Bret Stephens (3:19)

So this is what's really interesting to me and an opportunity for Democrats to message. The Republicans where I grew up are all like, you know, we're all about America and the founding fathers and its founding documents, and we're all about national security and. And then the modern day Republican Party and their think tanks, the Heritage foundation, looked to a newly formed autocracy in Eastern Europe for inspiration, flushing down 250 years of democracy. Number one, how painfully unoriginal that is, and number two, how inherently un American it is. But what got them going was how brilliantly Orban recycled, as you write so eloquently in your article, all of the scapegoats, women, LGBTQ minorities, immigrants. And one of his first areas of attack were institutions, specifically universities. Will you speak to that?

Jason Stanley (4:23)

So that we have in the United States imitated Orban's playbook. Let's start with the media first. Orban used the government to force the media into the hands of his allies and supporters. So 80% of the Hungarian media is owned by Orban's supporters. So we're seeing that here in the United States as Larry Ellison, one of Trump's oligarchs, is essentially being given TikTok, CBS, now CNN. So we're seeing the parallel takeover of the media institutions. This use of the government. Here's something that's un American. This use of the government to bully the private sector, to adopt essentially far right values. So we saw this with Desantis attack on Disney. That was very Orban, it was very Orban to target Disney for not going along with the don't say gay act. This is what Orban has done. He's used the apparatus of the state to target the scapegoats, to target particularly anything associated with LGBTQ Hungarian life. Now, you know, and he's done this. He's done this to supposedly to preserve the white Christian family who he says are the most persecuted people on earth. He's done this, you know, to save whiteness and Christianity and European civilization. And this is exactly what JD Vance has taken over the whole idea that you have to preserve white Christianity, Europe must preserve Christianity and whiteness, preserve European civilization. This was Orban's whole line. Now, what it was, in fact, was simply smoke and mirrors to disguise, enriching his family and friends. So that's really what Magyar took advantage of here, Magyar took advantage of the fact that Hungarian voters have now seen that owning the libs is not won't make up for jobs. This was just entirely. Orban's entire thing was using owning the libs to hide stuffing money in his family's pockets and the pockets of the people he grew up with. So it was kind of like it's really this basic strategy, the basic strategy of saying, I'm gonna vilify LGBTQ citizens, I'm gonna vilify trans people, I'm gonna vilify race mixing. He, you know, a country that allows race mixing is no longer a nation. This is the man the Republican Party has taken as its model. This man who said. Who bows and scrapes to Vladimir Putin, who says that race mixing is the destruction of a nation. This is the man who J.D. vance and Donald Trump and the entire conservative infrastructure have taken as their model. And furthermore, he doesn't even mean it. Not that it's good to be a Nazi, but he doesn't even mean it. It's like his real purpose is to stuff his family's pockets with money. And that's what the Hungarian people finally cottoned onto. They finally were like, wait, we're being told to hate on trans women? And we're being told, okay, we're gonna take your jobs away, we're gonna destroy the economy, we're gonna erect giant villas to orb and friends with taxpayer money, and we're going to spend hundreds, we're going to spend, I don't know how much huge amounts of Hungarian taxpayer money on fellowships for American conservative writers, American conservative politicians. TUCKER CARLSON. That's what Hungary became. Hungary became a place where the far right everywhere could come and get Hungarian taxpayer money to sit around and talk about how they were going to dismantle democracy and stuff money into the hands of oligarchs.

Bret Stephens (9:08)

Okay, explain this to me, Jason. So Benjamin Netanyahu sent his son to campaign for Viktor Orban. So you have Trump, Vance and Netanyahu all endorsing Victor Orban. Victoria Orban also deployed anti Semitic tropes as a scapegoat so that he could plunder and transfer money to his people. You specifically mentioned in your article the use of George Soros, which is often deployed here in right wing circles, that he's a globalist, this Jewish man that controls all the media. Furthermore, Orban had images of Zelensky up everywhere, making fun of him for being Jewish or scapegoating him for being Jewish. So explain this to Me, Jason?

Jason Stanley (9:57)

Yeah.

