{"id":195118,"date":"2019-09-21T06:05:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T06:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195118"},"modified":"2019-09-23T07:16:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T07:16:37","slug":"viktor-orban-i-am-the-only-free-man-among-the-prime-ministers-of-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195118","title":{"rendered":"Viktor Orban: \u2018I Am the Only Free Man Among the Prime Ministers of Europe\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Dreher \u2013 via Russia Insider Sept 20, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n

I arrived in Budapest on Friday to deliver a speech at a conference for Christian communicators from around the world. At the last minute, conference organizers alerted some of us that Prime Minister Viktor Orban would like to meet with us privately at the end of the event. We boarded a bus and headed to Buda Castle, where he received us in a salon. I assumed it would be a quick meet-and-greet. Hardly! He spoke with us for about 90 minutes, and answered our questions frankly. Here\u2019s a shot of the group, whose number included John O\u2019Sullivan and Philip Blond, two names familiar to Anglo-American conservatives:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mind you, I think I John O\u2019Sullivan and I were the only professional journalists in the room, so this was not a press conference. I did not know that we would be offered to opportunity to speak to the PM beyond saying hello, much less that we would be able to ask questions. Therefore, I didn\u2019t prepare for an interview, and in any case I only had the chance to put a single question.<\/span><\/p>\n

I tell you this so you readers don\u2019t ask me why I didn\u2019t challenge Orban on this or that policy of his government. I am perfectly aware that he is a controversial figure who has done things and pursued policy goals that are highly controversial for a number of reasons. However, this was a completely unexpected opportunity to be in the presence of one of the most extraordinary world leaders of our time, and to get a sense of his mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Orban at the Budapest Christian conference in Budapest.<\/p><\/div>\n

If the only thing you know about Viktor Orban is from Western media accounts, you would think that he was nothing but some kind of mafia thug. The Viktor Orban you encounter in person is very,\u00a0very<\/em>\u00a0different from the Viktor Orban shown to Americans by our media. In Orban \u2014 who speaks good English \u2014 was energetic, fiercely intelligent, funny, self-deprecating, realistic, and at times almost pugilistic in talking about defending Hungary and her interests. Orban is what Trump\u2019s biggest fans wish he was (but isn\u2019t), and what Trump\u2019s enemies think him to be (but isn\u2019t). If Donald Trump had the smarts and skills of Viktor Orban, the political situation in the US would be much, much different \u2014 for better or for worse, depending on your point of view.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban begin our session with extended remarks about Hungarian and European politics, and the role of his Fidesz Party in them. He said that when he was elected in 2010, he had one mission: to save Hungary from economic ruin. By the time Orban\u2019s 2014 re-election bid rolled around, the economy was stable, and he described the mission of his second terms as \u201cto say what I think.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI realized in 2014 that I was the only free man among the prime ministers of Europe,\u201d he said, explaining that by \u201cfree,\u201d he meant that he had a strong, united parliamentary majority behind him. He added, \u201cIn Western political life now, you can\u2019t say what you think.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When the migration crisis hit Europe in 2015, Orban famously shut Hungary\u2019s borders to Middle Easterners. Orban said that Hungary\u2019s was the only government in Europe to respond to the crisis in its own interests, and in the interests of Christianity in Europe. With a population of only 10 million, and as a country where Christianity, as elsewhere on the continent, is fragile, the Hungarians concluded that allowing large numbers of Muslims to take up residence here would mean the death knell of Christianity in time.<\/span><\/p>\n

