The National Conservatism Conference held in Brussels, Belgium last week made international headlines for the far-left activists’ efforts to shut down the event. It had to move venues multiple times after previous venues caved to progressive pressure and refused to host it despite prior agreements.
However, NatCon Brussels 2024 eventually did go ahead, with a discussion between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, also on the schedule. It proved that there is a good reason why far-left activists are afraid of the ideas propagated at the event: a two-minute clip of PM Orbán talking about illegal migration went viral on X (formerly Twitter), receiving 41,000 likes, 11,000 retweets, and around 1,000 comments.
In it, PM Orbán says:
‘It’s true that the number of [illegal] migrants in Hungary is zero. And the reason is very simple. We have a system, which is a fair system: we say that a border is a border. And to cross the border illegally, that’s an illegal action.
So we can’t accept if somebody’s illegally crossing the borderline, it’s a crime. It’s not a human right thing, it’s a crime.
We treat everybody who is doing that as a criminal.’
The same cohort of progressive activists who tried to shut down the conservative conference in Brussels, going against Western free speech values, also like to promote the idea that a country should ignore its immigration laws for supposed altruistic reasons. They believe people illegally crossing the border, and thus violating their host countries’ laws the moment they enter, should not be punished and deported, instead should be taken care of by the country’s social security system, drawing resources away from actual citizens.
It is a very weak case to make that can easily be refuted—no wonder they have to resort to trying to shut down free speech.
These same activists do not even attempt to get rid of immigration laws on the books in certain countries through the democratic process, such as the United States and Hungary, as they know they could never get the people elected to do that. Instead, they are vilifying border patrol and immigration enforcement agents, and hinder their work in any way possible.
In the viral clip of the discussion at NatCon Brussels 2024, PM Orbán continues to say:
‘We understand that many people would like to come, let’s say, to Hungary. But there is a procedure for that. If you would like to come to Hungary, you first have to submit your request to the Hungarian authorities, let’s say at an Embassy in Belgrade, which is a neighbouring country’s capital, and then stay and wait. So nobody can step into the territory of Hungary prior to getting the final decision of the Hungarian authorities on whether they let you come in or not. So, you have to wait outside, this is the key issue.’
The comments are overwhelmingly positive under the viral post. One user wrote: ‘Short but intense civic education lesson. Education is important;’ while another posted: ‘As it should be. Your country and your people should always comes [sic!] first’.
The original poster also followed up with a comment, getting 500 additional likes on it, writing: ‘‘The solution is simple, you just need to want it. Orban wants it because he loves his people. Long live Orban’.
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