Bret Stephens (9:58)

I mean, wait, wait, hang on. Let me ask you. Explain this. Like, I'm five. Netanyahu. Netanyahu is all about we have to stamp out anti Semitism. Yet he goes and endorses a man who weaponizes anti Semitism to win elections. Do these people believe in anything?

Jason Stanley (10:22)

No. They believe in Israel is, you know, backs anti Semitism. One version of antisemitism everywhere, this sort of classic Nazi antisemitism was that we Jewish people are responsible for liberalism. We're responsible for globalism, we're responsible for universal values. We're responsible for LGBTQ rights and feminism. That's Nazi antisemitism. That's the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That's 20th century antisemitism. The most deadly anti Semitism that we Jews have ever faced. Said, we Jewish people are not real nationalists, we're globalists. We're employing these liberal, cosmopolitan values to destroy nations from within. And Netanyahu and Netanyahu's Israel, and in fact, Israel, for a long time, a lot of Israel's state policy has been directed towards attacking this version. This has been basically lining up behind this version of antisemitism, targeting Jewish people who believe in liberal, universal, cosmopolitan values. This was the antisemitism of National Socialism that connected my people to universalism. We should be connected to universalism. We stood for social justice throughout the 19th century. Throughout the 20th century, we have stood for globally for universal justice. What Soros did was create democratic institutions all across Eastern Europe that spread liberal humanist values. That was his goal. Freedom of speech, free inquiry. That's what Central European did, European University did in Hungary. It was a center of excellence for free inquiry. Yes, it had a gender studies program, but as we've seen from toxic masculinity, masculinity all across the world. Gender studies is probably the most important department in any university. So it studies what's actually happening. So what Netanyahu is doing is he's backing the kind of anti Semitic attacks that really are at the foundation of Nazism. Nazism is not. The Nazis were not against an ethno nationalist Jewish state until the mid-1930s. They were for evicting us from Europe to live in our own state. So Netanyahu has been down with this anti Semitic attack of attacking globalists and cosmopolitan. And that is really global. Jewish people have been central to liberalism. Jewish people, we have been central to social justice. So Netanyahu has joined Orban in this attack against universalism and liberalism, because certainly Netanyahu's Israel does not stand for universalism and liberalism. It allies itself with other ethnonationalist nations today. And so. And also, Netanyahu is an autocrat who's been in power forever. And so all these autocrats are allied with each other. It's part of the global fascist network. And Hungary has been essential to this global fascist network. Hungary has stuffed the courts. That's what we're seeing in Trump's America. We're seeing this utter stuffing of the courts with circuit courts, courts at every. Appeals courts at every level. The takeover of the media, that witnessing in the United States the attacks on universities that really was pioneered by Soros. The linking of universities to free inquiry, to liberal humanist values. You know, you do it in different ways in different countries. Orban focused very specifically on LGBTQ issues. So that really, I mean, Putin and Orban really, you know, strongly leaned into that. We have to recognize that when you attack LGBT communities now, it's an attack on democracy. It's a direct attack on democracy, because everyone wants to take down a democracy and create a corrupt kleptocracy, goes after LGBTQ populations as a scapegoat. So this structure that we're so familiar with now in the United States, this came from Hungary. And the world's autocrats look to Hungary as a way of. As a model. As the model. And what I watched in Hungary over the years, I first went to Hungary in 2009 when it was like the rising, cool. Budapest was the rising cool European city. And watching Orban just destroy Hungary's future in order to enrich himself and his cronies has been tragic. And this. This. This model now, that. Of. Of using owning the libs, of saying, you guys get owning the libs, you know, and we get your money and your economic future. This model, that's what Hungary pioneered, and we should just be sick of it.

Bret Stephens (15:58)

So that was. That was interesting to me in your article, that here's the bargain, and initially it works. You tell people, okay, you get to hate on these groups of people. You can hate on lgbtq, can hate on Jewish people. You can hate on Muslim immigrants. And that's the exchange that we're giving you. We're making that normal. But this was defeated. And I think about this kind of stuff a lot. Now that we're living in this fascist takeover in the United States, how are we going to defeat it? And in Hungary, we can look at how fascism took over, but now it appears as though it's been defeated, and it was defeated from the center A center right candidate. And I've been on here saying a lot like, you know, how are we going to defeat Donald Trump and fascism from the center? What is your take on that? How he was defeated from the center and how it, for my listeners, where we are in defeating our own fascism, Is that from the center? Is it from the left? What's your take on all of that?

