For a long time, political conservatism was dominated by liberal, democratic values. In this European and American election year, Trump, Orbán and their ever-growing group of allies want to put an end to this. ‘Make America great again, make Europe great again’, said a conference of the new right.
“The liberal hegemony that brought us chaos, war, crime and poverty has fallen. This is our chance to introduce a new sovereigntist world order. We can end one of the most shameful periods of our Western civilization.” At a conference in Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán outlined on Thursday how he and his global peers view the stakes of the upcoming European and American elections. ‘Make America great again, make Europe great again!’
The jamboree – opened with a Christian and Jewish prayer – was organized by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the most important annual high mass of conservative and Republican activists in the US. The trip to Hungary symbolizes the rise of Orbán – who dismantles democratic institutions, muzzles critical media and oversees widespread corruption – as an international figurehead of the now dominant right-wing movement in the West.
In almost half of the EU countries, according to polls, a far-right party will become the largest in the June European elections.
Former prime ministers such as Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland), Tony Abbott (Australia) or Janez Janša (Slovenia), Israeli ministers, presidents of European far-right parties such as Vox (Spain), PVV (Netherlands) or Vlaams Belang, the son of a former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, the former director of the European border agency Frontex who now stands up for the French Rassemblement National, former American presidential candidate Rick Santorum and a host of Trump acolytes: they all spoke in Budapest last week.
Meloni shows how it’s done
The national conservative right, also called the ‘new right’, has the wind in its sails. In the US, Donald Trump has a good chance of becoming president again in November. In Europe it is recording one election victory after another. In almost half of the EU countries, according to polls, a far-right party will become the largest in the June European elections, including in four of the six EU founding countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, second in Germany).
The ‘new right’ already shared power in a majority of member states. The poster child for this gradual embrace is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who spoke at CPAC in 2022 and who went from neo-fascist leader to a graceful ally of the European establishment. In addition, the ‘new right’ is increasingly consuming the traditional (centre) right, as happened in Italy and France, but also within the American Republican party.
A similar trend is taking place among the British Conservatives, the other leading conservative Western tradition party. After the widely expected election defeat of the more moderate party leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak later this year, the Tories expect a move to the authoritarian right, says political scientist Tim Bale (Queen Mary University), author of several books on right-wing populism. ‘The Conservatives are increasingly looking like a populist, far-right party.’
Fall of the West
The trend heralds a new era for the conservative right. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, as leaders of the US and the UK, paved the way for a political conservatism that would dominate thirty years of right-wing conservative politics and was based on the free market, liberalism, international integration, belief in progress and the global triumphant march of capitalism and democracy – lubricated with more ethically conservative positions.
The new right finds each other in common cultural enemy images, such as ‘gender ideology’ and ‘woke’.
But in the last ten years, that socio-economic focus shifted spectacularly to the socio-cultural, with the election of Donald Trump and Brexit as symbols. The ‘New Right’ finds each other in a series of common cultural enemy images, such as migration, ‘gender ideology’ and ‘woke’, international institutions or the fight against global warming – economically combined with anti-globalism, protectionism and a major role for the state. It calls itself explicitly illiberal and is imbued with declinism, the idea of the demise of the West.
Some see this as a populist strategy. “There is much more electoral potential in culture wars than in neoliberal Thatcherite economic policies,” says Bale. Others see it as a logical consequence of the changing world. “Every era has its own kind of conservatism,” says Derk Jan Eppink, the Dutch former journalist and politician who himself traveled politically from the liberal VVD and Lijst Dedecker over the ‘new right-wing’ parties Forum for Democracy and JA21 to now the BoerBurgerBeweging. ‘Today, conservatism, on issues such as migration and the climate, looks less through an economic lens and more through a cultural lens.’
In recent years, more and more actors have marketed themselves as one national-conservative bloc.
Due to the strong focus on national sovereignty, there was hardly any question of an internationally united ‘new right’ for a long time. But in recent years, more and more prominent actors have made efforts to market themselves as one national-conservative bloc, riding on the success of the movement. At European level, far-right parties are increasingly working together, although in the European Parliament they are still spread over two factions.
