The annual CPAC Hungary conference kicked off on Thursday, 4 May, as the second Hungarian instalment of the grandiose event. Some elements were carried over from last year: for example, the venue was the Bálna shopping and cultural centre again, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, just like last year, delivered a speech.
The PM gave one of the opening remarks at CPAC Hungary 2023, a two-day event bearing the official slogan ‘United We Stand’.
He started by welcoming ‘the defenders of the free world’, then addressing his Georgian counterpart directly quickly after, who, as he put it, showed ‘how to live in Russia’s shadow while keeping your country and keeping the peace’.
He went on to call Hungary ‘an incubator where the conservative politics of the future is experimented with’, and a country where progressive liberals have actually been defeated by a Christian-conservative political force. This is why Hungary is the most appropriate place to host CPAC in Europe, Orbán noted. It all started with his Fidesz party’s 2010 victory, when they took over a country that was ‘in a state that was hard to imagine could have been any worse’, said the Prime Minister. He added that his administration has proved since 2010 that ‘only conservatives can help where liberal leftists have ruined a country’. The Hungarian success story has been ongoing since.
Orbán went on to state that George Soros was the primary reason why the continued conservative success in Hungary achieved worldwide attention.
In 2015, the Hungarian-born American financier decided to attack Hungary by unleashing millions of illegal immigrants through a slew of powerful NGOs following his nefarious programme. Hungary’s triumphant efforts to defend against that put the country in the limelight of the international media. He also emphasised that his fight has remained a defensive one since: neither he nor Hungary want to impress their ideas on Western countries, they just do not want the Western ideas to be impressed upon themselves.
The Prime Minister also talked about ‘the woke mind’ virus, a common theme throughout the day—a block of speaking events was even titled ‘No Woke Zone’. In his speech, PM Orbán said:
‘We are all under attack, in Europe as much as in America…The attack is not of an economic nature, we are facing a biological weapon, they launched a virus attack against us. This virus was developed in progressive liberal laboratories…This virus didn’t escape from the laboratory, but was developed, propagated and spread worldwide.’
In his opinion, this figurative virus is attacking the idea of nations, one of the most important inventions of the Western world. He went on to praise Pope Francis’ recent visit to Hungary; then struck a more lamenting tone, citing facts about how the Western world has been falling behind lately in terms of economic performance, demographics, and natural resources. PM Orbán identified ‘migration, gender, and the woke’ as the variants of the same ‘virus’ causing the downward spiral of the West, then stated that ‘wokeism and gender ideology in the West are just like communism and Marxism were’.
The Prime Minister showed his clear preference in next year’s US Presidential election: he claimed that there would be no war between Russia and Ukraine and peace would come if Donald Trump returned to the White House. Orbán even called on the former US President directly, saying: ‘Please come back, Mr President!’. Donald trump, in fact, also address the gathering in a video message.
He ended his speech by lauding the recent right-wing victories in Italy, Poland, and Israel. He also declared that the antidote to the woke mind virus is already developed and is available right here in Hungary. In order to win,
‘All it takes is to write well-visibly on the flag with enormous letters before the elections: no migration, no gender, no war,’
the Prime Minister suggested to his conservative allies around the world.
