Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary because its authoritarian, anti-immigrant leader has set a model for America's far-right
- Fox News' Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary this week.
- Carlson is promoting the worldview of Hungary's authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
- America's far-right looks to Orbán as a more successful, effective version of Trump.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Budapest, Hungary this week. For a lot of people, this might be perplexing. But for those who've closely followed the far-right in recent years, it makes perfect sense.
Many American conservatives admire Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán - a xenophobic, anti-LGBTQ authoritarian who's been in power for 11 years and who endorsed President Donald Trump's reelection campaign last year - and they've made no secret of it. They look to Orbán as a more effective version of Trump - and a model for the future of right-wing politics in the US.
Carlson is effectively in Hungary to promote Orbán's nationalism and anti-democratic approach to governance, and authoritarianism experts are concerned - particularly over what this says about the direction of American conservatism. The Fox host's Hungarian excursion comes at a time when Republicans continue to whitewash the pro-Trump Capitol insurrection, vie to restrict voting in states across the US, and as recent polling shows that more than a quarter of Americans qualify as having right-wing authoritarian political beliefs.
"There's nothing funny about this encounter," Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian and expert on strongman leaders, wrote of Carlson's visit with Orbán. "Carlson's world aligns to an alarming degree with that of Orbán ... The goal of these alliances has always been to mainstream far-right values."
"Orbán has arguably been among the most successful sitting leaders at creating an electoral autocracy ... keeping a veneer of democracy going while turning elections into sham events, taking judicial and press freedoms away, and suffocating society slowly," Ben-Ghiat added. "This is where the GOP is heading, accelerating the agenda of the Trump presidency to undo our democratic freedoms and institutions."
Carlson is boosting Orbán's profile, while ignoring his autocratic leadership
Carlson, perhaps the most prominent right-wing voice in the US, shared a tweet showing him meeting with Orbán on Monday. The Fox host is also set to speak at a far-right conference on Saturday called MCC Feszt that's tied to Orbán.
"If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now," Carlson, making no mention of Orbán's anti-democratic tendencies, said during his show on Monday night.
Carlson during the same episode decried the mainstream media in the US, stating that its true purpose was to defend the ruling class. He did not, however, discuss the extreme degree to which Orbán has shored up control of the news media in Hungary. In July, Reporters Without Borders pointed to Orbán as one of the world's 37 "press freedom predators."
The Fox host on Wednesday gave a talk at a dinner with Orbán's office and praised Hungary as a great place that the West can learn from while telling the audience, "You're truly hated by all the right people," according to tweets from Rod Dreher, a senior editor at the American Conservative.
Dreher has also expressed admiration for Orbán and has championed the Hungarian leader's politics in his writing.
"What I see in Orbán is one of the few major politicians in the West who seems to understand the importance of Christianity, and the importance of culture, and who is willing to defend these things against a very rich and powerful international establishment," Dreher told Vox last year.
"I find myself saying of Orbán what I hear conservatives say when they explain why they instinctively love Trump: because he fights," Dreher added. "The thing about Orbán is that unlike Trump, he fights, and he wins, and his victories are substantive."
Carlson and Orbán have promoted a white nationalist worldview
Carlson and Orbán, who faces elections in 2022, have been looking to one another as allies for some time.
Anna Massoglia, an investigative researcher at Open Secrets, reported that Hungary in 2019 paid a Washington, DC, lobbying firm $265,000 - and the payment was partially designed to help coordinate an interview on Carlson's show.
Around that time, Carlson on his show praised Orbán's ethnonationalist, anti-immigration policies, while decrying the "neoliberals who run" the EU. "Instead of helping the native population to have more children, the Hungarian government, they say, should import a replacement population from the Third World," Carlson said in July 2019.
"But Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has a different idea. Instead of abandoning Hungary's young people ... Orbán has decided to affirmatively help Hungarian families grow," Carlson added.
Carlson has espoused a white supremacist "replacement" conspiracy theory on his show, stating that Democrats were "importing" immigrants to "dilute" US voters. Orbán, who has presented himself as a defender of Christianity and built a wall to keep out refugees, has made near-identical talking points.
"We do not want to be diverse," Orbán said in a 2018 speech. "We do not want our own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others."
If the US follows in Orbán's footsteps, it spells trouble for American democracy
Orbán, who was once described by Trump's former campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon as "Trump before Trump," has rapidly eroded democratic institutions and tightened his grip over the Central European country's political system over the past decade or so.
The Hungarian leader, a champion of what he calls "illiberal democracy," has packed the nation's courts and media with allies. Orbán has also gamed the electoral system - via gerrymandering and other dubious tactics - to favor his Fidesz party.
"At this point, Hungary is a full-on dictatorship. No if, ands, or buts," Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College and author of "Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe," told Insider last year as Orbán was granted broad emergency powers by the country's parliament to combat the coronavirus, giving him the ability to rule by decree.
Last year, the watchdog Freedom House in its annual Nations in Transit report said Hungary no longer qualified as a democracy, citing "a stunning democratic breakdown" in the country. Freedom House in its 2021 report continued to criticize Hungary for its "unparalleled democratic deterioration over the past decade." Similarly, the US was classified as a "flawed democracy" by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its latest "Democracy Index" report, though it fell from its status as a "full democracy" back in 2016.
If the far-right gains more control over the levers of power in the US, pushing the political system closer to Orbán's Hungary, it could have potentially irrevocable consequences for American democracy.