Jason Stanley (16:57)

Professor STANLEY yes, absolutely. That's the question we have to address right now. I think what we see. So here's what Magyar did, and let me first sort of explain what Magyar did in his campaign and then talk about how I view the moral of this. Given a principle that I think is utterly fundamental, that you don't sacrifice any scapegoats, you don't drop. Our trans friends and fellow citizens and fellow human beings. You don't drop. Are protecting our immigrants, our immigrant neighbors. You don't go in for solidarity, cannot take the form of abandoning anyone. So Magyar himself is quite right wing. He's not pro lgbtq, he's anti immigrant, he's anti Muslim. I would say he didn't campaign on any of that. He campaigned on one thing, corruption. It's enough. Let's return to the rule of law, he said. He pointed at the things that all the cultural politics was meant to distract you from. How do scapegoats work? Scapegoats work by taking groups of people that are small and politically powerless and, and unifying different groups of people who might be opposed to each other, like rich people and poor people, and having them all say, okay, look, look at that scapegoat. That's your real enemy. So that's how scapegoat politics works. Then maybe you can get black people and white racists to vote for the same candidate because they're all being directed against trans people or immigrants. So what Magyar did is he said, look at what's happening. They're using that to enrich themselves. There's using that to give $400,000 fellowships to right wing American Christians or whatever. They're using that to fund global fascism worldwide. They're using that to buy villas for their families and take all the state contracts. So he focused on what the scapegoat. Scapegoat politics is always there to hide corruption. It's always there to direct your attention away from the real problematic minority, the billionaires. Now, that's a minority that does cause problems. That's a minority that is absolutely destroying our nation. So the goal of scapegoat politics is to direct our attention away from them. And what Magyar did was just focus on that. He said, look at what's happening to the country. Look at all the corruption. And so that kind of message, I think we're seeing some version of that from Mayor Mamdani. I was just about to say what Right, exactly. Who's saying, okay, let's focus on the fact that we should have jobs, we should have pre K, we should have affordability. Let's focus on that and let's see on whether all this attack on, you know, lower middle class university professors is helping us in any way. Let's just drop all that and focus on making our material lives better. And that's what Magyar did in Hungary. If we're going to defeat fascism, we're going to have to work in a coalition together with people we disagree with. Look at how fascist, look at how, that's how scapegoat politics works. You get people together, you get, you get, you know, you use toxic max masculinity to unify men who are going to be losing their health care and losing their jobs and maybe having some of their family deported that you create, use scapegoats to create solidarity. Well, we, to defeat fascism are going to have to create solidarity. We're going to have to tell, we're going to have to work with social conservatives. We're going to have to say social conservatives. We know you don't like tolerance of trans people. But first of all, we have to emphasize that doesn't affect your freedom. You are free to worship in your houses of worship. You're free to live as you like. And other Americans are free, should be free to live as they like their lives. Don't threaten your lives. And secondly, we're in this together. We're all, you know, the fascists work with solidarity. We're going to work with each other to get rid of, of corruption, if that. And that's going to mean working with people we disagree with. And that's what we have to do.

Bret Stephens (22:06)

I'm going to need you to counsel me through that because I don't want to work sometimes with bigots. And so that's a really good reminder that we need to, we don't have to compromise our own personal morals, but we have to see the greater good and freedom for all as a North Star. Okay, just a little bit of gossip. Now that Viktor Orban has lost, do they just like, is he done to the Putin's, Is he done to the Trumps? Is it just like you're a Loser. Hit the bricks, buddy. You are no longer helpful. Did they just drop him just like they did Pam Bondi's image in the trash can at the doj?

Jason Stanley (22:47)

No, because Orban has stacked the courts. He owns the media. He still has immense power in Hungary now. They did win a 2/3 majority in parliament. So they can change the constitution. Orban regularly changed the constitution. He just changed it to whatever he wanted to read. Ironically, when he first came in, he created a new fundamental law that was about, you know, Batra saying, you know, the whole idea here is great replacement theory that you need more Hungarian babies. So the whole constitution was going to be oriented around the Hungarian.

