Oct. 2, 2022 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
51:13
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| In Hungary, we were able to unify these forces through the lands of nation. | ||
| So if you love your country, it doesn't matter whether you are a classical liberal, libertarian or religious conservative, then this is the point where you have to be united and you have to be able to use your resources against your political opponents, because they are using everything what they have. | ||
| The institutions, the state, transnational organizations, media, academia. | ||
| And until that moment, we on this side were just too silent and too fragmented. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm Dave Rubin. | |
| This is the Rubin Report from the local studio right here in Miami. | ||
| And joining me today is the political director for the Prime Minister of Hungary, Balázs | ||
| Welcome to the Rubin Report. | ||
| Hi, thank you very much for inviting me. | ||
| I am glad to have you here, a freedom fighter from across the way here in America, in the free state of Florida. | ||
| I was trying to think how I wanted to do this interview because I will be very honest up top. | ||
| I don't think Americans know much, if anything, about Hungary, and I am not going to pretend to be a Hungary expert. | ||
| So I thought the best way we could start this was a little Hungary 101. | ||
| If I say to you, tell me about Hungary, what does that mean to you? | ||
| I think all the people of United States and Florida would love Hungary because it's a small but old Central European country with a thousand years old history. | ||
| As you were referred, we are known in Europe as freedom fighters because our history is about constant fight for sovereignty. | ||
| We were Several times occupied by foreigners like the Ottomans, like the Habsburgs or the Austrians, like the Nazi Germans and the Russians and what we survived and right now we are proud members of | ||
| The European Union and the Western community. | ||
| But we have our own values and we are very proud of our nationhood, our country, our traditions. | ||
| And that's the reason, I think, why we became part of the international debate, at least inside the Western civilization, about the future of this civilization. | ||
| Which direction should we go? | ||
| So, interestingly, the guy that connected us was my good friend Pete Boghossian, who has been on this show many, many times, who you've met a few times now, and he's in Hungary right now, and he is a Or at least was, for most of his life, a lefty atheist, but in search of freedom, in search of places where order exists and Western values exist. | ||
| And he lives in Portland, where he's struggling to find it there, goes to Budapest, and he's finding it in Hungary. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| He is a great guy. | ||
| Currently, we, at least those who are working for the Hungarian government and Prime Minister Orbán, we are conservatives, we are Christian Democrats, we are obviously representing the political right side, out of question. | ||
| But according to our understanding, it means freedom. | ||
| Freedom of speech, freedom of thinking, freedom of expression, and we have to preserve, protect pluralism in our society. | ||
| So, if Peter is there and he speaks openly about his views, we can argue, we can debate with him. | ||
| Actually, we are organizing debates to show that these are the alternatives. | ||
| Let the people choose. | ||
| And what he keeps telling to us that it was the case in United States, it was the case in some other Western European countries, but currently this is not the case anymore. | ||
| Leftist ideology wants to control everything. | ||
| They want 100% power, not separation of power. | ||
| So we, small Central European conservatives, we try to And interestingly, most of my audience will get it, you then are called all of the worst things, right? | ||
| You're a fascist, you're a bigot. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I should mention that although your last name is Orban, you are not related to the Prime Minister Viktor Orban, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, no. | |
| That must get very messy for you all the time. | ||
| No, and it's not the case that you have to change your name to Orban if you want to go to politics in Hungary. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, okay, so you talked about the values of Hungary. | ||
| So what do you think those values are, I have a sense, from the way you described it, but what broadly do you think those values are? | ||
| I just came from the conference of National Conservatism. | ||
| I think this is a movement which is an intellectual movement which is very close to our thinking and the basic pillar of this movement is the idea of nation. | ||
| So, we all know that we are in the era of globalization. | ||
| And time will not change, so we have to adapt to that situation. | ||
| But I think the challenges of the previous decades, like the pandemic, like the economic crisis, like the migration crisis, what we are also facing in Hungary, they proved that the nation as a concept is the only form which can serve the interest of the citizens and of the community who are living under the rule of this nation. | ||