In the second line, there are movements such as CPAC or National Conservatism (NatCon), the organization behind the conservative conference that encountered a ban from the local mayor last week in Brussels, but after the intervention of an arm of the independent judiciary, the Council of State, was allowed to continue. Orbán – who himself transformed from traditional center-right to ‘new right’ – Brexiteer Nigel Farage and the French polemicist and politician Éric Zemmour, among others, were on the program.
Machines behind Orbán and Trump
Although CPAC Hungary and NatCon are two distinct associations, their organization exposes how right-wing conservatism evolved and the ‘new right’ tries to conquer hearts and minds worldwide. The international propaganda surrounding national conservatism, with the aim of cementing it as the dominant right-wing ideology, is primarily the work of a Hungarian-American axis forged in recent years and built on the success and money of the machines behind Orbán and Trump, the two standard bearers of the movement (see inset).
The American-Hungarian axis behind the propaganda
The CPAC is an initiative of the American Conservative Union (ACU), a conservative organization led by a man who was once political director of former American President George W. Bush. In Budapest, the ACU supervises, but in practice the Center for Fundamental Rights – an ironic name according to critics – pulls the strings.
This is a Hungarian NGO whose aim is ‘the preservation of national identity, sovereignty and Judeo-Christian social traditions’ and which is financed by the Orbán regime through a foundation. The same foundation is also the patron of the Danube Institute, one of the driving forces behind NatCon – which took place in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode last week. That institute is headed by John O’Sullivan, a former Thatcher speechwriter.
Another force behind NatCon is the Edmund Burke Foundation, which is led by Israeli-American philosopher Yoram Hazony and Chris DeMuth. Until 2008, the latter was chairman of the American Enterprise Institute, one of America’s most influential neoconservative think tanks that championed global capitalism and American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A third organization behind NatCon is the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), an educational institution founded and financed by Orbán that, according to journalistic research, has already received hundreds of millions of euros and thus trains European young people in national conservatism. The MCC has branches throughout Europe, including in Brussels. The director there is the Hungarian-Canadian sociologist Frank Furedi.
Another link between NatCon and CPAC is Balázs Orbán – not related to, but political director of Prime Minister Orbán and key figure within the international ‘new right’. He is the man behind the MCC and the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, another Orbán-loyal Hungarian NGO, which is led by an American Trumpist academic.
The movement is partly successful in its aim, says political scientist Bale. ‘The meetings are not meaningless. And the far right does indeed stick together and learn from each other. But I wonder whether, by focusing on that, we are not attributing to them a coherence and mutual solidarity that is more symbolic than substantive.’
We conservatives are united against everything that is wrong in Europe.
Tom Van Grieken
Vlaams Belang chairman
Because the differences within the ‘new right’ are great. Leaders such as Meloni’s party and the Swedes and Finns are Atlanticist NATO supporters, others such as Orbán look with admiration at Russian President Vladimir Putin. Western European parties such as the Rassemblement National or the PVV defend LGBT rights to a certain extent, but their Eastern European allies do not want to know about it. There are also major gaps in the economic field.
Political fair
Vlaams Belang chairman Tom Van Grieken, for whom the back-and-forth to Budapest is his only foreign trip during the busy campaign, sidestepped the issue at the CPAC: ‘We conservatives are united against everything that is wrong in Europe.’
As long as the far right is not collectively in power, such as the traditional parties at European level, the position of dispersion can be maintained. “We are not each other’s clones,” says Van Grieken. ‘We feel roughly the same about things, but these types of conferences are not the place where major political plans are forged. Where we make valuable international contacts.’
“CPAC is a very broad church,” says Eppink, who was present several times at the American original. ‘Many conservative movements come together there. I see it mainly as a political fair where everyone tries to sell their own story.’
Yet Eppink sees a significant difference in this election year compared to before. ‘For the first time, the most important theme will be the same in almost all countries: migration and identity. National conservatism responds perfectly to this. A wave is coming, which may become a tsunami. If this continues everywhere, the existing power relations could fundamentally tilt.’
Or as Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving head of government, said at CPAC: ‘These elections coincide with major shifts in world politics and geopolitical trends. The world order is changing. Progressive liberals sense the danger. Replacing this era means replacing them.”
