Hungary and The Dangerous Polarization of Foreign Policy
Tucker Carlson and Hungarian Leader Orban. Screen capture from Fox News
Last week brought the politics of Hungary into American political discourse for the first time in years. Fox News host Tucker Carlson brought his highly rated show to the Eastern European nation for the week. He effusively praised the Hungarian state and its autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán. This decision set off the American liberal punditry. Many argued that Tucker’s visit was to showcase the eventual end goal of the Republican Party over Trumpism. In Hungary, dissent is limited and elections only appear free, while Orbán’s position is always secure. The nation rejects immigrants and is practically run by an ideology of anti-Semitism. Liberals see a number of parallels with Republican chicanery on voting rights and their attempts to undermine the legitimate election of Democrats. Jonathan Chait at New York made this point last week when he wrote:
The broad lesson of Trump’s presidency is that clumsy, violent efforts to seize power — such as the January 6 insurrection — will meet with intra-party resistance, but subtler power grabs will not. Republicans decided to shrug at abuses like Trump using American diplomacy as a lever to coerce Ukraine to smear his opponent, refusing to accept the election outcome, or using the presidency to line his own pockets… What they seem to want is a leader who shares Trump’s contempt for democracy, but possesses a subtler touch. That is the vision Orbán offers.
The politicization of American views of other countries is worrying. Hungary should be denounced as an autocracy that imprisons its enemies and quashes basic human rights. But the American Right’s support for Hungary needs to be understood in context if we have any hope of separating discussions of foreign countries from our endless culture war.
There is no data to suggest that most Republicans truly want an imposition of an Orbán-like state. Too many of them supported Barack Obama back in 2009 to want to outlaw the Democratic Party. The values of democracy often poll well. Orbán’s actions would be rejected by a large majority of Americans if they were attempted in this country. Republicans groveled and complained when their president lost in November, but most of them went on to criticize and complain about the Biden administration after his inauguration — showing that they believe in political dissent and free speech. Contrary to most liberal pundits, Republican America is not ready to throw itself behind the first fascist brownshirt march.
But this rosy view does not mean all is well with the Republican Party. The skewed nature of partisan politics, plus the radical decisions of political and media leaders, have filtered every event through the lens of the culture war. Republicans respond to polls about the election, their leaders, and Democrats based on what they think their leaders in the media and the Republican Party want to hear. There was an early warning of this dynamic on the other side back in 2016, when 67% of Democrats responded in a poll that they would vote for Barack Obama to serve a third term. These Democrats would not have gone out in the streets to support an unconstitutional power grab. They were simply responding to what they thought they should support as good Democrats. This dynamic grew worse among Republicans during the Trump administration, when they supported nearly everything the president did, legal or otherwise, because he was their president.
The nation’s partisan split has now made its way to views of Hungary. Republican media has signaled the virtues of the Hungarian system. There is a good chance that this signaling will be picked up by the Republican rank and file. They will respond that Hungary is a proud, respectable country and that we should emulate them in whatever way possible. These polling respondents will not make these statements after a careful deliberation of the country’s political turmoil. They will respond the way they think good Republicans should respond. The lack of sincerity about their beliefs should not detract from the fact that any support for authoritarianism is worrying in today’s unstable political world.
At some point, the culture war must end. Americans have to unite around a set of shared values and spurn the grifters and hucksters who stoke the nation’s passions for political gain. We need to find a way to combat dangerous beliefs held by Republicans while also understanding their superficial nature. “They don’t really believe it” is not an excuse for Republicans to do whatever they want at any level of government. But a belief that every Republican is a sociopathic monster hell-bent on storming the Capitol, like a small percentage of them did on January 6th, will lead to nothing but more conflict and heartache. Once Americans identify our opponents as human beings, we can start to focus more on bringing sanity back to foreign policy as well as the rest of the American political landscape.
This piece was first published on Medium
Imagine if we turned our cultural insights into Hungary the way we did Afghanistan.
We might be able to improve them through the sheer logic and obviousness of our culture’s moral superiority.Report
1956 called.
