Viktor Orban, leader of the far-right Fidesz party and prime minister of Hungary since 2010, was given a standing ovation by pro-Trump Republicans after delivering a fascist and anti-Semitic speech Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas.
Orban is one of over 100 far-right politicians, media personalities and business people scheduled to speak at the CPAC, which earlier this year held events in Florida and Hungary.
While previous CPAC events have featured Orban, Trump and other far-right figures, this conference marks a qualitative leap in terms of its openly fascistic character.
Orban was the featured speaker on the conference’s opening day. Less than three weeks earlier, on July 23, he gave a neo-Nazi speech at the 31st Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp in Baile Tusnad, Romania.
In that earlier rant, Orban likened “migration” to “population replacement or inundation” and recommended the notorious white supremacist book The Camp of the Saints.
He then launched into an attack on “race-mixing,” saying countries where “European and non-European peoples live ... are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.”
Denouncing the “internationalist left” and singling out Hungarian-born billionaire and Holocaust survivor George Soros, a bogeyman for anti-Semites around the world, Orban said, “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.”
In an obscene allusion to the Nazi Holocaust, Orban said of German government calls for reduced gas consumption, “I do not see how it will be enforced, although, as I understand it, the past shows us German know-how on that.”
Orban’s speech prompted the resignation of 20-year adviser, Zsuzs Hegedus, who said the speech was a “pure Nazi text.”
Trump invited Orban to his New Jersey golf resort last weekend and ostentatiously posed for photographs, saying it was “great spending time with my friend.”
At the CPAC on Thursday, Orban said Hungary was being “invaded” and compared immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to Genghis Khan.
To enthusiastic applause from the relatively small audience, he attacked Soros, communists, progressives and liberals. He called himself a “Central European anti-communist, old-fashioned freedom fighter.”
“We cannot fight successfully by liberal means” against the “‘woke’ globalist Goliath,” Orban snorted.
Calling for the election of Trump, he said, “We need a strong America with a strong leader. We have seen the future the globalist ruling class has to offer. The globalists can all go to hell, I have come to Texas.”
Twenty Republican House members are scheduled to speak at the three-day conference, which will culminate with a Saturday night speech by Donald Trump.
Republican House members speaking at CPAC Texas who voted to overturn the 2020 election following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol include: Brian Babin, Michael Burgess and Ronny Jackson (Texas), Andy Biggs (Arizona), Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz (Florida), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Mary “victory for white life” Miller (Illinois), Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) and QAnon fascist Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia).
High-ranking state officials speaking at the conference include Texas Governor Greg Abbott, along with his Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt.
Among the Republican senators speaking are Ted Cruz (Texas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Rick Scott (Florida).
International far-right politicians appearing at the event include Nigel Farage from the United Kingdom and Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of fascistic Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Billionaire war criminal Erik Prince, brother of Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, was photographed on the floor of the convention.
Media personalities at CPAC include fascist former Trump White House adviser and War Room host Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Jack Posobiec.
Support for Trump’s failed coup is explicitly expressed in an exhibition at the event featuring a mock jail cell and an actor, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a red “Make America Great Again” hat, playing the role of “January 6 political prisoner.” Attendees are provided headphones to listen to “testimony” from Trump’s imprisoned foot soldiers.
The working class must take the CPAC event as a serious warning. The Republican Party is being transformed under Trump into an American fascist party. The attempted coup of January 6 very nearly succeeded. Then-President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats did nothing to stop it.
They downplayed Trump’s coup preparations before the 2020 election, made no appeal for popular opposition during the attempted insurrection of January 6, and have spent the period since trying to cover up the role of the Republican Party and powerful sections of the military, police and intelligence agencies in the conspiracy to impose a fascistic dictatorship.
Events such as the CPAC conference and Trump’s Washington D.C. speech last month calling for concentration camps for the homeless and the deployment of troops across the country on the pretext of fighting crime, as well as the victory of election deniers in Republican primary contests, show that the conspiracy is escalating.
In a healthy democratic society Trump and his accomplices throughout the Republican Party and the capitalist state would have already been arrested and imprisoned.
The Democratic Party will not defend democratic rights. It is more terrified of the growing upsurge of the working class than the threat of fascism. The January 6 Committee is being used to promote right-wing war hawks such as Liz Cheney and promote the illusion that the coup was the work of just Trump and a few “crazies.”
This is a lie. The attempted coup and the ongoing moves toward dictatorship arise from the mortal crisis of American and world capitalism. Both parties are controlled by the same corporate-financial oligarchy that is seeking to impose its crisis on the backs of the working class.
The only social force capable of defending democratic rights and defeating fascism is the working class, united on a socialist program and perspective against the source of inequality, war and dictatorship, the capitalist system.
The Socialist Equality Party alone fights to break the grip of the pro-corporate trade union apparatus through the building of rank-and-file committees to unleash the massive social power of the working class, establish its political independence from the parties of the ruling class and unite its struggles with the international working class.
Workers who are looking for a way to fight the assault on democratic rights, jobs and living standards should join the Socialist Equality Party.