| So, everybody is talking about globalized cooperation on international organizations, but And if there is sunshine and if there is trade between the nations, I can imagine that it can do good things for the people. | ||
| But if there is trouble, if there is wind and bad weather, then you... | ||
| You can only go back to your nation, to your own government. | ||
| They should be responsible for you and for the people who are part of that community. | ||
| So, this is the basic idea. | ||
| Unfortunately, it's not very trendy or mainstream, right? | ||
| We're working on it! | ||
| And, you know, it's not easy to talk about God and religion, because that's a personal matter, but still, we do think that God and the idea of religion and tradition and the teaching which comes from the Bible through, for example, Christian democratic political philosophy, it has to play a very important role in building a well-functioning society, even in the 21st century. | ||
| So I spoke at a couple panels and gave a talk at NatCon last year, and that was one of the main things that came up, that how do you blend, as wokeness sort of infects all the Western institutions and governments, If the return is to be something of a return with some level of religiosity in it, what do you do about the people outside of that, either the non-believers or the gay people or just anyone that is not within, say, sort of the Christian tradition as you would see it? | ||
|
unidentified
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And I know this is a big debate going on. | |
| It's a huge debate but according to our understanding probably it's different here in the United States or even in Poland, a country which is very close to us in Europe. | ||
| So we are not focusing on the individual Believe of the people, because it's a freedom of decision. | ||
| If you want to be on board, if you want to take it, if you want to be a believer, if you want to be an active churchgoer, you can do so. | ||
| You are not allowed to be punished for that, but if you don't want to do it, then it's fine. | ||
| But the ideas, the political ideas which are coming from this kind of concept, They are useful. | ||
| Like, you know, family is a basic pillar of society. | ||
| Family is based on the idea of a marriage between a man and a woman, and one of the most important goals of this kind of marriage is to raise children. | ||
| And those children will be the next generation. | ||
| Without those children, there is no community anymore. | ||
| So it's not about the individual decision, whether you are homosexual or heterosexual, whether you want to have one children or two or three. | ||
| It's about that from a society perspective, the more the state can do for those who are ready to go into a marriage, between a man and a woman and ready to take as many | ||
| children as they want, then the state's role is to support them through state | ||
| institutions. This is the idea. | ||
| So one of the things that you've been doing is encouraging people to have kids because | ||
| you wrote a piece recently, I mean, you're worried about sort of population collapse, | ||
| which everyone, you know, if you listen to mainstream media, it's basically that the | ||
| earth is going to be overrun with humans. We're going to have no resources left. And there's too | ||
| many of us. And if everyone could have less kids, that would be good. And you see it. | ||
| I think it's just the other way around. | ||
| So, and especially, you know, we Hungarians, we are a small nation, just 10 million people. | ||
| So probably for big empires, the perspective, the historical perspective is a bit different. | ||
| But for us, we think that we have a very unique culture. | ||
| We have a unique language. | ||
| Culturally, we are an island in Europe. | ||
| We want to preserve it and we need people And we need children who are ready to be the representatives of this culture in the future. | ||
| If we don't have these people, then everything what is linked to Hungarian-ness will disappear, and we don't want to. | ||
| Let it happen. | ||
| So we need people. | ||
| So it sounds like you're fighting in many ways the same sort of wokeness, the same sort of top-down thing that it's a little hard to tell where it's coming from, but corporations and globalists and all this stuff. | ||
| When did it start in Hungary? | ||
| Or where did it start? | ||
| How powerful is it? | ||
| Is it sort of like America where now it's in all of our TV shows? | ||
| It's on the news all the time. | ||
| Our corporations are part of it. | ||
| Is it a similar feeling there? | ||
| So the woke, wokeism and gender ideology, it's a brand new issue in Hungary and it came through the channel, through the transatlantic channel. | ||
| So obviously it came from Unfortunately, from the United States. | ||
| But the Hungarians, you know, we were occupied by the Russians for like 40 years. | ||
| And through this period of occupation, the Russians, they did try to teach us to Marxist ideologies and constantly in school, in universities, everybody was repeating the nonsense Marxist ideas. | ||
| So in an average Hungarian or aggressive Hungarian voter, they are resistant against this How was it coming in? | ||
| resistant actually against the Marxist propaganda and when the woke came in they immediately | ||
| realized that there is a connection between the origin of Marxist ideology and the woke | ||
| or the gender ideology. | ||