Wants its tankie take back.Report
Please tell 1956 that it’s 2021 and we are still more interested in getting Eastern Bloc countries to agree with us about cultural issues than we are in providing health care to homeless people.Report
To be fair, the folks spending money pushing gay rights and other cultural left values in Hungary are private actors (Soros, NGOs) and the EU. The US is mostly just saying politically correct stuff through their embassies. That ain’t exactly diverting a lot of US Gov monies from housing the homeless or other stuff.Report
I didn’t say that we were diverting monies.Report
If we’re not paying monies for it then we aren’t actually “more interested in getting Eastern Bloc countries to agree with us about cultural issues than we are in providing health care to homeless people”.
Talk is a near infinite resource. Lefties can lavish almost limitless talk about getting eastern bloc countries to agree with them on cultural issues AND spend the same amount of talk on health insuring homeless people. It isn’t a zero sum game when the only resource being spend is talk.Report
We used to be good at getting people to want to be like us.
Even the left was good at it!
They’re not good at it any more. Worse than that, the money isn’t helping.
Maybe the stick will work better if we apply it more often.Report
Err “we” are not spending money, we just established that. Likewise “we” aren’t exactly applying sticks either.
As for getting people to want to be like us? We’re a victim of our own success there I suppose. Back then it was arguments about what fundamental social and economic order the world would operate under. Now it’s arguments about what pronouns should be used and what immigration policy should be. The heat is so intense because the stakes are so low.Report
I guess I see the essay above as being one of the sticks at our disposal.Report
That would be your error. The article is not about Hungary. Not really. It criticizes Hungary, certainly, but it isn’t talking about how we should go about changing Hungary. The article is mostly talking about how the American Right is currently having a love affair with Hungary and what that says about the American Right specifically and us in the US in general. Hungary isn’t really the subject. Hungary is just the screen we are projecting the actual subject (us) onto.Report
There’s a surprising number of us that don’t want to be like us.
“Why can’t we be more like this country in Europe?”, they ask.Report
Heheh, a whole slew of aging white voters in regions that have been abandoned by the youngs look at an eastern country and is aging and abandoned by its youngs and say “hey they’re just like us”. News at eleven.Report
Sounds like the problem is likely to be resolved within our lifetimes.
The only problem is that it’s not happening as quickly as we’d like.Report
I’m on the record as frequently saying “if we can just hold the line and not go reciprocally nuts in a leftward direction this problem will solve itself.”Report
The style book demands that the proper form of argument is that “it is cultural imperialism to impose our decadent bourgeois notions of individual liberty on others.”Report
You’d think that if our culture was so obviously better, the dog would eat the dog food. That’s how it worked in 1956, after all.
Maybe we just haven’t killed enough people.Report
You would think that if the Hungarian people were rejecting the food it wouldn’t be necessary to imprison them for eating it.Report
The fence was to keep people out, not in.
“You need to change your dog food recipe!” is something that the people on our side of the fence are saying.
And, of course, “you shouldn’t want to eat that” to people over here.Report
What I’m hearing is one group of Americans saying “You shouldnt imprison people for criticizing the government ” and another group of Americans saying “Why not?”Report
“Because Freedom of Speech is an important Enlightenment value that needs to be upheld!” used to be a pretty good counter-argument.
Way back when the music was still good.Report
The question is never “How many people are actively doing evil things”.
The question is, “How many other people are willing to ignore it, tolerate it, excuse it away?”
What percentage of Republicans have accepted or excused or given tacit support for the Jan 6 insurrection?
We read that the former president was pressuring all the organs of state to find ways to overturn the free and fair election.
What percentage of Republicans support that, or shrug it off, or excuse it away?
American democracy is hanging by a thread, and we need to take the threat seriously.Report
We’re regularly told about the benefits of the Canadian or even Cuban health care systems. We’re contrasted against the “sensible” French approach to adultery or the Dutch approach to drugs. Some find inspiration in the EU, some in Britain’s departure from it. We discuss South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commision and land reform. We praise or criticize the Nordic countries for their tax policy, immigration policy, energy policy. Every one of those counties is treated as a potential example or warning from the perspective of the American parties’ agendas.Report
Please understand, I am not suggesting we adopt the policies of Communist Cuba.
I’m merely pointing out that America is not as morally pure as we think, and indeed, whatabout our Negroes?
