Viktor Orban Pushed Replacement Theory, Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric Ahead of ‘CPAC Hungary’ Opening Featuring Tucker Carlson
ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban gave the keynote address at CPAC Hungary on Thursday after a short video message from Tucker Carlson and an open speech from American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp – mere days after another speech in which he pushed replacement theory and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
“Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies … want to annihilate the Western way of life that you and us love so much,” Orban said during his speech.
“We must coordinate the movement of our troops as we face a big test, 2024 will be a decisive year,” he added, and “reconquer the institutions in Washington D.C. and Brussels.”
Orban also praised Carlson, who broadcast his Fox News show from Hungary for a week in 2021, as the only American media figure willing to challenge “the rule of the liberal media.”
While his keynote address offered plenty of red meat for his right-wing audience made up of prominent American and European leaders and media figures, it was his comments in a speech on Monday that made headlines around the world.
Orban took his oath of office on Monday for a fourth consecutive term leading a country where critics claim he has successfully gutted civil liberties and impeded the democratic process.
During his remarks, Orban echoed the controversial replacement theory and claimed that liberal Europeans are pushing a “suicide attempt” by implementing “the great European population replacement program.”
Orban went on to say that the left is working to “replace the missing European Christian children with migrants.”
The so-called replacement theory has become a central topic of conversation in the United States after the accused Buffalo shooter cited it in the online screed he allegedly wrote laying out his motivations for killing ten Black Americans in a grocery store. Critics have blamed right-wing American media personalities for pushing the ideology that claims left-leaning leaders want to engineer demographic change to disenfranchise right-leaning voters.
The Guardian pointed out that Orban also took aim at LGBTQ rights in the U.S. and Europe, a rising talking point in the culture wars dominating American politics today.
“Echoing another popular theme on the American right, he argued that another form of cultural suicide was ‘gender madness’, a reference to the spread of LGBTQ+ rights in the west,” the Guardian reported.
Orban has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric from his longstanding attacks on billionaire George Soros to statements defending his nationalist policies as “illiberal democracy” meant to preserve Hungarian culture. In 2018, he sparked fury by saying, “We do not want our own color, traditions, and national culture to be mixed with those of others.”
Other prominent U.S. media figures to speak at the conference include Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec. Former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, will address the conference virtually on Friday.
Other prominent right-wing European leaders addressing the conference include the former head of the U.K.’s Independence Party, Nigel Farage, Herbert Kickl, head of the Austrian Freedom Party, and Santiago Abascal, the President of Spain’s Vox party.