| It's a neo-Marxist way of thinking. | ||
| How was it coming in though? | ||
| Was it coming in through television that was imported or movies? | ||
| Or was there something more coordinated? | ||
| Culture and the NGOs. | ||
| Media and NGOs. | ||
| They are playing a very important role. | ||
| was a... | ||
| Whether the soccer players should go down to the knee or not. | ||
| Wait, so you had your own version of that relative to the Hungarian players? | ||
| No, actually we were through international media forced to follow this thing. | ||
| And you know, we were saying that, look, we understand that some of them, I know it's a controversial issue here in the United States as well. | ||
| But I understand that some of the people are saying that it's about racial equality, which is important, and about the black community. | ||
| We didn't have any slavery in Hungary. | ||
| We don't have any black community. | ||
| This is a cultural reference point, which is Which is not ours. | ||
| So it's not a problem if somebody else is doing that. | ||
| But if we are forced to do so, and forced to follow, then it's something scary. | ||
| And then, a couple of months later, the educational issues came in. | ||
| And NGOs and media people, they started to launch campaigns in schools, you know, how to make it easier for children to change their sex, and they questioned their identity, the whole LGBTQ. | ||
| And then we realized that this is serious. | ||
| So we accepted the legislation, quite similar to the Florida one, to protect the minors and ban sexual orientation classes without the consent of the parents. | ||
| And we were immediately attacked by the headquarter of the European Union, by the Brazilian bureaucrats. | ||
| And then we made the decision that, you know, our only chance is This is common sense, what we are saying, and it will be backed by the people. | ||
| So we launched a referendum, and in this April we had a referendum on these gender ideological issues, four questions, and the Hungarians said with an overwhelming Majority, 92% of the votes. | ||
| And the turnout was the biggest in the history of referendum of modern Hungary. | ||
| So more people participated in the referendum than in a migration issue, than in a NATO enlargement issue or EU enlargement issue. | ||
| And they voted with a huge majority against And where does your media fit in that? | ||
| I mean, was the media doing what our media does, which is here in Florida, you know, calling Ron DeSantis a homophobe? | ||
| Yeah, it's a very similar pattern, but the only difference is not only the domestic media, but the international media is on us as well, and it makes it very hard to survive. | ||
| But we have no other chance. | ||
| Once we are supported by the people, so we don't have to be popular. | ||
| In the editorial board of the New York Times, we have to be popular among the Hungarian voters. | ||
| We have to represent their ideas. | ||
| If the Western civilization goes forward to that direction, that's going to be a suicide mission. | ||
| So somehow we should turn back or turn away from this direction. | ||
| And to do so, you have to stand up and be outspoken, even if it's controversial. | ||
| You mentioned right before we started, we spoke only for just two or three minutes before we started, but you said something about how the other European nations, that there's very few people in the nations willing to stand up for their own nations. | ||
| And that seems to be the fight that you guys have. | ||
| Who else is kind of doing it right? | ||
| Is there anyone else? | ||
| Poland seems to maybe have a version of this that's working. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| Poland is a strong country, four times bigger than Hungary. | ||
| It plays a very important role. | ||
| They have a clear conservative government. | ||
| They have a very Tough nation-state vision, and they are doing great, economically very successful. | ||
| And there are, actually there are everywhere political forces who are representing the same ideas. | ||
| The only problem is that the establishment is doing everything what is necessary to not let them Let them in. | ||
| There will be an election in Italy at the end of this month, and the Italian right side is doing great. | ||
| The coalition of right-wing parties, they are leading in the polls, so it can be a game-changer. | ||
| So, in this piece that I read that you laid out, so we talked about the population portion of it and why you want, obviously, people to have kids and multiply and that. | ||
| And, you know, the topic migration is linked to that. | ||
| So that was the next one I was going to ask. | ||
| Sorry, because it's linked to the idea of population decline. | ||
| If we can agree on that we need people, Then some of the liberals are saying that, OK, from a labor market point of view, I agree with you. | ||
| Just open up. | ||
| Just open up. | ||
| But then you lose everything what makes you what you are. | ||
| Because those people who are coming, they are obviously coming from different civilizational, they are bringing in different civilizational backgrounds. | ||
| What's been the general immigration policy of Hungary, say, over the last decade or two? | ||
| What's the general, if you want to come in, or with the migrants and the pressures you guys are under? | ||
| Yeah, so the general approach is very simple. | ||
