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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos from I'm here with Noelle King, but she's in Budapest, Hungary, where weirdly there is an American conservative political conference happening.
--:-- Noelle King: Yeah, the conservative political action conference is having kind of a franchise event here. I was very excited about it. Listen to a couple of these CPAC themes or panels, Sean. Western civilization under attack. Culture wars in the media. The father is a man. The mother is a woman. There's not a single panel that I can see about free markets or small business or lower taxes. It sounds like a new kind of American republicanism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, exactly. So how was the conference? Was it a weird scene? Can I play you something?
--:-- Noelle King: Yes. May I ask a follow-up, please?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No follow-ups? What's going on?
--:-- Noelle King: I got kicked out of CPAC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You got kicked out of CPAC?
--:-- Noelle King: Hungry. That's enough. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- Noelle King: Didn't know that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- Noelle King: I've never met an AI agent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Layering is an art form. All it takes is a bit of intention, style, and, of course, the perfect cold weather staples.
--:-- Noelle King: So find the perfect look for you with the help of Macy's Fall Fashion Guide, your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts. From leather to denim to cozy knits, find everything you need to piece together your new fall look.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Explore the Macy's Fall Guide for yourself and shop in-store or online at Macy's.com.
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King, and I got kicked out of CPAC Hungary. Today Explained producer Miles Bryan spent weeks applying for press credentials for CPAC. So many emails. He got no response. So we showed up and they told us you were supposed to apply for credentials for CPAC. But we did. No dice. So anyway, I strolled in and came upon a press conference.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Excuse me, are you taking questions from the press?
--:-- Noelle King: CPAC chair Matt Schlapp was talking about freedom. Hello, I have a question for Mr. Schlapp. My name is Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He answered my question. Too often the American government feels its job to dictate to other countries. And then I was ejected from CPAC Hungary. Next day, same deal. Couldn't stroll in this time. There was too much security. Other reporters were outside, too.
--:-- Noelle King: I don't think we're getting in. There was an American representative of CPAC outside who told us, Hungarian conference, Hungarian rules. And those partners are the ones who make the operational decisions. Anyway, freedom or something.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Of course, the point of the CPAC conference is the ideas. I'd arranged an interview with two men who were going to be at CPAC, and I got a hold of them before they vanished inside. Istvan Kish is Hungarian. He's the executive director of the Danube Institute, which is a conservative think tank in Budapest. Gladden Papin is American. He's an associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas, and he's spending a year in Budapest on a fellowship.
--:-- Noelle King: These are ideas, guys. They are not politicians, and they're a particular type of conservative. As you're going to hear, they're not the type that wants free markets and small government. They want the government involved in our lives.
--:-- Istvan Kish: One example, Hungary wants a bigger population. So the government gives loans and tax breaks and other benefits to Hungarians and gets more generous the more kids you have. Istvan thinks Hungary can teach that. Gladden thinks the U.S. should learn it.
--:-- Gladden Papin: What is the purpose of the CPAC conference as far as you're concerned? Well, the Republican Party has always been a more individualistic party. It focuses on lowering tax rates, making gestures toward traditional family structures, and maybe engaging in foreign interventions.
--:-- Noelle King: Hungarian conservatism, European conservatism is very different. There's a strong social welfare state tradition in Europe. But in Hungary, that's been turned toward supporting traditional families and really supporting their own conservative voter base, I guess.
--:-- Gladden Papin: So it represents a different kind of conservatism, different kind of approach to politics that's less individualistic. And I think that that is causing a lot of American conservatives to come over and see what's going on.
--:-- Noelle King: I imagine there's another type of American conservative that's a little freaked out by this. The idea of the Republican Party, the traditional Republican Party, kind of lining up behind the idea of a social welfare state.
--:-- Gladden Papin: I mean, this is the party of free markets. Am I out of the loop?
--:-- Noelle King: No, you're right. Look, I think there are some elements of the Hungarian conservative policy that are immediately appealing to American conservatives, like, You know, Trump talked about building a wall and, you know, Hungary in 2015 actually did build a wall on its southern border.
