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appalachiablue

(41,052 posts)
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 04:23 PM Aug 2021

Tucker Carlson, Far Right Embraced Orban, Hungary's Authoritarian Leader, Fox; Blueprint For US?



- How Tucker Carlson and the far right embraced Hungary’s authoritarian leader. Fox News host offers gushing praise for Viktor Orbán, spurring concerns about the erosion of democracy at home. The Guardian, Aug. 8, 2021. - Ed.

In the last few nights in Budapest,” mused Tucker Carlson, US RW media star, “I’ve run into a number of Americans who have come here because they want to be around people who agree with them, who agree with you. Do you see Budapest as a kind of capital of this kind of thinking?” Viktor Orbán, PM of Hungary, agreed it was “one of the capitals” producing “very nice ideas”. He went on to praise Trump as “a great friend of Hungary” and laud the former US president’s “America first” foreign policy.

The “kind of thinking” that Carlson and Orbán were discussing in a fawning TV interview on Thursday was, in their words, about families, borders and the struggle of Christian democracy against leftist liberalism. But for critics of both men, it was nothing less than an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist blueprint for the United States. Carlson, the most watched host on Murdoch’s Fox News, spent all week hosting his show from Budapest and promoting Hungary as a model for America’s future.

His target audience was the Trump base that turned a blind eye to his 4-year war on institutions that culminated in a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. Just as the US left has often pointed to Scandinavia as an example of social democracy delivering public benefits such as healthcare, it seems the far right now has its own lodestar in Europe – a democracy weakening incrementally but inexorably like a slow-boiling frog.

“Tucker is using the massive platform that he has at his disposal, via Rupert Murdoch, to legitimise authoritarianism,” said Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It’s not speculation. The Republican party has made it very clear that their agenda is to institute an autocratic style of governance to the point where they are willing to throw out democracy when elections don’t go their way.”...

Read More,
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/07/tucker-carlson-hungary-viktor-orban-donald-trump
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Also: Carlson: The Only Threat to Hungarian Democracy Is Joe Biden. Tucker’s embarrassing apologia for authoritarianism. NY Mag., Aug. 6, 2021,
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/tucker-carlson-viktor-orban-interview-fox-news-hungary-biden-interference.html
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DFW

(54,051 posts)
1. Well the Hungarian government of 1944 thought it was a good idea anyway, so there IS precedent
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 04:42 PM
Aug 2021

Considering who their allies were at the time, though, it’s not one I’d want to emulate in post-war Europe. The Republican Party has not yet been invited to revise history books in Europe, so the people there know who did what.

appalachiablue

(41,052 posts)
3. We know the hell of Hungary's fascism & nationalism then:
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 04:49 PM
Aug 2021

The Arrow Cross Party (?'Arrow Cross Party-Hungarist Movement', abbreviated NYKP) was a far-right Hungarian-nationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National Unity. They were in power from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945.

During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered outright, including many Jews and Romani, and 80,000 people were deported from Hungary to concentration camps in Austria. After the war, Szálasi and other Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by Hungarian courts...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party



- The "Shoes on the Danube Bank" memorial, Budapest, conceived by film director Can Togay with sculptor Gyula Pauer [hu] to honour those Jews murdered by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II.

appalachiablue

(41,052 posts)
11. During WWII, Swedish businessman & humanitarian
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 08:29 PM
Aug 2021

Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands of Jews targeted by German Nazis and Hungarian fascists. As an envoy of Sweden in Budapest, he issued protective passports and sheltered Hungarian Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory.



Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945) was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian Fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory.

On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared. He was later reported to have died on 17 July 1947 while imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the prison at the headquarters of the KGB secret police in Moscow..

- WWII. Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, under the regency of Miklós Horthy, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts, the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage.

.. With the Nazis now in control, the relative security from the Holocaust enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In April and May 1944 the Nazi regime and its accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. Under the personal leadership of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, who was later tried and hanged in Israel for his major role in the implementation of the Nazis' Final Solution, deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 people per day...More, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg

Response to appalachiablue (Reply #3)

HUAJIAO

(2,362 posts)
2. All of these authoritarian ideas are spreading like a cancer in the US.
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 04:44 PM
Aug 2021

Our leaders and we the people better wake up and stop being the boiling frog.

We need to see the forest and not just the trees.

It is everywhere at every level of society. The anti-mask and anti-vaccine insanity has nothing to do with masks or vaccines and everything to do with overthrowing the US government.


Girard442

(6,059 posts)
8. I sometimes wonder if the history books will say...
Sun Aug 8, 2021, 04:57 PM
Aug 2021

...that American democracy hit the skids when the Dems performed poorly in the downballot races in 2020.

One would hope we do better in 2022.

appalachiablue

(41,052 posts)
14. Nah, Tucker wont support any of the positives
Mon Aug 9, 2021, 12:50 PM
Aug 2021

in Hungary like natl. healthcare, paid tuition at state univ. or strict gun laws. For him it means restrictions on non- Xian and non whites- the 'others.' And heavily promoting families, as Mgt. Thatcher said, 'there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and families.'

Abolishing anything resembling democracy, or social democracy is the agenda Tucker and his pack are aiming at for decades.
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- The “kind of thinking” that Carlson and Orbán were discussing in a fawning TV interview on Thursday was, in their words, about families, borders and the struggle of Christian democracy against leftist liberalism.

- But for critics of both men, it was nothing less than an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist blueprint for the United States. Carlson, the most watched host on Murdoch’s Fox News, spent all week hosting his show from Budapest and promoting Hungary as a model for America’s future.

dianaredwing

(406 posts)
15. Yea
Mon Aug 9, 2021, 07:36 PM
Aug 2021

Can they all emigrate to Hungary? We could start a Fund Me account to pay for passage for those RWNJs who can't afford their own passage. Good riddance.

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