“Yes”, said the wise man, “there is no difference between good and bad things. “Report
The biggest problem with Communist Cuba is that the people who left it were vocal about why they left instead of vocal about why we needed to change to be more like the culture they left behind.
We only got one side of the story!Report
I don’t want to live in Orban’s Hungary anymore than Trump’s America. From what I understand, calling Hungary an autocracy is not really accurate. He’s quite illiberal and has stacked the odds in his favor, but there’s still a chance he’ll lose the next election. He’s been in and out of office since the late 90s. But anyway, if we’re in the business of comparing ourselves to small, former communist countries, I want to throw in something else to chew on.
-Elites in region 1 support and participate various ill-advised military efforts in a much poorer, less stable, neighboring region 2.
-Governments in region 2 begin to collapse, low intensity wars get hotter, sectarian and ethnic strife gets worse.
-Huge numbers of refugees from region 2 begin foooding into region 1.
-Elites from region 1 tell people from region 1 they have a moral duty to accept and take in people from region 2, regardless of concerns about economic and cultural challenges in doing so.
-Large numbers of voters from region 1 decide elites from region 1 no longer put their interests first, and become open to supporting other elites who say they will, in spite of a number of troubling inclinations from said new elites.
Let’s do another.
-Elites in region 1 pass a number of trade agreements with a much poorer neighboring region 2 that don’t account well for displacement of labor in either region.
-One result of the deals is a complete destabilization of agricultural work in region 2, and a relative increase in labor costs in region 1.
-Huge numbers of migrants begin illegally entering region 1 due to inability to make a living in region 2, and the ability to actually make ends meet undercutting the new relative cost of labor in region 1.
-Elites in region 1 tell people in region 1 they have a moral duty to accept the migrants from region 2, regardless of concerns about economic and cultural challenges in doing so.
-Large numbers of voters from region 1 decide elites from region 1 no longer put their interests first, and become open to supporting other elites who say they will, in spite of a number of troubling inclinations from said new elites.
Now I get many quibbles could be had with the above. There are caveats and nuances not captured. But again, if we really feel like we have to have this conversation, I don’t see how we can without accounting for it.Report
This is right. Fidesz is broadly popular with a plurality of voters in an electoral system that allows for factions. If anything it is a counter-point to my constant harping on more factionalized voting! Then again, the problem with Fidesz isn’t that it’s popular in Hungary, its that opposition is split on axes that don’t make for a natural coalition. Still, it happened in Israel and it might happen in Hungary that an unnatural coalition emerges to challenge a ruling coalition.
So +1 for my constant harping on factionalized voting?!
I’m sure Tucker Carlson and others have said stupid things about Hungary but man, the rebuttals I’ve seen beggar my belief in rebuttals. Yglesias in particular sounded like he ate a bucket of stupid for about a week.
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/hungary/Report
People who haven’t been paying attention to Europe since 1992 are shocked, SHOCKED to realize that when the Iron Curtain fell there weren’t just a bunch of cosmopolitan western European types on the other side, ready to embrace multiculturalism and be snooty to vacationing Americans. Not only that, but their parliamentary systems allow such people to win office and govern in ways not entirely outside the mainstream of the electorate. At least to the extent it feeds on cultural imperalism from Brussels it gives us something we can legitimately blame on the French and the Dutch.
And yea the takes have been just terrible. If Matt Y heard some of the sentiments my brother regularly reports to me from Germany he’d lose his mind.Report
I don’t think social conservatism/traditionalism exists in former Soviet Bloc countries or the rest of the world. You can be socially conservative/traditional and still be democratic. The issue is that Orban’s government is basically a sham democracy at this point which theoretically allows the opposition to compete in elections and win but in practice is authoritarian one-party rule enshrined.
The other issue is that the American right-wing is looking at Orban’s Hungary as a kind of model for what they want to the United States to be because Dreher, Carlson, et al are in total meltdown about losing the culture wars.Report
I get the criticism of Orban but I’m not sure I’m following the premise getting you there.