This scandalized the European political class. Orban doesn\u2019t care. He told our group that he understands that he is dealing with elites who believe that being a post-Christian, post-national civilization is a great and glorious thing. Orban rejects this. He said the main political question in the West today is how fractious pluralities can live together peaceably. He said, \u201cHere the most important question is how not to have the same questions as them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban pointed out that the UK and France were once colonial powers in the Middle East. He added, \u201cBut Central Europe was colonized\u00a0by<\/em>\u00a0the Middle East. That\u2019s a fact.\u201d He\u2019s talking about\u00a0the Ottoman occupation of Hungary<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, from 1541 to 1699. Orban told our group that the room we were sitting was part of a Church building that had been turned into a mosque during the occupation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Explaining his decision to shut the borders to Muslim refugees, Orban said what tipped the scales was consulting the Christian bishops of the Middle East. Orban: \u201cWhat did they say? \u2018Don\u2019t let them in. Stop them.’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Middle Eastern Christians, said Orban, \u201ccan tell you what is the [ultimate] end of a society you have to share with Muslims.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitting at the table listening to the prime minister was Nicodemus, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Mosul, whose Christian community, which predates Islam by several centuries, was savagely persecuted by ISIS. Archbishop Nicodemus spoke up, thanking Orban for what Hungary has done for persecuted Christians. Nicodemus said that living with Muslims has taught Iraqi Christians that they can expect no mercy. \u201cThose people, if you give them your small finger, they will want your body,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that Western countries don\u2019t accept our experience,\u201d the prelate continued. \u201cThose people [Muslims] pushed us to be a minority in our own land and then refugees in our own land.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the Orban government, Hungary frequently extends a helping hand to persecuted Christians.The archbishop exhorted Orban to stay the course in defense of Christians. For 16 years, he said, Iraqi Christians begged Western leaders to help them. Addressing Orban directly, Nicodemus said, \u201cNobody understands our pain like you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Philip Blond, the British political economist, suggested to the prime minister that he has a mission to re-Christianize Europe. Orban, who is 56 and part of the country\u2019s Calvinist minority, said that his generation\u2019s mission was to defeat Communism. Religious rebirth is a task for Millennials, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to\u00a02017 Pew research<\/strong><\/span>,<\/a>\u00a0though 59 percent of Hungarian adults say they believe in God, only 16 percent pray daily. As Hungary-based writer\u00a0Will Collins wrote in TAC earlier this year<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, only 12 percent of Hungarians go to church \u2014 a number that is no doubt much smaller among Hungarians under 40. In my on the record interviews and background conversations with Hungarian Christians these past few days, there is an acute sense that the Christian faith is fast fading among the young, who, like their co-generationalists across the former Soviet bloc, are far more drawn to Western materialism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban spoke frankly about the post-communist religious state of his country. \u201cIt\u2019s still not a healed society,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s still not in good shape.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked the prime minister if he saw evidence of a \u201csoft totalitarianism\u201d emerging in the West today, and if so, what are the main lessons that those who resisted communism have to tell us about identifying and resisting it.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said that the Soviets and their servants in Central Europe tried to create a new kind of man:\u00a0homo Sovieticus.\u00a0<\/em>To do this, they had to destroy the two sources of identity here: a sense of nationhood, and the Christian religion. In order to survive, said Orban,\u00a0\u201cwe have to strengthen our national identity and our Christian identity. That\u2019s the story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Western peoples have decided to create a post-Christian, post-national, multicultural society. Peoples in Central Europe do not.\u00a0 For Orban, re-establishing a sense of national identity and the Christian faith are the same project. It\u2019s an attempt to reverse the damage done by Communism. The danger, obviously, is that Christianity becomes emptied of its spiritual and moral content, and is filled with nationalism. On the other hand, if a pro-Christian politician like Orban can at least keep the public square open and favorable to the ancestral religious beliefs of the nation, religious leaders can step into the space politics creates, and do their work of recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban said that he wants Westerners and others who share these values to come to the Hungarian capital, where they will be free to speak their minds, and establish a base. \u201cI\u2019m trying to create a free place in Budapest,\u201d he said. \u201cPlease consider Budapest as a kind of intellectual home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, Orban\u2019s government played host to a demography summit here.\u00a0Reporting on it, the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>, as usual, called Orban a politician of the \u201cfar right.\u201d<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/a>Orban is certainly nationalist and populist (and popular here), but smearing him as some kind of right-wing extremist only demonstrates how cut off the liberal Western media are from common sense. One can certainly take issue with Orban\u2019s illiberal methods of pursuing his policy goals \u2014 and\u00a0the prime minister does not deny that he is an illiberal democrat<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 but the man understands his small country to be in a fight for national survival against globalist, anti-Christian multiculturalism coming from Brussels and other Western capitals. How, exactly, is he wrong?<\/span><\/p>\n

Put in terms of contemporary American conservative politics, it seems to me that Viktor Orban\u2019s party and movement is what you would see if Sohrab Ahmari\u2019s side of the Ahmari-French debate actually won a mandate to govern. Ahmari\u2019s integralism \u2014 as distinct from French\u2019s classical liberalism \u2014 is a very hard sell in the United States, which is a truly pluralistic nation. Hungary, however, is far more culturally and ethnically homogeneous. As Orban told us, one of his goals is to make sure that the kinds of questions that are breaking multicultural Western polities never arise here. Again: is he wrong to want to protect Hungary from the disintegration that comes with Western-style liberal identity politics? Hungary has a million problems, but Parisian-style\u00a0banlieues\u00a0<\/em>filled with angry and unassimilable Muslim migrants, vicious institutional combat around so-called \u201cwhite privilege,\u201d and endless fights in locker rooms and libraries over gender ideology are not among them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Original source: The American Conservative<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The implication being the rest of Europe\u2019s leaders are beholden to the dictates of a hidden elite <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":195120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Unreported_News"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195136,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195118\/revisions\/195136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/195120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}