White Christian Nationalist Arizona Republicans Speak At International Fascist Conference in Hungary

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This should be automatically disqualifying for any American politician. Millions of Americans sacrificed and served their country to fight a world war to rid the world of Fascism in World War II, and now their descendants are trying to bring Fascism to America. They are contemptible, loathsome individuals who dare to call themselves “patriots” as they dishonor the memory and service of previous generations of Americans. They are unworthy of calling themselves “Americans,” they are Fascist collaborators and traitors to their country. I would revoke their passports and not allow them back into the country – let them live in exile in Hungary, or Russia, wherever they would be more at home..

 

The Arizona Mirror reports Arizona Republicans travel to Hungary for far-right CPAC Hungary conference of white supremacist Fascists:

At the Hungarian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Arizona is on center stage as [Coup Plotter] U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and failed gubernatorial candidate [and election denier] Kari Lake will share a stage with the leader of a far-right Austrian party founded by former Nazis.

The Freedom Party of Austria, or FPÖ, was founded in 1956 by former officers of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, the paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The party has staked out far-right policies on immigration, the government and Muslim immigrants. 

FPÖ Chairman Herbert Kickl and FPÖ European Parliament member Harald Vilimsky will both speak at CPAC Hungary.

Gosar spoke Thursday during the “Nations First” part of the conference, as did Vilimsky. The session also featured a video message by Arizona U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko and speeches by antisemitic and Islamphobic former Trump aide Michael Anton and Mark Ivanyo, the director of a far-right populist organization that has organized events that have brought white nationalists and politicians together in Phoenix.

UPDATE:

Lake will be speaking Friday after the Hungarian minister of defense.

UPDATE:

CPAC Hungary will feature a litany of far-right ideologies. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán limited access to the event by traditional news outlets in previous years, a move which was then copied by the U.S. version, with CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp saying they were going “Hungarian” in their approach to media.

Since coming into power in 2010, Orbán has overseen deep changes to the media landscape of his country in what many say as an erosion of press freedoms.

U.S. conservative media entities and modern American conservative politics are playing a major role in the Hungarian event and Gosar, Lake and Lesko will be alongside a number of other U.S. conservatives and far-right personalities. 

Former Donald Trump aide [and Coup Plotter] Steve Bannon will be speaking at the event [of course], as will former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker and Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer. Hammer has amplified a number of far-right conspiracy theorists since joining Newsweek.

A number of conspiracy theorists will also be present at the event, including some with ties to far-right extremists.

One of them is Jack Posobiec, who rose to fame by promoting the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory and also has ties to white supremacists. Posobiec has pushed antisemitic content and has met with far-right figures in other countries who have also pushed white supremacist content.

Other speakers have also embraced conspiracy theories, such as Slovenia’s far-right prime minister Janez Jansa, who has refused to admit that Trump lost his election and used his own media empire to push his own extreme views on the “deep state” into the mainstream.

Even more eccentric speakers are listed as well, such as Hiroaki “Jay” Aeba.

Aeba is part of a Japanese cult called Happy Science and has been working for years to build relationships with high power conservatives to create the Japan’s Happiness Realization Party, an ultranational political party aimed at increasing Japan’s population through childbirth.

The cult’s leader claims to be able to channel the spirits of famous people both alive and dead and has claimed that COVID-19 originated on another planet.

This is the second CPAC conference in Hungary, which borders Ukraine and has been blocking EU support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Gosar has been critical of the Ukraine war effort, saying that no more American money should go to the war in Ukraine. He has also promoted an antisemitic website that praised him for opposing the Ukraine conflict. 

Hungary has gained international attention for its hardline stances and, in 2021, Orbán’s Fidesz party banned the depiction of homosexuality or gender reassignment in media targeting people under the age of 18. The law similarly bans information from sex-ed programs, films and ads accessible to minors.

During his speech Thursday Orbán said that, if Trump was still president, there would be no war in Ukraine and begged for him to come back and to bring “peace,” to applause from the crowd.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch adds, Congressmen To Mix With Leader Of FPÖ, A Party Founded By Nazis:

CPAC Hungary, an offshoot of the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference, puts that country’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a global spotlight for a second consecutive year, surrounding him with like-minded figures from across the world. Orbán is an authoritarian leader whom Tucker Carlson regularly lauded on his show before Fox News canceled it last month. In addition to Orbán’s history of corruption and hostility to press freedom, he has given voice to the great replacement conspiracy theory espoused by radical-right extremists.

