On Thursday, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) will meet in Hungary to discuss their ongoing “fight for conservatism in America and abroad.” Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, is featured as a keynote speaker.
Apart from his Christian nationalism, antisemitism and homophobia, a major characteristic U.S. conservatives find endearing in Orban is his success in silencing the academic left — something the American right has long wanted to do.
But there’s a great historical irony about conservatives’ embrace of Orban. The Hungarian Revolution — in which academics and students led an anti-communist attempt to gain independence from the Soviet Union — was a catalyst for the rise of the American conservative movement in the 1950s.
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