| We have experienced neighboring countries, ethnic Hungarians, or those people who are belonging to To neighboring nations, they are trying to come to Hungary. | ||
| Illegally, we make it possible. | ||
| Illegally, we don't support that idea. | ||
| And currently, we are hosting more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees. | ||
| They are our neighbors, so we have the humanitarian responsibility for help. | ||
| have them. | ||
| But what we experienced in 2015, that was the first time that something is happening and it's totally different than what we experienced before. | ||
| 400,000 illegal migrants came to our southern borders and they wanted to just come in and cross the border without any permission and | ||
| they just wanted to go to Germany. | ||
| Some of them wanted to stay but many of them wanted to go to Germany, Sweden and other | ||
| countries. | ||
| And this was the point when Prime Minister Orbán realized that the migration, what we | ||
| were talking about, it's completely different from what we will experience in these debates. | ||
| And if we look around Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, there are millions of millions of people, ten millions and ten millions of people coming from overpopulated countries, and they want to start a new life somewhere. | ||
| And Europe, that's the closest continent. | ||
| So they want to start, without any permission, they want to start a new life in Europe. | ||
| So what was that like in 2015? | ||
| I mean, everyone remembers the videos of just watching people. | ||
| We see these videos now from Mexico into the United States. | ||
| Pretty much the same. | ||
| So in essence, it seemingly kind of happened overnight. | ||
| It was obviously related to the war in Syria and everything. | ||
| But did you stop people immediately? | ||
| How quickly did they figure things out? | ||
| The tricky thing was that the left was saying that it's mainly linked to the war in Syria. | ||
| So it's a local conflict issue. | ||
| But we hosted people on our southern borders. | ||
| They were coming from more than 100 countries. | ||
| So not just Syria, it was just back at the time it was just 30-40%. | ||
| It's a more broader issue and we immediately realized that if our country is not able to protect the borders and to restore law and order, then we are lost. | ||
| And we established the fence, we built the border fence. | ||
| It was a three-month operation and around 150 miles. | ||
| And we stopped them. | ||
| And we introduced the border control measures where we stop everybody who does not have the right to enter. | ||
| And were you getting threatened by the EU? | ||
| Of course, of course. | ||
| Since then. | ||
| That's a constant legal court war. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So what do they try to do? | ||
| I mean, they try to force you to just let anyone in? | ||
| Or what are their punishments, really? | ||
| There were several punishments. | ||
| The latest is that they are attacking us through the courts. | ||
| So they are in charge of the court system and the institutions and they try to block all our legal mechanisms to stop the people. | ||
| Because the idea is that If you are an illegal immigrant, you are not allowed to enter the country and walk freely. | ||
| You have to apply for asylum, and until the decision is made, you are not allowed to enter the territory of the country, because then you're going to disappear. | ||
| It will be impossible to find you. | ||
| And this is the basic idea which, according to their understanding, goes against the humanitarian law requirements. | ||
| But it's nonsense. | ||
| Those humanitarian legal requirements, those are outdated. | ||
| Those are historical memories based on the Geneva Convention from 1951. | ||
| Back at that time the thing was very different. | ||
| Do you think they don't even know what they're calling for? | ||
| Or do you think it is more nefarious than that? | ||
| When you see this coming in either through the ideas of wokeness or quite literally the people walking across the borders. | ||
| No, I think it's a political program of the left. | ||
| and political program of George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. | ||
| Because they think that European nations, they are threats of the future. | ||
| So what they want to do is to deconstruct these nations. | ||
| And how can you deconstruct a nation? | ||
| So you have to change the population. | ||
| You have to let People in who are coming from different civilization and give them citizenship as soon as it is possible. | ||
| They are not Christians. | ||
| They are mainly Muslims. | ||
| They don't share our values. | ||
| They have their own value system. | ||
| They are very proud of it. | ||
| I don't want to judge this kind of value system. | ||
| Probably it works in Muslim societies. | ||
| Or it definitely works in Muslim societies. | ||
| But in our society, the value system is different. | ||
| So it's, I think, and those people, if they come in and they settle, they establish parallel societies immediately. | ||
| And they are supporting leftist liberal political forces with a huge majority. | ||
| So for them it's a political program to destroy the old European type of nation states. | ||