--:-- Gladden Papin: So there's some obvious overlap there. But you're right. These programs that support families in Hungary involve amounts of money that would probably make some Democrats blush in the United States.
--:-- Noelle King: I think that some American conservatives have started to realize that their earlier policy of supporting whatever big corporations do isn't working in their interest anymore. That's causing some tension within the party because the old donor base that drove the policies of the 1980s and 1990s is still there.
--:-- Gladden Papin: But, you know, we live at a time in the United States now where young people are having trouble imagining purchasing a house. And so when you look at the Hungarian pro-family policy, it's really about enabling people to make that first step into a responsible homeownership or building or expanding a house.
--:-- Noelle King: And so I think there is a lot of new interest in what that looks like among American conservatives.
--:-- Istvan Kish: Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Hungary a Christian democracy. Isvan, what does this mean?
--:-- Istvan Kish: Well, I think a lot of people confuse this with you know Hungary being a Christian state and that not the same I think he always talking about Hungary and broadly speaking Europe being a continent a country which is based on Christian values which most of the population share.
--:-- Noelle King: These people might not be church-going people, they might not be over-religious in their everyday life. But still, if you look at the actual statistics, even broadly in Europe, there is about 70-80% of people who identify themselves as Christians.
--:-- Istvan Kish: And by advocating Christian democracy, I think he's more looking at these Irish head values, which we have to protect, which we have to try to support. And this might be an alternative to liberal democracy.
--:-- Noelle King: Prime Minister Orban and Fidesz, his party, have changed some of the laws in Hungary so that they make life more difficult for LGBTQ people. There is a law that prevents the teaching of anything that involves homosexuality in schools.
--:-- Istvan Kish: American listeners will be very familiar with this from Florida and from the United States. But I think the overarching criticism is Christianity, OK, fine. But if you're using Christianity to make laws and policies that disadvantage or even persecute LGBTQ people, you've got a real problem.
--:-- Gladden Papin: I think that you might say that there's some discrimination against LGBTQ people. But in Hungary, homosexuals can actually live in a civil partnership and have 99% of the same rights as people who are married.
--:-- Noelle King: In the United States, that reads as discrimination. Among many people, that reads as discrimination.
--:-- Gladden Papin: In your mind, is that not discrimination?
--:-- Istvan Kish: It's hard to say. I think here, because in our constitution, and because most of the people believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, we do not feel that this is overly discriminating against these people, because they can still have the civil partnership, and they can still have, as I said, 99% of the same rights and benefits as, let's say, ordinarily heterosexual couples have.
--:-- Gladden Papin: Glad, and I want to get the American perspective on this, because you know that in the United States, what we might call marginalized groups or once marginalized groups, LGBTQ people would be included in that. They have fought to get rights. They have fought to be treated equally.
--:-- Noelle King: And here we are in Hungary where Istvan has just said, you might call this a little bit discriminatory. It's a minority of people who are being discriminated against with a particular policy. But those people are still part of the country. They're still part of Hungarian society or American society.
--:-- Gladden Papin: Isn't democracy about pluralism?
--:-- Istvan Kish: I think it's clear that most Americans want to live in a fair and pluralistic society. But I think it's become clear over time that the question is, what are the basic forms of family that are in the driver's seat?
--:-- Gladden Papin: To be honest, I think a lot of American conservatives and just ordinary American people feel that some very, very small groups of sexual minorities have maybe had an outsized impact on the way that education is undertaken and maybe some other elements of public life.
--:-- Noelle King: So Hungary has a different approach. It is establishing a norm that the family is constituted of a mother and a father.
--:-- Gladden Papin: Let's be honest, this was the norm in the Western world until approximately 7 to 10 years ago. So it's not like a big stretch or something that's completely strange.
--:-- Noelle King: I think in liberal democracies now, actually it's more like the tyranny of the minorities.
--:-- Gladden Papin: I mean, in America, you had states where you had popular referendums about this, and most of these states voted against same-sex marriage. And then you took it up to the Supreme Court, which we all know is an unelected body, and they approved that, yes, you can have same-sex marriage.
--:-- Noelle King: In my mind, that's undemocratic.