You don’t think conservatism/traditionalism exists anywhere else in the world? I’d say it exists everywhere, in many, many different flavors depending on place and culture.Report
Indeed, I dare say cultural conservativism was one of only a handful of ideologies that managed to endure and outlast the commies.Report
I don’t know that the culture war will end, necessarily but it certainly could cool.
The Pollyanna view of the future from my own chair is that Biden continues mollifying the illiberal left with mostly inconsequential culture fluff while getting enough actual stuff done on economic issues to contain the Trumpian right for the next economic cycle. The wellspring the right wing grift machine is pumping its money out of is a cohort of aging wealthy boomers and that is a necessarily finite resource- especially as the population of grifters pumping out of it continues to multiply exponentially. If the Dems/liberals can continue to keep their own illiberal leftists from actually taking over the party apparatus while appropriating the actual issues that both have merit and are politically popular, they could potentially win a couple electoral cycles.
If the money starts drying up on the right for their current positions, such as they are, and they loose a couple of consecutive elections that should accelerate the process of the right figuring out what the heck the coherent successor ideology to zombie Reaganism is and then the natural constructive cycle of push pull should begin to reassert itself.Report
In short, the entire future of our country depends on the appetite old people have for trading out their social security checks for these safe, secure, reliable GOLD COINS!Report
Also Sleep Number Beds, Mypillows, adult diapers, NRO Cruises and financial advice from those bright well put together young folks who’ll tell them the world is still the way it was in 1970.Report
The “illberal left” is largely confined to a bunch of very loud and very online people on twitter and some podcasts/small magazines with no real influence on American politics. El Chapo might bring in some dough on patreon but it is nothing compared to the amount of money in right-wing media.
The anti-democratic and authoritarian right is being backed by serious money and gives fawning interviews and coverage over several major media outlets.Report
“The “illberal left” is largely confined to a bunch of very loud and very online people on twitter and some podcasts/small magazines with no real influence on American politics.”
Umm and also top very significant degrees: the entire decaying edifice of mainstream media, also the entirety of the non-right wing academy (from which it originated), much of the modern entertainment industry and much of the non-right wing NGO industry.
The illiberal right is, of course, backed by right wing versions of all of those above and has ALSO captured control of the rights actual political apparatus, the Republican Party. Pointing to the right, however, doesn’t reduce the problems the left has with the illiberal left or excuse them. We don’t WANT to go down the same path the right has gone. Not only for moral reasons but also for the very practical reason that if the left embraces the illiberal left we’ll get absolutely thrashed electorally. There isn’t a huge voting constituency for the illiberal left and what voters it has are deeply concentrated in electorally inefficient metropolises.Report
That’s bullshit. The authoritarian right-wing speaks and acts like a two-faced Janus when it comes to COVID and has Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, multiple talk radio empires/syndicates, publishing wings, etc.
The El Chapo set has influence over whom exactly? Which politicians reply “how high?” when El Chapo says jump? Not even the squad.
There is a lot of boffsides here.Report
If “boffsides” is true, pointing out that someone is noticing that you’re doing it too is not a defense against doing it too.
“STOP NOTICING!” rarely works as well as planned.Report
Saul, North just listed a bunch of people that he considers illiberal leftists other than El Chapo. You can’t respond to him as if he didn’t.Report
You may need to reread me Saul. I did note the right wing equivalents to what I listed are entirely captured by the right as well as the right wing political party.
You’re shifting the goal posts when you talk about political parties. As you’ve said, and I said, the Democratic Party is not in thrall to the illiberal left (yet) the way the GOP has been seized by the illiberal right. You seem to be thinking of the illiberal left as only the “no elections, socialize the means of production” commies but the illiberal left also includes the CRT “liberalism is racism, twitter mobs will get your ass fired” bunch as well.Report
And how much power does that group exert in the Democratic Party? Not that much either. CRT is an elective in law school and systematic racism is very real. I’m not going to fall for bad faith Republican shit.
The real threat to Biden’s success now seems to come from 9 “moderate” House members who are throwing a hissy fit over taxing the rich:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/9-moderate-democrats-threaten-to-tank-biden-presidency.html
“Notably, the moderate House Democrats have been loading up the reconciliation bill with a series of conflicting demands. On the one hand, they have been complaining about its overall size and pushing to shrink down the headline number. On the other hand, they have been making their own costly demands. Josh Gottheimer, one letter signer, has been crusading for a restoration of the state and local tax deduction, a benefit for some of his affluent constituents. Jim Costa, another signer, wants to protect the heirs to massive fortunes from any taxation on their windfall.