| When you talk to your counterparts, either in Germany or in the UK, places that let tons of people in, that have these parallel societies, do they go, man, we're jealous, you guys are a little ahead of us on this thing, we missed it? | ||
| According to our understanding, this is a mistake what you can have only once. | ||
| And if you make that mistake, and you let millions and millions of people in, and you give them citizenship, then it's over. | ||
| Because you have no other chance. | ||
| You have to live with those people. | ||
| And what our counterparts are saying, that, look, you are right. | ||
| But our situation is different. | ||
| I have to at least try to convince those voters. | ||
| So I cannot be the defender of the Christian civilization if 20 or 15 percent of my voters are coming from a different background. | ||
| So most probably you are right. | ||
| Most probably we made a bad decision because we were only looking to the economic consequences of decision, not the cultural consequences, but that's it. | ||
| So that's why we Hungarians, we have to be, and Prime Minister Orbán is in this sense the most tough anti-migration politician in Europe, because we have to be very tough on that issue. | ||
| Once you commit You mentioned the Prime Minister and I know that he either was or is friendly with our former Prime Minister Donald Trump and obviously a lot of the things you're talking about in terms of borders and culture and things like that sound | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| in. Was that a nice little time for you guys when there was sort of similar leadership in the United | ||
| States that I suspect is a little bit different right now? | ||
| Yeah, that's true. Honestly, in domestic politics, we are the strongest. So we won four | ||
| consecutive terms with two two-third majority, so people are on our side. | ||
| What does that mean in terms of the vote? | ||
| So, what percentage of the vote, roughly, is that? | ||
| More than 50%. | ||
| Which is our system. | ||
| It differs from your system. | ||
| It's not a two-party system. | ||
| So, in a European context, that's huge. | ||
| But internationally, inside the Western Hemisphere, the situation is not so good. | ||
| So, for example, in 2016, when President Trump came into power, Benjamin Netanyahu was the Prime Minister in Israel. | ||
| Brexiters were emerging in London. | ||
| We had Angela Merkel, that was a Christian Democrat coalition-based, but still Christian Democrat government. | ||
| Although she did let a lot of migrants in, which probably... Yeah, but right now in the Ukrainian issue, we would need European leadership of the Germans, and we don't have this kind of leadership. | ||
| So, we had huge conflicts with her, but she is missing right now. | ||
| Not because of the migration, but because of the geopolitical issues. | ||
| So, back at that time, international cooperation was easier, but I think better days should come. | ||
| The Poles are on board. | ||
| Italy, there will be a changing of the government. | ||
| I hope United States, in the United States during the midterm election, the Republicans will do a good job. | ||
| And the economic situation in Europe, it's very hard. | ||
| So energy prices are skyrocketing and middle class is suffering serious problems. | ||
| And all the countries are governed by By left-wing governments. | ||
| So I think we will have a very turbulent political time. | ||
| Is it crazy to you or obvious that so many of the nations are going through this at the exact same time? | ||
| I mean, almost everything you're laying out here, to some degree, is pretty much what's happening here, and it's pretty much what's happening in the UK, and all over the place. | ||
| But I guess that's the point, right? | ||
| We are connected. | ||
| It's by design. | ||
| Yeah, we are connected. | ||
| And you know, for I think for the liberals, it's very easy intellectually to cooperate on an international level. | ||
| Because if you are a liberal, it means that you have your principles, your value system, and it's universal. | ||
| It doesn't matter where you are. | ||
| It doesn't matter where you are in DC, in, I don't know, Scandinavia, in Africa, in Even in Southeast Asia, if you are a liberal, then you have your values and you want to | ||
| Turn the government into that direction and you have no conflict with the others who are liberals but living on the other side of the world. | ||
| But for the conservatives or in a positive way nationalists, it's hard because all your beliefs are coming from the history of your nation. | ||
| So it's historically, sociologically, geographically, it's based. | ||
| And it differs from the views of others. | ||
| And that's the reason why cooperation is very hard, because we will never agree 100% on everything. | ||
| Because you are following the interest of your nation, and I am following the interest of my nation. | ||
| But through mutual respect and understanding, I think this kind of cooperation, if we are able to make these connections, then in the long term they can be stronger because it's rational. | ||
| And based on mutual respect, which is always a good starting point. | ||
| But it's a tough experiment, right? | ||
| I mean, this is what they're trying to figure out at NatCon. | ||
| Can you take ex-Libs and Libertarians, mix them with these religious conservatives, all fight wokeism? | ||
| And it seems to me that everyone, sort of right now, is kind of willing to put their swords down to make it work. | ||