--:-- Gladden Papin: — Gladden, as an American from a country where checks and balances really are part of what we do well or what historically we have done well, where our Constitution is sacred in a lot of ways, you've been living in Hungary.
--:-- Gladden Papin: You know, I grew up in Arkansas. Let's look at Arkansas today. If the Republicans win every seat in the Arkansas House of Representatives, they win every district. Then there are no Democrats in the House of Representatives.
--:-- Noelle King: If FIDAS wins all districts, which it didn't, there are going to be seats for the opposition in parliament.
--:-- Gladden Papin: From an American standpoint, America is much more, potentially much more majoritarian in particular states. There's this proportional representation thing, which is hard to understand.
--:-- Noelle King: But even if Fidesz were to win every district in the country, there would be a large number of seats reserved for the opposition.
--:-- Gladden Papin: I was reading Viktor Orban's inaugural speech, the one he gave after he won the election. Quote, the suicidal waves of the Western world belong to the picture of the war-torn decade ahead of us.
--:-- Noelle King: I see as such a suicide attempt the great European population exchange program, which wants to make up for the lacking or missing European Christian children with adults, migrants arriving from other civilizations.
--:-- Gladden Papin: This is replacement theory.
--:-- Noelle King: I imagine you're both aware that last weekend, a young man in Buffalo, New York, walked into a supermarket and shot and killed 10 people. He was deliberately targeting black people.
--:-- Gladden Papin: This young man was a devotee of this idea that white Americans, white people, are being replaced with minorities.
--:-- Noelle King: I hear the prime minister of Hungary saying something that is effectively replacement theory.
--:-- Gladden Papin: We are at CPAC. Tucker Carlson will be beaming in soon. Tucker Carlson also a big proponent of replacement theory.
--:-- Noelle King: How do you not hear a statement like that from the prime minister of this country or from Tucker Carlson, a fellow attendee, and not really feel like there's something wrong here?
--:-- Istvan Kish: Well, I think that Hungary is a country with a unique history that really does need to preserve its traditional nation. If Hungary changes, then Hungary no longer exists.
--:-- Noelle King: It's not like... If Hungary changes, it becomes Germany. It becomes France. If Hungary changes it becomes another European country That not a category It that good and if you don want that then isn it our right to don want it
--:-- Gladden Papin: So Hungary is a small nation. We are surrounded with Slavic people, German people. Even in the Middle Ages or the 18th century, you always had these poems, literature works, which were talking about how Hungary will disappear.
--:-- Noelle King: They'll be washed away by the Slavic wave. You might think that this is, you know, something from history. It's no longer important. But I think most Hungarians still think it is important.
--:-- Gladden Papin: And they would like to preserve this culture and heritage.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: [Over the phone] You know, the short answer is that Hungary is the premier international model for democratic backsliding in a consolidated democracy.
--:-- Noelle King: That sounds like a little bit political science jargony, broken down. What it means is Hungary is a truly striking case of a democracy sliding backwards into some kind of authoritarian system.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: It's that some kind of actually that I've been really struggling with because I hear authoritarianism and I think I think secret police. I think there are certain things I can't say in public.
--:-- Noelle King: And every Hungarian I talked to, whether they were critical of Prime Minister Viktor Orban or not, kind of made it a point to say, incidentally, I can say whatever I want.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: But is that authoritarianism or is that something different?
--:-- Noelle King: I had the same experience you did in Hungary when I'm there, right? Is that people will just will talk very freely, but does not mean that there's actual freedom of speech in the country.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: If you are a media magnet who wants to run a media outlet that is critical of the government, either you're going to be marginal or you're going to be destroyed.
--:-- Noelle King: The government will audit you repeatedly. They will hound you by making sure you don't get ad revenue. They will ensure that your competitors get certain advantages, your government-friendly competitors.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And this pattern has repeated over and over again to the point where depending on whose estimate you buy, between 80 and maybe even upwards of 90% of all media in the country is owned by the government and its cutouts.
