A panel on post-liberalism at MCC Feszt 2025 featuring Patrick Deneen, Gladden Pappin, and Chad Pecknold has drawn sharp criticism from liberal thinkers on X, who condemned the speakers’ praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his model of illiberal democracy.

‘Borders must be protected, peace must be established, and the US and Hungary are strong allies in this,’ Director General for the Budapest-based conservative think tank Center for Fundamental Rights Miklós Szánthó has also told the audience in his speech at the annual Young Republicans National Convention (YRNC) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sydney Sweeney has found herself at the centre of a woke outrage after critics accused her American Eagle advert of racism and sexism. Dutch right-wing political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek defended Sweeney, arguing that the backlash reflects a deeper cultural hostility toward white women—something she knows from personal experience.

‘It is impossible to defend democratic legitimacy by hollowing out the very norms that give our institutions their credibility. Germany’s strength after 1949 was not rooted in the moral purity of its political representatives, but in the trust built around procedures, non-negotiable rules, and the idea that the parliament is bound not by political preference but by democratic representation.’

In its ‘Beyond the Óperencia’ series, Magyar Krónika is looking at the meeting points of America and Hungary, and at Hungarians in America, from penniless peasants to political emigrants and soldiers of fortune. This part will explore how Americans perceived the arrival of Eastern and Central European immigrants as a chaotic phenomenon.

In 1982, Hungary’s state security services launched Operation ‘Crystal’ to surveil an IMF delegation staying at Budapest’s Hilton Hotel. Phones were tapped, documents copied, and economic secrets uncovered—all under the watchful eye of the Kádár regime. The operation reveals the extent of Cold War-era espionage woven into everyday locations.

‘I started teaching the children ever since more of us from Wisconsin started attending the Csipke Camps…I try to put together a small performance for every major holiday, and in doing so, I help them learn more about Hungarian traditions. We meet weekly…but we gather beyond the rehearsals, to spend time together—we sing too, and try to preserve our Hungarian identity also in this way.’