Hungarian Conservative

An opinion piece by the Washington, D.C.-based magazine The Atlantic is trying to make the case that Donald Trump’s victory in November could bring a ‘Hungary-style autocracy’ to America. Evidently, this is nothing new, just a usual hit piece by the liberal media in the US with the customary distortions, omissions, and half-truths.

Conservative visions of the future of Europe after the European elections; the cultural crisis in the Western world as influenced by far-left movements including the ‘Woke’; and international security and geopolithical challenges—these were the main topics of the Free Speech and Freedom of Thought: British and European Conservative Visions of the Future of Europe conference held at the Danube Institute on 18 June. The all-day event aimed to bring together British, European, and American scholars and public figures to discuss how conservative political strategies can shape a world in flux.

‘The Constitution is ideological in nature, as it implicates modern features such as the separation of powers and the protection of individual rights. We all remember the definition of Article 16 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. Today, the situation has undergone major changes. Thus, just as the Constitution displaced the law, the jurisprudence of the constitutional courts (based on supposed “principles” and “rights”) is displacing constitutions. Thus, some embrace the latter against the so-called “new law” of activist judges.’

‘It’s really important to understand that we’re not operating military to military with ground rules and understanding of military bases in uniform as these terrorists are not wearing uniforms and are embedding themselves in schools, hospitals, public areas, kindergartens, homes, hiding weapons in those areas, making themselves and the people around them targets. So it’s a very, very complex situation to fight in. Secondly, I think that Israel understands not only the humane side but also that it’s important to allow more and more humanitarian aid to enter because our goal is to eliminate Hamas and not to harm the people of Gaza,’ IDF Staff Sergeant Nicki told Hungarian Conservative in a recent interview.

The French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the emergence of capitalism, and the development of the first nation-states put both Protestant and Catholic churches in a position they could never have dreamed of a few decades before. Even though reconciliation between state and church came fast, these events served as a Rubicon in Western history and civilization. The clergy, regardless of its faith, had to rediscover itself in a totally different political and socio-cultural environment. The insightful book Theologians on Modern Politics, presented on 4 June, attempts to demonstrate the changing nature of both religious institutions and the faith itself, which allowed Christian ideas and communities to remain key players in modern politics.

‘States are free to reject decisions or judgements that are inconsistent with the treaties they signed,’ Senior Research Fellow at the European Centre for Law and Justice Nicolas Bauer told Hungarian Conservative.

‘Being a conservative in Berkeley is like you’re surrounded by Marxists. I think sometimes Hungary feels the same, surrounded by these European progressive elites,’ John Yoo, former US government official and Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley stated in an interview with Hungarian Conservative.

On the first day of the Rule of Law as Lawfare Conference experts such as Minister of European Union Affairs János Bóka of Hungary and MEP Ryszard Legutko of Poland discussed how the legal concept of the rule of law has been turned into a political weapon by EU bodies, and analysed the double standards applied to different Member States with rule of law assessment procedures.

The Free Market Road Show, held for the ninth time, was organized in collaboration with the Austrian Economics Center and the Danube Institute. This year’s speakers discussed topics such as Central Bank Digital Currencies and the related issues of individual freedom and privacy, new economic strategies for a post-COVID world, and how global security threats, such as wars and migration, affect trade.

Foreign pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted a conference in Budapest on Tuesday where Israel’s ambassador to Hungary Jakov Hadas-Handelsman was also speaking. At around the same time, anti-Israel graffiti flooded the Hungarian capital. For many months, such phenomena were unknown in Hungary, but now it seems that the conflict and hatred are being imported from abroad.

Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani pointed out that ‘in this horrible reality, even though we showed evidence of the barbaric sexual violence by Hamas on 7 October, the world still doesn’t believe it happened,’ which demonstrates how people tend to believe only what they want to, even when presented with facts.

The Free Market Road Show was held in Budapest for the ninth time. At the ceremonial opening of the event, John O’Sullivan, president of the Danube Institute, presented the condensed Hungarian version of world-famous economist Friedrich A. Hayek’s (1899–1992) book The Road to Serfdom. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Nobel Prize-winning economist’s work, the Danube Institute, under the auspices of the Austrian Economics Center, published the booklet in Hungarian with the aim of making Hayek’s most important teachings easily accessible to Hungarian students.

The Transatlantic Patriot Summit took place on 27 April, co-hosted by the Danube Institute and a number of international conservative youth organizations. The distinguished speakers covered a wide array of topics, including the left’s control over mainstream media in many countries, mass migration, and the upcoming elections in Europe and the United States.

