Republicans Show their True Colors: White, White, White Supremacy

The Republican response to a recent speech by Viktor Orban is illuminating

A curious thing happened recently, when Viktor Orban, the Hungarian autocrat and beloved darling of America’s right-wing, declared in a speech that “Europeans should not become people of mixed race.” In case anyone had somehow missed the point, he threw in a little one-liner about Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers, saying “the past shows German know-how” about natural gas rationing, wink, wink.

Hilarious.

It’s estimated that some 565,000 Hungarian Jews perished in the Holocaust, many of them in a nightmarish orgy of death at Auschwitz near the very end of the Second World War. It says something profoundly disquieting that the leader of modern Hungary could flippantly crack jokes about this bloodbath. 

It’s grotesque. Republicans, however, seem to adore him for his outspokenness. Perhaps they’re just in on the joke.

Nevertheless, it seems Orban committed what’s known in the political business as a Kinsley gaffe, when a politician accidentally reveals a truth that’s usually hidden beneath meaningless platitudes and jargon. In this case, that barely veiled truth was Orban’s strident white supremacy, the ugly racism that is the beating heart of his illiberal “zero-immigration” platform, and the Republican Party’s as well.

That’s what it’s all about, ladies and gentlemen. Hatred.

For their part, American conservatives heard his line, and promptly renewed his invitation to appear at CPAC in Dallas, apparently unmoved, or perhaps rather more excited than they were before about the prospect of hearing him speak so openly and unapologetically. 

They love this stuff.

Thus, Orban delivered the keynote address, and Republicans gushed as he belittled those who would dare call him a “far-right, European racist, antisemite strongman, Trojan horse of Putin” as “idiots.” 

I must be a total idiot, because that sounds like a pretty good self-description to me.

In any case, Republicans weren’t going to participate in this cancel culture censorship over a little joke, or a misinterpreted line out of a damn fine speech.

More to the point, Republicans agreed with him. 

They don’t want race-mixing in America, either, if they’re being honest.

It’s no surprise that the modern GOP is a seething claptrap of racism, sexism, and nativism, but to hear it so clearly articulated as Orban did, and to then watch Republicans embrace him right afterward is quite illuminating.

It tells you something about the sad state of affairs in America’s decayed Republican firmament, which increasingly appears to be a violent White supremacist organization, more than anything else.

Even as Orban’s own longtime adviser, a Jew, resigned in protest at this latest outrage, CPAC’s organizer Matt Shlapp responded by saying: “Let’s listen to the man speak.” Clearly, the uproar over his comments wasn’t a problem, just like the comment itself wasn’t a problem.

Rather, it was the big draw.

Viktor Orban appeared alongside Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Sarah Palin, among others, at a CPAC that appears to be little more than a conclave for the political wing of a very well-armed American White Supremacist gang.

Indeed, the Republican Party of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatives” is long dead, buried in the political mass grave of Trumpism, replaced by an assortment of unbridled extremists, Christian nationalists, and “European identitarians.” 

CPAC’s become a frothing pastiche of White paranoia, grievance, and hatred.

Increasingly, American conservatism is a home for even the most noxious self-identified fascists and Nazis. The rest of the party takes something of a wink and a nod approach to these types, for obvious electoral reasons. But there’s no denying what the Republican Party has become in recent years.

Neo-fascist.

It’s all about good government.

But Republicans don’t just emulate Viktor Orban for his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. They emulate his authoritarian regime, which has effectively turned Hungary into a soft dictatorship, if there can be such a thing. He’s obliterated Hungary’s free press, and rewritten Hungary’s constitution to guarantee he’s unbeatable in future elections, as he plays footsie with Putin.

Republicans are just a bit envious of his success thwarting democracy, and keeping himself in power permanently. How did he do that?

Viktor Orban has a formula Republicans are anxious to duplicate in America. Thus, he’s both an ideological ally, and he provides a useful model for America’s right-wing politicians eager to dismantle our democracy, and install their own soft dictatorship in Washington.

Get people elected who will destroy it from within. 

Just today, Kari Lake won her Arizona gubernatorial primary by parroting Donald Trump’s election lies, and embracing the ideological fringes of American politics. Clearly, Viktor Orban’s politics are providing something of a blueprint for Republicans to follow as they “deconstruct the administrative state,” as Steve Bannon put it.

In any case, the response to his gaffe was telling.

As Orban’s own advisor resigned and referred to his speech as “pure Nazi,” Republicans rolled out the red carpet for him. That was a message in itself, a clear signal about their intentions and their ideology: Authoritarian Christian White supremacy, full stop.

In what is still America’s pluralist democracy, that’s a formula for disaster. 

America cherishes its democratic ideals, and its people will resist dictatorship.

That much I’m sure of.