#viktororban #hungary #conservative

Raymond Oliver Dreher, known as Rod Dreher, is an American writer and editor. He is a senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative and author of several books, including How Dante Can Save Your Life, The Benedict Option, and Live Not by Lies. He has written about religion, politics, film, and culture in National Review and National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Touchstone, Men's Health, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

Views on Hungary and Viktor Orbán
Dreher has written supportively of the government of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom Dreher first met at a religious-liberty conference in Budapest in 2019. In 2021, Dreher was given a paid fellowship by the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank based in Budapest and funded by Orbán's government. While many international observers believe that Orbán's premiership has been responsible for the erosion of democracy, human rights, an independent judiciary, press freedom, and the rule of law in Hungary, Dreher commented that "I was there about ten days before I realized that eighty, ninety per cent of the American narrative about the country just isn't true." Observing Orbán's government, Dreher found "so inspiring ... what a vigorous conservative government can do if it's serious about stemming this horrible global tide of wokeness." Dreher identified as instructive for U.S. conservatives Orbán's belief "in national sovereignty, not globalism. He's not opposed to transnational alliances and organizations, but he believes that it's important for people to keep and defend their own traditions and ways of life. That entails controlling immigration." Discussing Orbán's anti-LGBT+ policies,Dreher stated, "We are living, right now, through an ongoing societal catastrophe with gender confusion and transgenderism. Viktor Orbán wants to save his nation from this ideological toxin and does not hesitate to use the power of the state to do so, even if it might violate the spirit of liberalism." Orbán famously asserted in a 2014 speech that "The new state that we are building in Hungary is an illiberal state." Comparing dynamics in Hungary to those in America, Dreher said, "We all seem to be barreling towards a future that is not liberal and democratic but is going to be either left illiberalism, or right illiberalism. If that's true, then I know which side I'm on: the side that isn't going to persecute me and my people."

Dreher has played a key role in encouraging other members of the American conservative movement to engage with Hungary and to look toward Orbán's political strategy and governance as a model. In 2021, Dreher invited Tucker Carlson, whom Dreher calls "the most important conservative figure in America," to visit Hungary. After Carlson replied that he was already considering a visit but that the trip had become entangled in red tape, Dreher personally spoke to Hungarian government ministers and one of Orbán's closest advisers to assure them that "Tucker was somebody who could be trusted." Carlson subsequently spent a week in Hungary taping episodes of his Fox News series Tucker Carlson Tonight, during which Carlson conducted a one-on-one interview with Orbán and praised him as the only elected leader on Earth who "publicly identifies as a Western-style conservative." Subsequently, the American Conservative Union hosted its first conference in Europe, CPAC Hungary, in Budapest in May, 2022, with Dreher in attendance.

Dreher has stated that the U.S. Republican Party needs "a leader with Orbán's vision" and has written favorably about American candidates and elected officials whose words and actions echo Orbán's. In 2022, speaking to Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker he said, "Seeing what [J.D.] Vance is saying, and what Ron DeSantis is actually doing in Florida, the concept of American Orbánism starts to make sense. I don't want to overstate what they'll be able to accomplish, given the constitutional impediments and all, but DeSantis is already using the power of the state to push back against woke capitalism, against the crazy gender stuff." By contrast, Dreher's close friend and fellow conservative writer Andrew Sullivan has spoken critically of U.S. conservatives' admiration for Orbán: "If these people think the extreme left is hijacking American society in dangerous ways, then, yes, I agree. ... But to go from that to 'Let's embrace this authoritarian leader in this backwater European country, and maybe try out a version of that model with our own charismatic leader back home'—I mean, that leap is just weird, and frankly stupid."