Professor Gottfried sat down for an insightful, two-hour discussion with host Meg Hansen of the Danube Institute, in which they covered topics such as the different branches of American conservatism, the current state of the political right in the United States, and ‘paleoconservatism’, a term coined by Professor Gottfried himself.

‘My young friends, our responsibility is immense. We are the last generation that could rely solely on our parents to differentiate between right and wrong. Yet, we are also fully immersed in the technological advancements of the 21st century. We have an opportunity to globalize conservatism.’

‘One of the problems with the Anglosphere is that we have these occasional bouts of hysteria. It’s a sort of psychosexual, cultural, religious frenzy,’ American writer James C. Bennett highlighted in an interview with Hungarian Conservative.

Viktor Orbán has a very long record in public life, from his early days as a strong anti-communist freedom fighter, through to his first stint in government, and now to this long and successful tenure as a prime minister. He’s been able to articulate a brand of conservatism that is both economically sensible and culturally conservative and traditionalist.

‘Colonel Buskila explained that ‘‘there were two waves of the attack: in the first, there were the 2500 terrorists who infiltrated Israel and then in the second wave hundreds, maybe one thousand Gazan civilians took advantage of the fact that their border was open and rushed into Israel with knives just to kill people and steal.’’ Colonel Buskila added that these Gazans didn’t spare anything, and after they killed Israeli civilians in the kibbutzim, they stole everything, even the batteries, from those Israeli civilians’ cars whom they murdered.’

In the latest episodes of the Danube Institute’s podcast co-chair of the Israeli Sovereignty Movement Nadia Matar spoke about the nature of radical Islamist terrorism. To demonstrate her point, she showed a flag from the city of Bethlehem with the Arabic phrase ‘We will murder Jews on Saturdays and we will murder Christians on Sundays’ written on it.

I cherished David most for his humanity and intellectual vibrancy. His optimistic smile and encouraging thumbs-up after our conversations were always a source of comfort.

According to Ambassador Yacov Hadas-Handelsman the Gaza War is not just against Israel and it is not a political strife anymore, but a cultural and religious conflict.

On 6 February 2024, the documentary Some Kind of Liberating Effect was screened with the participation of the film’s director Dr Valerio Severino in the Danube Institute. Several different aspects of science and religion were discussed both in the film itself and after the screening in a panel discussion.

Orthodoxy is the second largest form of Christianity in the world, with some 200 million believers, Dr Noble highlighted in our interview, reminding that of the nine recognized candidate countries for membership of the EU, there six countries with an Orthodox majority.

According to Dr Samuel Noble, countries with a predominantly Orthodox Christian population have been able and willing to preserve their traditions. Contrary to the proposition put forth by Samuel Huntington, Dr Noble highlights the primacy of national identity in countries professing Orthodox Christianity, as a result of which, he contends, there has never been a truly unified Orthodox bloc.

‘The divisions inside the conservative movement are less over what should be done, and more over how far we might go, and the right answer is always as far as possible. In a democracy, the path to political success is always practical: for us, that means identifying the problems that worry people most and finding credible and pragmatic ways to make change for the better.’

The brand new edition of our magazine features a piece by Miklós Szánthó, director general of the Center for Fundamental Rights, who wrote about the subversive nature and history of the new Woke ideology; as well as a statistical analysis of the difference in the ways democracies and autocracies wage war by political scientist and military historian Bruce Oliver Newsome, and two Christmas-themed articles as well, as per the holiday season. You can pick up the latest edition of Hungarian Conservative magazine at your local bookstore or newspaper stand; or, subscribe to our quarterly magazine on our website to make sure you never miss an issue.

The conference, held on 27 November 2023, brought together a diverse groups of speakers to discuss the repercussions of the Israel-Hamas war and the situation of the Christian community in Israel.

Tony Abbott, who served as the Prime Minister of Australia between 2013 and 2015, will be joining the line-up of guest lecturers of the Budapest-based think tank the Danube Institute this autumn. He will be giving lectures at events and will be regularly publishing in the print magazine Hungarian Conservative.

In a bizarre speech, Canadian Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen alleged, with no basis whatsoever, that the Conservatives in parliament oppose the modernized trade deal with Ukraine because one of them had a trip to London paid by the Hungarian Danube Institute last summer.

The famous British unorthodox feminist, Mary Harrington recently visited Budapest to talk about ‘reactionary feminism’ and progress at a Danube Institute event.