one of the few genuine allies we have.
With President Trump having been ousted by election fraud and Bolsonaro at risk of a similar coup, Orbán may well be the last man standing in the Western national-populist movement. Just as he stood by us in January 2021 in recognizing “Stop the Steal” as an internal affair of the United States—at a time when most of the world’s nations were condemning our president and our movement—we should stand by him on Sunday.
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Mark Ivanyo is an attorney and the executive director of Republicans for National Renewal, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting national-populism within Republican Party institutions.
Photo “Viktor Orbán” by European People’s Party CC BY 2.0.