These demands, notably, are not designed to protect the Democratic Party from the left’s unpopular baggage. Most of the broader debate has focused on the toxic brand damage of slogans like defunding the police and Green New Deal, but the moderate Democrats are, in this case, threatening to tank a highly popular agenda of taxing the very rich in order to give broad middle-class benefits. The moderate Democrats are the biggest obstacle to making the math work, simultaneously complaining about the size of the bill while ordering more expensive goodies for themselves.”Report
I’m not going to fall for bad faith Republican shit.
You must be *THIS* morally pure to make criticisms of team good.
Also, certain criticisms will be deemed preemptively ineligible.Report
“CRT is an elective in law school” is a bad faith statement.Report
I think you’re thinking too narrowly and on too short a time horizon.
First off let’s be clear. When I refer to the illiberal left, I am referring both to economic far-leftists (the “nationalize everything, liberalism is a capitalism running dog bourgeoise conceit” crowd) and the cultural far-leftists (the “we have to be racist to fight racism, free speech is a racist, heteronormative, western-centric construct of the patriarchy” crowd). In all honesty even though the economic far-left is by far the older cohort it’s the social far-left bunch who’re really feeling their oats these days.
How much power does either group wield in the Democratic Party? Not very much for either but more than they used to wield and a lot more than before for the cultural far-leftists. This is, however, somewhat off topic because, as I said in my initial post, the illiberal left doesn’t control the Democratic Party apparatus. So, we’re agreeing on that element.
What we’re disagreeing about is how significant the illiberal left is over all. You mostly ignore the cultural illiberal-leftists and focus on the economic illiberal-leftists which is rather silly since the real movement is on the cultural illiberal left.
We can quibble about the degrees and scope of the illiberal lefts influence and power (emphasis: outside the Democratic Party) but to try and pretend it’s trivial or nonexistent is wildly disingenuous or ridiculously naive. Weird derivatives of this stuff is abounding all over the place in media, corporate life, charity, museums, education, really anywhere young wealthy liberals proliferate.
The illiberal left, intersectional left, whatever we call them and however we demarcate the gradients on them are major movers and shakers culturally in this country and across the industrialized world. Some of this influence is salutary: treating people better, better racial consciousness, shifting cultural norms for what’s publicly acceptable; some of it is poison: making everything reductive to racial or gender characteristics, assigning negative stereotypes to races and then trying to make those stereotypes morally neutral, trying to dismiss liberal pillar principles as barriers to equity or symbols of hate etc; and a lot of it is hurr durr idiocy when it comes to, ya know, actually winning elections. The right isn’t hiding their economic libertarianism under the couch cushions and focusing everything they have on the illiberal left for no reason. People hate the extreme illiberal leftist cultural stuff, they turn out in droves to oppose it and it’s vaguely defined so right wingers can stuff everything to the left of integralism under that umbrella and they do.
No, the illiberal left doesn’t control the Democratic Party yet. That’s because the Democratic Party is still a live, functioning (if corporate, elderly and hidebound) old beast of a party and it is still responsive and dependent on actual voters which is an area the illiberal left (very much like libertarians) is sorely lacking in. It’s also because the illiberal social left is so vaguely defined that you can kind of placate it by just mouthing the right platitudes and shooting off the right rainbow chaff (that’s why Corporate America LOVES the illiberal cultural leftists, they’re cheap to buy off).
I don’t think the illiberal social left is the world-shattering threat right wingers make it out to be. How could it be? But it is a challenge for liberals because it’s illiberal, it’s popular with a really important demographic, it punches liberals right in the feeling spots of their brains and it’s pure electoral poison with actual, ya know, voters. So, as I stated in my original comment, Biden/liberals needs to appropriate what is good and worthy from the illiberal lefts’ ideas while keeping them from taking over the party or becoming dominant on the left. I don’t think the illiberal social lefts ideas are coherent or detailed enough to survive long term but we can’t afford an electoral forest fire behind us while we’re trying to contain the illiberal right wing inferno that is threatening in front of us.