The Austrian political party founded by Nazi SS officers, Austrian Freedom Party, or FPÖ, will send to CPAC Hungary their chairman, Herbert Kickl, along with European Parliament member Harald Vilimsky. These men will join other radical-right figures, including former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, who has a reputation for embracing conspiracy theories, Japanese politician and cult member Hiroaki “Jay” Aeba, and American political operative Jack Posobiec, who is known for his ties to the white supremacist movement and his history of promoting Russian intelligence-backed social media campaigns.

Hatewatch attempted to reach Gosar but could not get in contact with him. Hatewatch emailed Moore’s office but did not receive a response.

Gosar, who pushed the “Stop the Steal” lie that preceded the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is no stranger to appearing alongside extremists. He has previously stood with white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes at his AFPAC conference.

Barry Moore has a lower profile than Gosar but is also familiar with controversy. The Alabama congressman temporarily deleted his Twitter account in January 2021 after publishing tweets that promoted former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and appeared to apologize for those who attacked the Capitol in its aftermath. He filed a bill in February to make the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

AN ILLIBERAL COALITION

Gosar, Moore and Posobiec will link up with other American reactionaries at the pro-Orbán event. Matt Schlapp, the CPAC leader who has denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a male staffer, will attend. CPAC Hungary also lists election denier Kari Lake, who lost the race for Arizona’s governor in 2022, as a speaker. Michael Anton, a former Trump adviser, will be there too, according to a post on CPAC Hungary’s website. [Coup Plotter] Mark Meadows, Trump’s embattled former chief of staff, will appear before the CPAC Hungary crowd via video conference.

Indiana’s new Secretary of State Diego Morales, who has faced criticism in that state for hiring his brother-in-law to a six-figure job, will speak in person. So will Rick [“Man on Dog”] Santorum, the anti-LGBTQ+ former senator who lost his job with CNN in 2021 after making comments appearing to dismiss the cultural impact of Native Americans. Other, lesser-known Americans are also slated to speak.

In addition to members of the Nazi-founded FPÖ, members of far-right groups known for their anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ stances will be at CPAC Hungary. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, is speaking. Members of such hardline groups as France’s National Rally (formerly National Front), Portugal’s neofascist Chega party, and Im Tirtzu, a Zionist group who paints human rights activists as traitors to Israel, will also speak.

NEWSWEEK AGAIN ASSOCIATES WITH ANTI-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT

Josh Hammer of Newsweek will also speak at CPAC Hungary, marking another time when that publication’s opinion editor has publicly rubbed shoulders with European radical-right figures. Hammer previously attended the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) gala in December 2022 alongside members of FPÖ, Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), American white nationalists and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Hammer has courted radical right, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant and anti-democracy voices while serving as Newsweek’s opinion editor, as Hatewatch previously reported. He has also traveled to Hungary to speak to a state-sponsored group. In February 2022, Newsweek published a glowing dispatch Hammer authored about Hungary without disclosing that connection to Orbán’s government. In addition to Orbán, other extremists who are slated to attend CPAC Hungary promote views hostile to press freedom, and they are listed on a roster next to Newsweek’s name.

In a previous comment to Hatewatch, Newsweek claimed that Hammer “does not share nor endorse the views of those published in the opinion section of Newsweek, nor those who participate in events he attends.” Hatewatch reached out again about Hammer’s scheduled appearance at CPAC Hungary, but the magazine did not respond.

Hammer is joined by contributors to the opinion section he runs, including the extremist Posobiec and Trump loyalist Gavin Wax, the president of NYYRC. Wax staged a protest last month, featuring Posobiec, outside the Manhattan courthouse where the former president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While speaking at NYYRC’s gala in December, Wax called for “total war” against his perceived domestic enemies.

Jacob Heilbronn reports for Politico, I Was Banned From Entering CPAC Hungary’s ‘Woke Free Zone’ (excerpt):

I came to Hungary to witness the not new, yet still astonishing enmeshing of the populist-nationalist American right and its European counterpart, and I didn’t have to wait long. There was Orbán endorsing Donald Trump’s 2024 bid on the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference taking place here. Some in the audience wore T-shirts depicting Orbán and Trump as “saviors of the world.”

I was supposed to be watching all this from inside the conference, within the gleaming Bálna, or whale center, along the Danube. Instead, I was livestreaming it from my hotel room — barred from entry as a member of the media.

I was surprised but not shocked by my travails. I knew that CPAC had banned many journalists, including the New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz the previous year[.]