| But the question is, okay, if we make it work, what happens after that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I don't have the answer. | |
| The only thing I know is if, you know, the... I hope we get to see, because then we'll have at least defeated... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| But, you know, so in Hungary, We were able to unify these forces through the lands of nation. | ||
| So if you love your country, it doesn't matter whether you are a classical liberal, libertarian or religious conservative, then this is the point where you have to be united and you have to be able to use your resources Against your political opponents, because they are using everything what they have. | ||
| The institutions, the state, transnational organizations, media, academia. | ||
| And until that moment, we on this side were just, you know, just too silent. | ||
| And too fragmented. | ||
| So we talked about a little bit related to migration, but okay, so Ukraine, now how many refugees did you say? | ||
| One million. | ||
| One million that are to be settled, to become citizens? | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| They left. | ||
| Because that would be 10% of the population. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's huge. | ||
| They left Ukraine and they came to Hungary. | ||
| We managed an operation to host them and help them. | ||
| Some of them went back, some of them went to other European countries, but some of them stayed. | ||
| So what is Hungary's position on what's going on there? | ||
| And I'll say that to the backdrop of I haven't covered Ukraine much on my show because I've found it's extremely difficult getting an honest assessment of what's going on and who really are the good guys and the bad guys and everything else. | ||
| It's just been very messy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| According to our understanding... And I also live in a country that's halfway across the world. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Not right there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| It's not your problem. | ||
| But it is. | ||
| But it is because all of these things are interconnected. | ||
| Because of the prizes and so on. | ||
| Yeah, it's true. | ||
| So I think it's out of question that the Russians are the aggressors in that story. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And the Ukrainians are brave and they are protecting their country. | ||
| And we should have them, but... | ||
| But it's a question of peace and prolongation of war. | ||
| So what we are doing right now, the Westerners together, that's the NATO strategy, let's call it that way, that we support through military equipment, weapons, and so on, the Ukrainians, and they are fighting. | ||
| And they are doing good, but the war is still there, and it's going to stay there for a long time. | ||
| And the consequences of the war, they are destroying our economies, mainly through the energy sanctions. | ||
| Can you describe how that directly affects you guys? | ||
| So the U.S. | ||
| or NATO put sanctions on Russia. | ||
| in the field of energy and it brings up the prices immediately because if you are not | ||
| allowed, some countries are not allowed to buy Russian gas or oil, it means that it's | ||
| like a trade market so immediately the prices are getting higher and higher and you have | ||
| to buy the energy from somehow because Europe is not independent. | ||
| And, you know, if the energy prices are high, then it's immediately causing inflation, and it is causing serious trouble for manufacturing companies. | ||
| If they close, then people are losing their jobs. | ||
| So it's a process. | ||
| It's a rational, economical process which is going on. | ||
| So according to our understanding, this war should be stopped, but not stopped through escalation or prolongation of the war, but through peace talks. | ||
| So our position is that we should I mean the West and obviously the United States should be involved because the Russians, they take only seriously the United States. | ||
| So there should be Russian-U.S. | ||
| peace talks and we would need immediate ceasefire and try to cool down the process. | ||
| Is there even any talk of that right now? | ||
| No, unfortunately not. | ||
| So what do you make of that? | ||
| Fortunately not, because I think the American position is that this kind of prolongation of war, it weakens Russia, for sure. | ||
| The Ukrainians are willing to do so. | ||
| And the Europeans are not strong enough to represent their own interest in that situation. | ||
| I'm mainly talking about France and Germany. | ||
| That there's no real credible threat behind them, if they were to come to the table with Russia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but I mean... | |
| I mean, you know, they are politically also fragile. | ||
| So coalition government, the different parties, they have a different opinion on that. | ||
| The international mainstream is very hard on putting pressure on those who are saying that, look, it shouldn't be a war propaganda around this issue, but we should do the other way around. | ||
| The peace propaganda should be started and spread everywhere. | ||
| But we are not close to that. | ||
| But unfortunately, the winter will be very hard. | ||
