https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-17-2024
"On Friday, journalist Casey Michel, who specializes in the study of
kleptocracy, pointed out that reporters had missed an important meeting last
week. Michel noted that while reporters covered Hungarian prime minister
Viktor Orbán’s visit to former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, they paid
far less attention to the visit Orbán paid to the Washington, D.C.,
headquarters of the Heritage Foundation on Friday, March 8. There, Orbán spoke
privately to an audience that included the president of the organization, Kevin
Roberts, and, according to a state media printout, “renowned U.S. right-wing
politicians, analysts and public personalities.”
Michel noted that it was “nothing short of shocking” that Orbán declined to
meet with administration officials and instead went to Washington, D.C., to
meet with a right-wing think tank. With Roberts’s appointment as head of
Heritage in 2021, the conservative organization swung to the position that its
role is “institutionalizing Trumpism.”
Roberts has been vocal about his admiration for Orbán, tweeting in 2022 that it
was an honor to meet him. At last year’s Conservative Political Action
Conference (CPAC), Orbán boasted that Hungary is “the place where we didn’t
just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a
conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.” In January,
Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the
New York Times that Orbán’s statement
was “all true” and “should be celebrated.” In a different interview,
Garcia-Navarro noted, Roberts had called modern Hungary “not just a model for
conservative statecraft but the model.”
Last year, Michel notes, Heritage joined the Hungarian Danube Institute in a
formal partnership. The Hungarian think tank is overseen by a foundation that
is directly funded by the Hungarian government; as Michel says, it is, “for all
intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.” The
Danube Institute has given grants to far-right figures in the U.S., and, Michel
notes, “we have no idea how much funding may be flowing directly from Orbán’s
regime to the Heritage Foundation.”
The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the
plan Heritage has led, along with dozens of other right-wing organizations, to
map out a future right-wing presidency. In Hungary, Orbán has undermined
democracy, gutting the civil service and filling it with loyalists; attacking
immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals; taking over businesses
for friends and family, and moving the country away from the rules-based
international order supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO)."
Via Kevin O'Brien.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
