Hungarian Conservative

‘While Budapesters aren’t wealthy, their lives are safe, purposeful, and filled with objective beauty. They perceive that they are temporary stewards of a valuable human condition and assume their descendants ought to inherit it; society is to be preserved, rather than consumed. Mothers with infants and other young children are an unmistakable element of the Hungarian capital. I always felt comfortable when my wife walked alone at night. Violent crime and discarded needles are nonexistent. This is life in the former Eastern Bloc.’

Following Emmanuel Macron’s statement on sending Western troops to Ukraine, NATO allies are distancing themselves from the French President. In the run-up to the European elections, radical pro-war rhetoric may have serious consequences—the case of the Hungarian opposition in the 2022 parliamentary elections is a cautionary tale.

Viktor Orbán and the governing parties refrained from paying tribute to Alexei Navalny in the Hungarian parliament earlier this week. Considering the less-known views of the recently deceased Russian opposition leader, the Hungarian prime minister’s decision is likely to resonate with the majority of Ukrainians.

As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, the prospect of peace remains as distant as it did 24 months ago. However, with the upcoming political events in Europe and the United States, 2024 holds the potential for significant changes. With these crucial events ahead, there is hope that 2025 could finally become the year of peace in Ukraine.

A bipartisan US Senate delegation visited Budapest over the weekend to exert pressure on the Hungarian parliament to advance the ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership. The senators also held consultations with opposition politicians and NGO representatives, and are planning to propose a resolution condemning Hungary.

‘We have to rid ourselves of the fundamental cultural Marxist idea that we must destroy European identity at its very fundamentals. That we must destroy the classical nuclear family. We must destroy nations. We must destroy classical aesthetics. We must destroy the Christian faith. That’s wrong,’ says Dutch politician and author Thierry Baudet in an interview with Wael Taji.

‘Allowing a diversity of opinion to inform one’s judgment really can be a source of strength. And, to paraphrase Cicero, taking history seriously is necessary if you wish to be a grown-up on the world stage, not a child, stomping around looking for somewhere to bomb, and somewhere else to bully.’

While South Africa alleges that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, it failed to condemn some of the most severe human rights abuses of our times in the past. Pretoria’s assertion that its engagement to prevent grave human rights violations, fulfilling its responsibilities ‘under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring’ is a political stunt and a blatant attempt to exploit the international legal system.

‘We don’t want a world run according to Russian or Chinese or Hamas or Iranian values. But unfortunately, we cannot be sure that these forces can be held at bay unless we’re willing to defend what we have.’

US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman gave two recent interviews to the British press. He criticized Hungary’s foreign policy in both of them, claiming that it was based on ‘fantasy’—Hungarian MP and State Secretary Tamás Menczer has responded to the criticism.

With Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressing a desire to negotiate with two pro-peace leaders on the right, Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, it appears that the Ukrainian president is anticipating a potentially unfavourable scenario for Ukraine: a right-wing shift in both Europe and overseas.

The inherent dilemma regarding the rules of engagement in a just war is that they tend to become either vague or restrictive when military operations fail to achieve victory or a ceasefire leading to peace.

Rarely has a single year carried such profound implications for global security and the future as the one that lies ahead. With conflicts erupting across the globe, the foundations of the international order are being relentlessly tested. Compounding
these challenges, 2024 is marked by the impending presidential elections in two formidable and opposing powers, the United States and Russia. Similar gravity can be attributed to the European Parliament elections scheduled for the same year, where a realistic opportunity exists for the reinforcement of right-leaning forces.

At the year-end press conference, PM Orbán explained why he chose to veto the €50 billion aid package to Ukraine at the recent EU Summit, how he views the potential Ukrainian and Swedish NATO accession, and what he believes the biggest struggles of 2023 were. He also talked about what hopes he has for the new year of 2024.

After the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, all large Russian opposition media outlets were forced to leave the country. Notwithstanding their dire situation, some of them could nonetheless retain a significant chunk of their former readership, which equals millions. Regrettably, judging by how they portray Hungary, responsible journalism is not their strength.

Originally a Greek-built temple, now known as the cathedral of the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the most iconic buildings on the Pest side of Budapest, right on the bank of the Danube River.

According to estimates, in November Russia suffered over 900 casualties a day; thousands of Ukrainian civilians and more than 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the invasion. It is clear that the cost of the war is becoming unbearably high.

‘Washington and the EU need to take an entirely different approach, one that may actually work, and that is facilitate a ceasefire. Convincing Zelensky to consider this does not necessarily mean that Ukraine is to give up on restoring its 1991 borders or on holding Putin’s government responsible for the death and destruction he has caused since invading the country.’

‘The fact of the matter is that this is the West’s stupidest war with Britain helping to lead the way: unnecessary, unaffordable, and unwinnable.’

‘Most importantly, Facebook is a Western company, and we are a Western-style democracy. Facebook’s ideology is basically liberal democracy, as is ours—although the Hungarian Government takes issue with this and represents a version of it based on Christian, conservative values. The number one platform for this world and this set of values for the public is the Facebook universe: we are therefore allies; not good friends, but allies.’

Moscow has failed to condemn the 7 October Hamas attack as terrorism, and Putin has likened the Gaza blockade by Israel to the siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany, effectively poisoning the previously amicable Russia–Israel relations.

Gazprom is making efforts to compensate for the losses in the European markets, which occurred following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, partly due to the explosions in the Baltic Sea pipelines of the Nord Stream project.

It is quite apparent that from Afghanistan to Ukraine, from Israel to North Korea, the world is worse off than it was when Donald Trump occupied the White House. Can all this really be just by mere chance?

In a recent Facebook post, Péter Szijjártó informed that he had a phone conversation with the South Korean Foreign Minister Park Joo, in which they discussed not only issues of bilateral cooperation but also the significant challenges facing international security.

‘I believe that the presence of all of these varying opinions is what makes the Third Danube Geopolitical Summit stand out. As James Carafano, Senior Counselor to the President at The Heritage Foundation noted during his opening address: the Danube Institute is a place that gives a platform for real dialogue.’

The Rubicon Institute organized a large-scale conference on 23 September that focused on the reawakening of the century-old field of geopolitical thinking, shedding light on the connections between geographical conditions and political decisions.

The confetti cannon has been fired and the Polish campaign is officially underway: at the beginning of August, President Andrzej Duda set 15 October as the date for the parliamentary elections, an event that is making not only the Poles but also Hungarians hold their breath.

American political pundit Tucker Carlson sat down again for another interview. This time, they discussed the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the national pride of Hungarians, the indictments against Former US President Donald Trump, and more.

Despite the left-wing’s denunciation of Orbán as a despot because of his censorship, or for that matter that of Abdullah II, the one-sided free speech absolutism that is being promoted by the same left is nothing more than a capitulation to moral nihilism, a reason why Facebook has been removing Hungarian conservatives from its platform.

‘Nation-states will be reduced in their functionality, becoming of secondary importance as entities, and the principle of territorial existence will slowly dissolve into a new, boundless uniformity. To use a rather un-English term, we are going to witness the deterritorialization of the world—a world deprived of the territories of its constituents, at least if we are to believe the new utopians.’