After Marxist-inspired Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the American political left fell in love with the movement’s guerrilla leader, Daniel Ortega. Even as the U.S. government funded the Contras to overturn the new regime as part of Cold War machinations, progressives flocked to the Central American nation to see the wonders of the fledgling socialist paradise.
“By now American liberals have created a virtual industry of delegations to Nicaragua,” the Christian Science Monitor reported in 1984. “Last year, more than 2,500 Americans took part in such missions.” Some pilgrims spent weeks working on plantations. Whatever one’s thoughts of the U.S. proxy war, the spectacle was revolting. Ortega modeled his revolution on Cuba, which by then had clearly become a totalitarian basket case.
I’m astounded by recent parallels on the American right, as legions of conservatives—including the sitting vice president—have flocked to Hungary to champion the wonders of Viktor Orbán’s self-described “illiberal” government. If you’re not up on political lingo, the term “illiberal” does not refer to modern liberalism, but to the classical liberalism of our founders. Right-wing post-liberalism is about replacing limited government with something like elected autocracy.
Orbán, who was Hungary’s prime minister for 16 years, was the New Right’s version of Ortega, although he looks more like a bloated Soviet-era Politburo member than a romantic, camouflage-wearing revolutionary. Hungarian voters handily rebuked him and his Vladimir-Putin-friendly Fidesz Party in elections last week despite President Donald Trump’s fawning support. It’s been splendid watching the weeping and gnashing of teeth from American MAGA supporters.
In an admirable and hard-hitting column in Fox News, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) noted that “Hungarian politics has persisted as an object of intense fascination in certain corners of the American right.” He found this affinity “endlessly puzzling,” as “America’s self-proclaimed national conservatives spoke of Orbán’s Hungary as an oasis of traditionalism amid the wasteland of an ailing, liberal and decadent postmodern Europe.”
But, McConnell added, it’s a myth. Hungary is the European Union’s basket case, a nation that has seen little economic progress under Orbán—as well as diminishing freedoms and a rise in what some Hungarians call “industrial-scale” corruption. Even if American nationalists find “his illiberal court-packing, crony capitalism or restriction of free speech an acceptable price for their desired social utopia,” McConnell argued that they should be weary of his admiration of authoritarians and close alliance with Russia, China, and Iran.
As further evidence of the conservative movement’s sympathy toward Orbán, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts slammed the McConnell column in a Twitter post: “7-term Republican Senator celebrates Hungary becoming a vassal state of the EU.”
Better, I suppose, that it’s a vassal state of an imperialistic Russia. My, how the right has deformed.
New Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar “accused Orbán of diverting taxpayer money to CPAC at a Monday news conference and vowed to cut off the funnel of government cash,” per Politico. That’s the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference, which was held in Hungary. Some U.S. conservatives have been associated with an Orbán-allied think tank. Praise for the former government is common on the right.
The new line from the Orbánistas is a pure copium: The Hungarian leader conceded defeat, so he really wasn’t a despot. Just because Orbán didn’t unleash the military to cling to power—or engage in election denialism and watch his allies storm their capitol, as a certain American wannabe autocrat has done—doesn’t mean that he wasn’t systematically dismantling Hungary’s democratic institutions and replacing them with a new, illiberal political order. Sounds familiar, right?
Even Ortega allowed Nicaraguan elections in 1990—and conceded defeat after he lost. He was re-elected in 2006. As the Democratic Erosion Consortium explained, he then embraced “stealth authoritarianism,” which is a slow destruction of democracy rather than direct repression. That’s similar to the Orbán approach and may explain (along with his anti-immigration policies) why American nationalist conservatives liked him so much. It’s their model for the United States—and a reminder why the Hungarian election outcome is cause for celebration.
We need not accept the inevitability of illiberalism, from left or right. When I visited Nicaragua in 2013, Ortega was still president. Crossing the border from Costa Rica was an even starker contrast than crossing from San Diego to Tijuana. In Hungary, the country sank on the Freedom Index, as the Cato Institute explained. Its attacks on private property and exertion of state control over industry have caused its economic fortunes to fall behind its neighbors. As Cato added, conservatives love that Hungary subsidized religion and families, but church attendance and birthrates fell nonetheless.
I would never have believed that modern conservatives would behave like 1980s leftists. Instead of looking for inspiration from illiberal foreign (or domestic) leaders, they need to rediscover the classical liberal values that made our nation so free and prosperous.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
