Know Your Enemy
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The American Right's Hungary Hearts (w/ Lauren Stokes and John Ganz)
🕑 Added 2021-10-25 19:49:17 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam are joined by historian Lauren Stokes and writer John Ganz to unpack the American Right's ongoing embrace of Viktor Orbán's Hungary, from Rod Dreher's springtime junket there to Tucker Carlson broadcasting from the country to the adoring attention it receives from an assortment of "postliberal" intellectuals What gives? Your hosts and their esteemed guests break it down, including: what the American Right gets from Orbán, and what he gets from them; the 20th century history of Hungary that provides the backdrop to its current politics; the long history of U.S. conservatives of admiring authoritarians abroad; John's visit to a Nazi bookshop in Budapest; and more!
Sources and Further Reading:
Elisabeth Zerofsky, "How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary," New York Times Magazine, Oct 19, 2021
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "What American Conservatives See in Hungary's Leader," New Yorker, Sept 13, 2021
David Baer, translation/Twitter thread of Rod Dreher's interview with Klubradio, Aug 29, 2021
John Ganz, "Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part I: The Right Goes to Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 10, 2021
"Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part II: Reflections on the Revolutions in Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 13, 2021
Comments
JSzpilka
Another great episode! One interesting thing that was missing from the discussion of the nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian Empire was that it was a very explicitly anti-nationalistic polity ("I rule subjects, not nations" was the quip by, I think, Franz Josef II himself), and one that was deeply multi-cultural in this way that was characteristic for the entire east of Europe before the chain of catastrophes of the 20th century rendered it into a series of homogeneous nations. It's very difficult to model any kind of an explicitly ethno-nationalist project after that, unless you are instead picking a Disneyland version of history too. The other thing that is interesting, I think, is the degree to which Hungary today is also a crony country? I think you can draw certain parallels between various Trumpian tendencies, and the way that Orban has created a country held together by quasi-feudal relations between him as the king and all the layers of various cronies who thrive only thanks to personal loyalty to him. Also, I have to ask, are you planning an episode on the other pseudo-fascists man of the EU, Poland?
Ashleen Bagnulo
There’s one point at which someone (I can’t remember who) suggests that the attraction to Hungary is based on not understanding how it was created by intellectuals and is a product of some contrivance. That may be true for someone like Dreher, but for someone like Adrian Vermeule I think the attraction is precisely from this sort of power to create and instate a new historical and cultural paradigm from scratch. V is more Nietzschean than these other ones, I suspect after reading him.
Lou Guberti Ng
"What do you call your act?" "The MAGAyars!"
