Inspirational Orbán

One nation that is holding out against its own dissolution is Hungary. Its Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, gave a speech this week to a congress of his political party, Fidesz. It is, in the main, one of the great inspirational speeches from a major political leader.

I say this, even though it is difficult to categorise his speech politically. Is he a Christian and nationalist right-liberal? Or a traditionalist? At the very least, he is shifting the Overton window back toward something close to a traditionalist politics.

One reason I hesitate to label Orbán a traditionalist is that he excludes race as a foundation of national identity. I have written before (here and here) that I disagree with those who think that a communal tradition can be founded on racial self-interest alone. Orbán goes entirely the other way. He provides a rich foundation for a communal identity, but excludes what realistically ought to be there, namely a common ancestry.

I will now hand over to the extraordinary Hungarian PM:

...we should realise that the spirit of the age is not the same as the prevailing media trend. We should realise that the soothing melodies pouring out of the speakers of powerful global corporations and global political organisations – siren voices encouraging breezy irresponsibility, frenzied consumption and boundless self-indulgence – are not at all the same as the spirit of the age. Under the soft blanket of dreams laid down by the global elite, one finds the cold, hard reality of life. We see tens of millions of Europeans working hard and struggling day in, day out to keep themselves and their families afloat. We see how they yearn for security and order. We see how they cleave ever more firmly to their cultural identity, and fight every day for every square metre of their normal European life. This is the true spirit of the age. So we should refocus our vision, and we’ll see that in fact the spirit of the age is on our side: it is on the side of hardworking and responsible Europeans who provide for their families, love their homelands and insist on their Christian roots. We are in a majority – in an overwhelming majority. It is only a question of time, and we shall prevail not only in Hungary, but in the whole of Europe; indeed, we shall prevail in the entire Western world.

This is also well understood by globalist elites, the bureaucrats who serve them, the politicians in their pay, and the agents of the Soros-type networks that embody their interests. They understand it well, and therefore they’ve invented the magic word “populism” to describe all that is national, popular, Christian and civic. But they repeat this magic word in vain, their incantations are in vain, and their political voodoo is in vain: reality, flesh-and-blood people, real-life instincts, real human desires, dreams and hopes will conquer the globalist elite still ruling Europe today. And they will make Europe – and within it Hungary – great again. Of course not all of this is self-evident: this is not Marxist historical materialism, in which world history has an inevitably predestined goal. There will be a battle here. Will be? There already is! And in this battle the European debates of the next decade will centre on identity: the identities of people, of peoples, of countries, and even of continents.

...But there’s a new, modern genre of politics which has never been seen before. At the centre of this stands the individual who is wrenched out of their cultural, national, religious and gender identity, and reduced to an aggregation of their instincts. This new type of human being for a new age is the embodiment of “Homo brusselicus”. Drawing on our experience, we should declare our conviction that in Europe policies which set aside the natural order of life and deny national communities the right to life – regardless of the educational sophistication and moralising good intentions of those policies’ authors – have always led to barbarism. We should declare that to our mind the most important bond between human beings – beyond the laws of biology – is the spiritual bond which we call “nation”, and which elevates us all to participants in a shared culture and shared tradition. And we should also declare that we have inherited a unique and great national culture. Our national culture makes us what we are. Our national culture means that to this day Hungarians have the ability to face the truth, the capacity for self-respect and self-awareness, and can also understand their situation and mission. We believe that the Hungarian spirit can support anything and survive anything. As our ancestors said: “It sometimes loses its voice, but it does not die”. This spiritual and intellectual strength enables us to bravely address and calmly consider answers to the questions which terrify others, as they tower over our wider motherland of Europe. Our great forebears knew this and wrote about it. And in those days it was even customary to say that this unique Hungarian spirit – and the Hungarian way of thinking stemming from it – created the possibility for the Hungarians to live among civilised peoples. And it was also this that gave us the moral strength without which a lonely people such as ours, swept here from faraway lands, would hardly have been able to survive for a thousand years. How could we possibly give this up?

My Friends,

...There is only one way that European unity can survive: if we accept one another’s differences; if we show mutual respect for one another; and if, instead of a United States of Europe, we create a free alliance of European nations. There is no other way.

And now I’d like to talk about what we should protect and why. It is well known that we Hungarians have no desire for empires – and especially not for their viceroys. We don’t like it when imperial viceroys seek to determine the fate of the nation instead of us. Today an empire is threatening us once again. We stand in the way of a plan which seeks to eliminate nations, and seeks to create a Europe with a mixed population. We stand in the way of a financial and political empire which seeks to implement this plan – at whatever cost. Let’s not beat about the bush: in order to implement the “Soros Plan”, across the whole of Europe they want to sweep away governments which represent national interests – including ours. In recent years Soros’s NGOs have penetrated all the influential forums of European decision-making. They are also present in the backyards of some Hungarian parties. They operate like the activists of the Department for Agitation and Propaganda of the old Soviet Communist Party. We old war horses recognise them by their smell. Although the Soros troops use somewhat more refined methods, they nonetheless want to tell us what to do, what to say, what to think – and even how we should see ourselves. For a long time the situation was simple and clear: there were men and women, mothers and fathers, Hungarians, Germans or Russians – and Christians or Muslims, for that matter. Today they want to force us into a world in which these natural and clear outlines have been erased. Such a world has no definite points of reference, it is unclear who is a man and who is a woman, what family is, and what it means to be Hungarian and Christian. They are creating a third gender, they are ridiculing faith, and they regard families as redundant, and nations as obsolete.

Let’s speak to the point. Migration is not the goal of the Soros Plan, but merely its means. Millions of people in desperate situations in Africa and the Middle East are being encouraged to come to Europe; indeed they are even being transported here, in order to debilitate nations and deliver the coup de grâce to Christian culture. Let’s also talk candidly about the fact that the Soros Plan also seriously endangers the security of our everyday lives. In Europe’s immigrant countries, acts of terrorism have become regular occurrences, crime rates are increasing, violence against women has escalated, and anti-Semitism is emerging again. This is what we must prevent, and this is the threat against which we must defend the country. So when we say that we must defend Hungary, we declare that we must defend work, our families, security, the authority of our laws, our achievements and Hungarian culture. And we must also defend our future. What we did not tolerate from the Soviet Empire we shall not tolerate from the Soros Empire. We shall defend our borders, we shall prevent implementation of the Soros Plan, and eventually we shall win this battle.