And this is NOT whatabouting or both sides-ing the madness on the right. The whole right is basically a conflagration of grift, desperation, resentment, illiberalism and incoherence. The right is on fire from foundation to roof. Compared to that the illiberal left is a flaming garbage can in the back yard of the left. But saying “We need to contain that fire in the back yard” is not countered by saying “yeah well the neighbors house across the street is on fire all over so we should ignore our own flaming garbage can.”Report
Oh, and as to the rebel 9. I am hopeful that Nancy will stick a stiletto shoe so far up their asses that a heel comes out their eyeball. The Speaker has proven very good at herding her caucus thus far and these plutocrat suck ups aren’t something new.Report
The entirety of the mainstream media, entirety of non right-wing academy, much of mainstream entertainment industry and NGO are “illiberal left”??
In what universe and how can I go there?Report
Heehee here I was thinking I stole a base by not including the c-suit of corporate America in my list.
It’s, obviously, hard to precisely measure how much the illiberal left has captured a given industry but I went with an off the cuff “how likely is it that a twitter mob get you fired for saying something that offends their collective liberal sensibilities” back of the envelope estimate.Report
Very slim.Report
This an example of the absurd double standard for conservatives and liberals.
The overwhelming majority of Republicans want to overthrow a free and fair election.
On the other hand,, if you say things that outrage your coworkers, you might lose your at-will job.
Boff Sides Same!Report
Good Lord(Lady?) I never said any such thing. I said, if you’ll refer all the way back down to the root of this thread, that liberals and conservatives are NOT the same and an important part of putting this particular impasse to bed will be in not traipsing down the same path the Republicans/Conservatives went shrieking down.Report
As long as you acknowledge enemies on the left, you’re never going to pass the purity test. Anyway, this isn’t the Two Minutes Analysis time, it’s the Two Minutes Hate. Goldstein promised to return to power in August!Report
Happily I don’t need to pass the illiberal lefts purity tests.Report
I hate to recommend him (and I ‘m really not) but some of this reminds me of Karl Schmitt’s notion of politics as being defined solely by the friend/foe distinction. It was why he (privately) recommended banning the Nazi and Communist parties from the Weimar political system. But it was also why, when that didn’t work, he threw in his lot with the Nazis.Report
Ugh, Schmitt. When I went back to revisit owing to his uptick in mentions… remembered why he’s a D-Lister. Decent prose, but so obviously inconsistent that there’s no real development of thought… less a political theorist than a political journalist.Report
Yeah, he’s a mess. I’m not a fan. He came to mind because the notion that all politics is about is friends and foes and whatever one does to the latter is justified can lead one to some bad places.Report
An entire post written as though the American dialogue on Israel doesn’t exist.
Or on Saudi Arabia for that matter.
Or China.
Or Russia.
Or…
I don’t know what it would mean for our national dialogue on our relations with, and the behavior of, other countries to not be “politicized,” because an apolitical dialogue on our relations with, and the behavior of, other countries is a nonsensical concept.Report
Foreign policy has always been political in a democracy. The entire politics stops at the borders was a Cold War conceit and honored more in the breach than in practice. You can’t prevent any area of politics from becoming a polarizing issue in a democracy. The only way to truly prevent this is either you immunize foreign policy from democracy somehow or you conduct in the most cynical manner possible.Report
There was an early warning of this dynamic on the other side back in 2016, when 67% of Democrats responded in a poll that they would vote for Barack Obama to serve a third term. These Democrats would not have gone out in the streets to support an unconstitutional power grab. They were simply responding to what they thought they should support as good Democrats.
Or, more simply, saying Obama was a better alternative to Clinton and Trump, which is hard to disagree with. It’s quite different from they foolish, ignorant, and/or psychotic belief that the 2020 election as stolen.Report
But a belief that every Republican is a sociopathic monster hell-bent on storming the Capitol, like a small percentage of them did on January 6th, will lead to nothing but more conflict and heartache
I’ll feel better about this when a Republican official can publicly denounce 1/6 without being punished for it. (See Cheney, Liz.)Report