‘Let’s put on our armor, go to the battlefield and win’: at CPAC, the radical right calls for battle

“It’s a kind of fair, with stalls.” This is how a member of Thierry Baudet’s Dutch Forum for Democracy describes the atmosphere at CPAC on his social media. “It’s a lot of fun,” said the man. “Albeit a bit too American.”

The latter may be true. Because CPAC, Conservative Political Action Conference in full, comes from the United States. Conservative activists, influencers and politicians have been meeting there every year since the 1970s to exchange ideas. In recent decades, the congress grew into a gathering of supporters of a more explicitly radical right-wing ideology.

Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, who has already given a few speeches in the US, decided in 2022 to organize an annual European version of CPAC in his own capital Budapest. CPAC is more or less similar in theme to NatCon, which recently became world news because the mayor of Saint-Josse Emir Kir tried to ban the conference. But CPAC is bigger and with more extreme voices, so to speak.

In their speeches on Thursday and Friday, the speakers one by one declared war on ‘communists’, on ‘immense mass migration’ and ‘globalists from Brussels and Washington’. People raved about repopulation and autocratic leaders were applauded.

A few notable names too: Jack Posobiec, an American influencer who played a leading role in spreading the Pizzagate conspiracy. That is the baseless story that a pizzeria in Washington is the center of a pedophile network controlled by politicians. Another speaker was Tony Abbot, the Australian former prime minister who built a detention center for refugees on an island in the Pacific Ocean. And the controversial former boss of the German domestic security service Hans-Georg Maassen was also a guest. He is labeled a right-wing extremist by the current German intelligence services because he called Africans ‘culturally backward’. But the Dutch radical right Geert Wilders and Vlaams Belang chairman Tom Van Grieken were also allowed to speak.

Then again, independent journalists were not allowed in. Various media that registered, including VRTNWS, received an email with the message that CPAC had a ‘no woke zone‘ is. “We look forward to welcoming you in the future, should your organization become significantly less woke.” The speeches themselves could be followed via livestream.

Superstate Europe

The organizers are very clear about the purpose of the conference. They want to bring like-minded people together to form an alliance. “You have to see this on a metapolitical level,” says author and cultural scientist Ico Maly (Tilburg University). “They mainly share ideas about how they can reconfigure the European Union. Because, according to them, this is a fundamental problem. A super state that suppresses the sovereignty of nations.”

And they especially want to show the outside world that their radical right ideas are very successful, says Sarah de Lange, political scientist at the University of Amsterdam and specialized in extremism and populism. “It is a political movement with shared ideas, it is about three things: family, God and country. They are anti-woke and anti-globalist.”

This was evident from the speeches, which, according to De Lange, were clearly a lot sharper than in recent years. “Let us put on our armor, go to the battlefield and win,” Orbán shouted in his opening speech. Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek, once affiliated with the Forum for Democracy, also called for a fight. “Otherwise, this time risks going down in history as the moment when Western countries were no longer invaded to be conquered, but as the time when our corrupt elites actively invited the invading power. And made the indigenous people pay for it.”

The speakers especially sounded very confident. For example, Tom Van Grieken said that it becomes clearer to him “every day that the truth is on our side”.

The ultra-right clearly wants to profile itself as a movement that is about to take over power, says Sarah de Lange. And the polls for the European elections also confirm the rise of the radical right as a group. But according to her, things won’t go that fast. “They want to pretend to be one group, but they are not yet. There are a few important names missing from the conference. For example, the Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and the French Marine Le Pen. Participating in such a conference also entails risks. Someone like Le Pen is not only thinking about the European elections, but also about her ambitions to become president of France. Then participation in a conference where very radical statements are made does not help.”

Tom Van Grieken was less bothered by that hesitation. He eagerly posed with Vlaardingerbroek, among others, on his social media. Geert Wilders gave a speech that was, for him, rather moderate. He also immediately indicated that he did not want the formation talks in his country kill.