[O]nce upon a time CPAC, which hosted its annual flagship event just outside Washington two months ago, was eager for media attention. But lately, CPAC officials have developed an aversion to the press, restricting many reporters and denouncing its critics as “fake journalists.” That seems particularly true as the MAGA movement has embraced Orbán and his agenda.

Hungary is now the global epicenter of the new right’s crusade against liberal democracy. It serves as an alluring model for many conservatives — a country that’s successfully neutered the media and the judiciary as well as passed an anti-LGBTQ law that’s supposed to protect the traditional family. And don’t forget Orbán’s reluctance to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s brutal invasion.

This is the second year in a row that CPAC came to Budapest, and Trump and his allies rejoiced in the blossoming relationship. In a Friday video address to the conference, Trump hailed the “freedom-loving patriots” at the conference and declared that it was imperative to “stand together to defend our borders, our Judeo-Christian values, our identity and our way of life.”

* * *

“I stand in awe,” declared Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, who has appeared at white nationalist events in the past, agreed. “Hungary,” he said, “is a beacon.”

In fact, the MAGA faithful flocked to the event to profess their admiration for the Hungarian miracle. Former Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake recently declared on Steve Bannon’s show that “Hungary is doing things right.” One thing Orbán is apparently doing right is cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday morning, Lake announced at the conference that there was a simple solution to ending the Ukraine conflict — sellout Kyiv to the Russians. “The only way to stop this war,” she said, “is to turn off the money spigot. I say we should invest in protecting our borders, not Ukraine’s.”

In a video message presumably taped before his abrupt ouster, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson told the Americans who were in Budapest that they were “very brave” as the State Department was “keeping track, you went to a forbidden country.” Later that day Orbán hosted Lake, Gosar and more than a dozen other American conservative activists and politicians for a photo-op at his office, including the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and former Sen. Rick Santorum. Hungary, Orbán said, has become an “incubator where the conservative [Fascist] policies of the future are being tested.”





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3 thoughts on “White Christian Nationalist Arizona Republicans Speak At International Fascist Conference in Hungary”

  1. Wow…….the Republican Party of fascists isn’t even trying to hide that they are indeed fascists who want to end our democracy so their agenda of power & control over all of us is realized.
    Remember how hard we had to fight in 2018 to gain the house and the senate from the fascists? Remember how hard we had to fight to win the 2020 presidency away from Hitler wanna be fat fascist trump? Remember how hard we had to fight the supposed “red wave” of fascism in 2022?
    Well, 2O24 is around the corner, and once again we good Americans have to fight the fascists that are threatening our way of life in America.
    The good news is WE OUTNUMBER THE FASCISTS!!!!!! All we have to do is vote like we did in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
    I know we can win because good always prevails over the evil of the fascists of the Republican Party.
    It’s time to get ready. It’s time to fight again until the fascists are purged from the Republican Party ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!!!
    We are in this together. We Democrats are UNITED to stop the republicans that want to harm our democracy. The fascists are divided. Let them be. Let them have their weapons of war, their deplorable cult, their white nationalists, their racism and their greed and love of money. They are unable to govern with those issues. They will crumble under the weight of the UNITED DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!!!!!!!
    We don’t want to live in THEIR white, straight America where they are so set on the rights of fetuses that they can kill in another mass shooting when the kid is born and in school. Where books that we grew up on (and turned out fine) are burned and banned because the fascists are afraid the Nazi kids they are raising will have a thought of their own. Where Disney World is attacked for being sympathetic to the LGBTQ+ community, and people of color are targeted and killed for jaywalking.
    That’s not the America the majority wants! That’s the America the fascists want….and they will pull every dirty low down trick to have it their way….hiring fake electors to try to steal an election, bullying governors to find votes to steal an election, inciting a coup to steal an election. And so many more horrible acts of FASCISM!!!!
    We must stop allowing the fascists to bully us, threaten us, and trick us. When you stand up to the bullies, the bullies fold like a bad hand of poker. It is our duty to our country to VOTE in numbers too big for the fascists to manipulate. Vote for your lives, and the lives of your children and grandchildren. Take your children with you when you vote so they can learn by example!
    IF YOUR VOTE WASN’T IMPORTANT THEN THE FASCIST REPUBLICANS WOULDN’T WORK SO HARD TO STEAL IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Stay United, stay diligent, and do your democratic duty to protect our democracy from those fascists that want to steal it. VOTE blue in every election, every time!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  3. These Democracy hating scumbags should get the treatment meted out to Hans Landa at the end of Inglorious Basterds. Having a swatiska carved into their foreheads so everyone knows what they are.

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