BUDAPEST, Hungary (ChurchMilitant.com) – CPAC Hungary — short for the nation’s conservative political action conference — kicked off in Budapest this morning, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán opening the event with a cure for what he calls the “virus” of woke ideologies.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister
The prime minister delivered a rousing keynote speech to a packed house at the conference venue on the shores of the Danube.
Conservatives from all over the world arrived in the capital city to focus on, as conference organizers put it, “the liberals’ nightmare: the international coalescence of national forces.”
A Simple Formula
Delivering the speech in his native Hungarian, Orbán told attendees that the defeat of the woke globalist agenda was as easy as writing: “no migration, no gender [theory], no war” on a flag before a nation’s elections.
The conservative leader backed up his one-two-three rhetorical punch with the reality of what the Fidesz Party has been able to accomplish during his tenure as prime minister.
“We have stopped migration at our borders,” he noted. “We have banned the sexualization of children and school gender propaganda, and we also work for peace without compromise.”
Although Hungary does not claim to be powerful, militarily formidable or rich relative to other CPAC hosts — like the United States, for example — its leader says it has something unique to offer. According to Orbán, “Hungary is in fact an incubator where the conservative politics of the future are being tested.”
As to how a seemingly insignificant country in the heart of Europe became an example for the conservative community, the prime minister said: “Hungary is the place where we not only talked about defeating the progressive liberals and engineering a conservative, Christian political turnaround, we actually did it.”
Overcoming a Troubled Past
Orbán is not merely thumping his chest gratuitously. Under the jackboot of the Soviet Union, the Hungarian People’s Republic became a one-party socialist state beginning in 1949 after a stolen election. Pro-Hungarian forces only brought an end to the communist regime in 1989, in what became known as the Rendszerváltás (change of regime) and not without many lives lost and destroyed in the interim.
The rebuilding of Hungary was a long and painful process, Orbán recalled. In 2010, when he took office, “the question was whether a conservative policy could restore a country bankrupted by liberalism run amok.”
But he pointed out that from the “ruins” of leftist governance, the Hungarian government was able to effect historic achievements, such as “full employment, record investment, a low corporate tax rate, 40% fewer abortions, Europe’s best public safety, curbed migration and a strong national identity.”
Still, the battle against the liberal Left is not over, as he points out.
“The woke movement and gender ideology are exactly what communism and Marxism used to be,” he explained. “They artificially cut the nation into minorities in order to spark strife among the groups.”
Despite challenges then — and now — Orbán touted his nation’s ability to survive and thrive.
“The Hungarian success story has been continuing ever since [Hungary’s conservative turn]” said Orbán, pointing out that “we are the proof [that] only conservative politics can help where the liberals and the Left have ruined a country.”
Comments Attacked
The ink on Orbán’s speech was barely dry when woke gender ideologues reacted to it. The flamboyantly gay U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, weighed in.
David Pressman, the U.S. ambassador to Hungary
Pressman, who has been undermining Hungarian sovereignty since his appointment by the leftist Biden administration in 2022, asserted that Hungary should focus on the war in Ukraine and not issues the ambassador himself deems “fake.”
“There’s an unfortunate eagerness to talk about a fake culture war in Hungary,” the leftist ambassador said. “This is not about wokeism. This is about Russia.”
Pressman failed to acknowledge Hungary’s consistently neutral stance on the war in Ukraine, instead framing the prime minister’s many calls for peace as siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Orbán took the opportunity to refer to his friend and fellow conservative politician Donald Trump.
“I am sure that if President Trump was the president today, there would not be any war in the Ukraine or in Europe,” stated Orbán. “Come back, Mr. President, make America great again and bring us peace!”
Papal Criticism
Orbán’s CPAC address comes just days after Pope Francis’ visit to Budapest. In his final Mass, held in the historic Kossuth Lajos Square, the pontiff broached the topic of migration, urging Hungary to open its doors:
How sad and painful it is to see closed doors. The closed doors of our selfishness with regard to others; the closed doors of our individualism amid a society of growing isolation; the closed doors of our indifference toward the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close toward those who are foreign or unlike us, toward migrants or the poor.
The day before the Mass, during a public prayer service, the pope greeted some of the 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees who have found a home in Hungary.
CPAC Hungary, organized by the Center for Fundamental Rights, is scheduled for May 4 and 5. The two-day conference is also featuring sessions titled “Make Kids Not War” and “No Country for Woke Men.” A sign over the entrance to the venue reads “No Woke Zone.”