| And I hope that sooner or later everybody will realize that the prolongation of war is just not a good way to end this crisis. | ||
| What do you think the off-ramp looks like for Russia? | ||
| What's something that they could sit down and say, okay, we got this, we can end this thing now? | ||
| I can have my own opinion. | ||
| The Hungarian leadership can have its own opinion, but we are not a game changer in this situation. | ||
| So it should be done by the big players. | ||
| We are just a small mouse in the room. | ||
| There are big elephants in the room. | ||
| They should make their own decisions. | ||
| But the problem is that currently nobody, as you mentioned, nobody is talking about these kind of peace talks. | ||
| Everybody is talking about that, you know, we should keep going, we should go further, what is happening there. | ||
| And, you know, the Ukrainians, they made just recently a good counter strike, but then the Russians made a counter strike. | ||
| The whole story is, from a humanitarian point of view, it's getting even worse and worse and worse. | ||
| And we should stop that. | ||
| So I wasn't even planning on mentioning this to you, but I guess what sort of sits with all of this is, you know, we have a major censorship problem. | ||
| here in the United States and a completely, I would say, like a media that is in complete dereliction of their duties and deeply dishonest and not friendly to a lot of the ideas that we're discussing here. | ||
| So I'm curious on two things. | ||
| Sort of, how is your media generally? | ||
| And what about censorship and what's going on with the internet and big tech and all those things? | ||
| How much of that is an important part of your world? | ||
| No, it's a very important part. | ||
| And from our perspective, media is a sovereign issue again. | ||
| So if media is owned by foreigners, then foreigners are dictating what the Hungarians should think. | ||
| So it's the first and foremost important point is that at least the majority of the Hungarian media should be owned by Hungarians. | ||
| It doesn't matter whether they are liberals, conservatives, socialists. | ||
| what ideology they have, but it should be in the hands of Hungarians. | ||
| In that sense, we are in a much better shape than we were 12 years ago when the Orbán government came into power. | ||
| The other thing is that pluralism is important. | ||
| The variety of opinions should be visible. | ||
| And people, Hungarian people should make their own decision which opinions they want to follow. | ||
| And in this sense I think the Hungarian media is a better shape than the media in Western Europe because the balance between It's obviously oversimplifying the things, but the liberal views and the conservative views, or the progressive liberal views and the conservative views, it's quite balanced. | ||
| So it's 50-50. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And do you find you have counterparts on, say, the progressive-liberal side that you can debate publicly or get into these conversations with? | ||
| Because that's what's going on here that's very difficult. | ||
| They don't seem to want to debate anymore or even have these conversations. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good question. | ||
| Sometimes they are on board with the debate and they are available, but then they make a decision if their interest is that and they close down everything and they are not communicating. | ||
| Well, because to be clear, whoever might be the counterpart, I know you don't have a counterpart on the progressive side because they're not in the government right now, but I would have that person on and treat them the exact same way, but I suspect after talking to someone with the last name Orban, that's probably not going to happen. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, I think it's important and we conservatives, or the Hungarian right side, we are confident because we think that the truth is on our side. | ||
| So I'm confident that I can win all the debates. | ||
| So I'm always ready to discuss these things, but their mindset is a bit different. | ||
| You mentioned the big tech companies. | ||
| Playing an even more and more important role in the Hungarian public sphere. | ||
| And the censorship is obviously an issue there as well. | ||
| Our situation is even worse than your situation because those tech companies, their headquarter is in the United States or in another European country. | ||
| So we don't have those companies. | ||
| So what was done by, for example, Governor DeSantis, that through taxation and through some legislative actions, he wanted to Create a fair treatment for all the political opinions. | ||
| We Hungarians and the other small Central European countries, I'm not saying we are tool-less, but we don't have as much tools as you have here in the United States. | ||
| That's why for us it's important that the Republicans are pushing this thing forward, because otherwise it will have an effect on the other What level of censorship do you guys think you're dealing with? | ||
| It's almost impossible to tell because once you're being censored and throttled and all those things, you don't know. | ||
| But, you know, I would imagine if the Prime Minister was to put out something that they could even frame as anti-immigrant. | ||
| And I've read a lot of his speeches where they go completely insane, call him racist and all these things. | ||