Bret Stephens (23:27)

Let me jump in there. And the birth rate dropped after this. Right. I saw in your article like, he's like, hey, we all need to breed. And so I'm going to make the conditions great for everybody to breed and have all these families. And then when people don't feel safe, they don't breed.

Jason Stanley (23:41)

Yeah. Nobody wants to live in a loser country. And if you, if you get rid, if you attack lgbt, LGBTQ people there, that, that, you know, you can't have creativity, you can't have, you can't have a creative free society without LGBTQ citizens. Who the hell wants to live in a city without, without, without diversity and creativity?

Bret Stephens (24:09)

Or Jason, I could say, who wants to live around a bunch of boring straight people?

Jason Stanley (24:16)

You know, you don't want to live. Who wants to raise their kids around a, with just where you're, you're eliminating, you know, any fun. Right, Exactly. And so, so, so it just, Hungary just became this dull, you know, this, this dull, boring place with. That was completely corrupt. And so, you know, do you think

Bret Stephens (24:40)

there's potential criminal as this charges or investigations into Viktor Orban as this new prime minister and his new government take over, will we see that that full arc come realized that he committed crimes or did he do all of this corruption legally?

Jason Stanley (24:59)

Well, what happens in this structures is you change the laws so you do the corruption legally because you change the laws. So that's like, look at what happened in the United States when they're doing all this crazy illegal stuff. But they're interpreting the laws in a certain way and they stack the courts. So the key thing is they're going to have to replace the Orban judges, which, you know, that's the problem. That's always the problem here. That's the problem with Poland as well, that appease the law and Justice Party stack the courts. So we have all these justices in the United States now who are, especially in Trump too, who are just really, really extreme, really owned by the billionaires and oligarch, you know, so. And really ideologically out there. So they're going to have to find some way of. They're going to have to change the laws back to. They're going to have to change the constitution to adjust Orban's kleptocratic constitution. They're going to have to change the funding structures, they're going to have to retire, return institutions to independence. Universities aren't, you know, Central European. I mean, the damage Orban did to Hungary, I mean, Central European university had the brightest future of any European university, and he shut the university town down and drove it out of the country. I mean, that is like, you know, the shock people had when their kids were being raised learning Hungarian and, and learning in Hungarian schools and these professors from all over the world, and suddenly they had to go to Austria to change their 10 year old to switch from Hungarian to German. I mean, imagine ejecting Harvard out of the United States. It does look like that's what Trump wants to do. So what we learn from Orban's Hungary is these fascists, they destroy their own countries first. They're. They're in it to destroy their own countries. They hate their countries and they want to just, you know, if you're attacking your LGBT community, you're attacking creative, you know, just. Just a powerful creative source. You're attacking your own citizens and you're attacking freedoms, you're attacking your great. Your universities, you're attacking your business community, you're attacking the independence of your institutions, you're attacking your country. And that's what Orban did. He destroyed his country. Will he pay for that? Well, that depends upon how much they can restore. Restore the independence of the judiciary, the independence of the media, the independence of the business sector. You know, like. Like, we. It should have been a warning sign for everyone when Desantis went after Disney. You know, That's the Orban thing. You go after the business people. That's what they're doing in the United States. That's what this is. You know, this is not just about LGBTQ Americans. This is about. This is about economic freedom as well, because they targeted the business sector for that whole strategy of targeting the business sector for DEI that's pioneered in Hungary. That is not American. Attacking businesses for trying to have a diverse workforce and a diverse leadership that is Hungarian and that is interfering in the private sector to promote, you know, white Christian men.

Bret Stephens (28:48)

And I think we'll leave it at that. But I just want to point out to the Democrats that happen to watch this. There is content rich messaging that the Republican Party looks to people in Hungary who want to tear their own country apart. That is their inspiration. This is layup messaging. All of this within with the flag and we support the troops and the founders and all that is they're liars. All right, Professor Jason Stanley, my friend, safe travels. We'll see you back here very soon.

Jason Stanley (29:19)

Thank you, Jennifer.

Bret Stephens (29:34)

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