| And if you read it, it's actually quite measured and sort of what you've laid out here. | ||
| So can you even tell what level of censorship you're dealing with? | ||
| It's not as bad as it happened in the United States, that one platform banned the president. | ||
| And then everyone banned him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then everyone banned the president. | ||
| So it's just, it did not happen yet. | ||
| But I experienced as well as a politician and some other politicians also experienced that. | ||
| And we know that those people who are in charge of making these kind of decisions, they are not accountable. | ||
| But we know them. | ||
| And from an ideological perspective, their opinion is obviously not balanced. | ||
| You know, making these kind of decisions shouldn't be made by private companies. | ||
| It's so simple. | ||
| And it's not a brand new issue. | ||
| It wasn't invented. | ||
| They thought just recently. | ||
| It's well known for like centuries and thousands and thousands of years that these kind of decisions should be made by independent branches. | ||
| That's why we invented the idea of independent judiciary. | ||
| And currently the role of the independent judiciary is done by these private companies, censorship group of people. | ||
| I think it's nonsense, but I'm quite optimistic because through the history of the technological development, when all the new platforms were coming in, first radio, and then television, and then the internet, and then right now the social media. | ||
| There was always at the beginning a kind of a turbulent time when the state made the takeover. | ||
| So it does not mean that there should be state censorship, but through legislative power at least some fair balance should be immediately established. | ||
| And they did, with the radio, with the television, with all the platforms. | ||
| I hate to tell you, my friend. | ||
| So I hope it's going to happen. | ||
| But when you say you hope it's going to happen, do you mean from an American side? | ||
| Because these are American companies, for the most part, that you want something to happen on the legislative side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Or we. | ||
| I hate to tell you, my friend. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Or at least in Europe. | ||
| Because probably we Hungarians, we're just small players in that issue. | ||
| But Europe as such is 27 countries. | ||
| So this is something which should be discussed on a European level. | ||
| And we should act together. | ||
| But until that moment it did not happen. | ||
| I normally don't end on a question like this, but is there anything else that you want to hit on? | ||
| I think we hit most of the big stuff. | ||
| You're here in town in Miami for the National Conservatism Conference, as we talked about, and that's ongoing for a couple days, and they're trying to hash out all the things that we've Did you hear anything else interesting there that is on your mind or relevant to Hungary? | ||
| Or have you been shocked by anything since you've been here in the United States? | ||
| Is it worse than you thought? | ||
| Is it better? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Because all the Americans I know and I like, they are anti-Volk and they are very nice people. | ||
| And they are very nice to my country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| You should go to Portland and see what's happening. | ||
| Yeah, the situation is different, for sure. | ||
| But I have to say that That always I come to here, I become more optimistic. | ||
| I know that you are also serious trouble, but if I keep talking with people, the idea of American greatness, it emerges immediately. | ||
| And I think at the end of the day, you will figure out something. | ||
| And the only thing I I keep telling them, look, I know that America is special, I know that it's like an elephant, and all the others are just smaller animals around you, even the Europeans, but there are some small animals, some mouses, and sometimes the small animals, the mouses, also can help the elephants to survive. | ||
| So these kind of alliances can be beneficial for both parties. | ||
| That was a beautiful ending. | ||
| However, I did say to you right before we started, I said this is a beautiful cover of a book. | ||
| The book is The Hungarian Way of Strategy. | ||
| Can you just tell the people what this elk on the front of the book is? | ||
| Yeah, it's an elk, or a stag, and the idea, according to Hungarian history, the Hungarian tribes, seven tribes who occupied the land where we are living, More than 1,100 years ago, they were led by this special creature. | ||
| ago, they were led by this special creature. | ||
| So she was the one who was doing the lead. | ||
| And through this animal, a transcendent power or God was leading the way. | ||
| And the idea of the cover is that this tag is still here, still with us, so the future is not so pessimistic for us. | ||
| Now that counts as an ending. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate it. | |
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about international issues instead of nonstop yelling, check out our international playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist. | ||
| They're all right over here. |
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