--:-- Noelle King: So it is an authoritarian system that is designed to mimic certain freedoms that democratic countries have and to make people think that they actually have them.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: For some time, you've been making the argument that Orbanism, Victor Orban's style, is creeping into the United States, creeping Orbanism, if I may.
--:-- Noelle King: And I want to talk about one figure in particular whom you've written about, Florida's governor Ron DeSantis.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: What has Ron DeSantis done that reminds you of Viktor Orban? What's the American analog here?
--:-- Noelle King: The best way to think about this is the whole saga involving Florida's don't say gay law and the subsequent fight with the Disney Corporation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Now, this law is very similar to a Hungarian law passed about a year prior to the American law. The European Commission has urged Hungary to repeal the law, but Budapest says EU efforts to overturn it will be in vain, insisting the measure is there to protect children.
--:-- Noelle King: Some things that I've seen suggest the American law was literally inspired by Orban's law, which was an attempt to curtail the speech rights of LGBT individuals.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: There this element of the use of social policy and socially conservative ideas as a means of cracking down on individual liberties and making it difficult for your cultural opponents and your political opponents to express themselves in public spaces.
--:-- Noelle King: But then afterwards, what's potentially even more striking is that when Disney, which is obviously a very big company in Florida, protested, DeSantis decided to retaliate by attempting to strip their special tax privileges in a place called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, where Disney basically functions as a mini government.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Florida revoked that, basically in direct retaliation. This state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida. It is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.
--:-- Noelle King: That is classic urbanism. The idea that what you do is you take a regulatory policy that was designed for other reasons, namely encouraging economic development and boosting the sort of welfare of people in a particular part of Florida and using it to punish a corporation that speaks out.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: That is, I think, the essence of Orban's style of rule is twisting government powers.
--:-- Noelle King: Obviously, there is a certain type of Republican that is looking at Hungary and is very interested in what Viktor Orban is doing, how he's done it.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Viktor Orban very famously sort of consolidated power in all of these different areas, the judiciary, the media. He rewrote the Constitution.
--:-- Noelle King: These are things that you can't do in the United States. Nobody's gonna come along, throw out the Constitution, rip it up, write a new one, and say, these are the new laws.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And so some of this concern that maybe America is drifting toward a Hungary-like model seems really overwrought to me.
--:-- Noelle King: Where do you come down on this?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The concern to me is not that Donald Trump comes in in a second term and all of a sudden he is doing everything that Orban has done on the federal level.
--:-- Noelle King: I really worry about people like DeSantis employing these kinds of powers because states have incredible amounts of power to change the electoral system, to make life difficult for people who live there and disagree with their policies.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And it is possible in 21st century America that you could get a version not of the aggressive, basically naked kind of authoritarianism, but a more subtle Hungarian version cropping up in certain states.
--:-- Noelle King: And you've already seen warning signs of that, not just in Florida, but also I think most notably Wisconsin and North Carolina, who are two of the real Republican innovators on figuring out how to undermine a democratic system from within.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: What do you say to someone who makes this argument? Zach, this is just Americans looking abroad the way they always do. You're mad. You're upset because it's Republicans doing it.
--:-- Noelle King: But if liberals do this with Sweden, you don't go and write a piece for Vox saying we should be worried about this.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: To which I say, are elections competitive in Sweden? Are elections competitive in Norway? Yes, they are. Are elections competitive in Hungary? No, they're not.
--:-- Noelle King: The opposition, as we just saw in the election of April this year, was not competing on a fair playing ground. They had no real chance to win.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And when you look to a country like that, it's just categorically different than it is looking to a country like Sweden, because you're talking about a country that's pioneering a model for democratic destruction.
--:-- Noelle King: And the means by which it accomplishes these things are inextricably intertwined with its social conservatism. The conservatism is used as a pretext for power grabs.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And so when you're looking to model that, what you are modeling is a playbook for authoritarianism.
--:-- Noelle King: It's not just social conservative policies, right? And there are certain policies that if you want to take from Hungary, like subsidies for families, right?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: I have no problem with that, but lots of countries subsidize families and provide superior childcare options to what we have in the United States.
--:-- Noelle King: Why do you pick that country? Why the one that also happens to be pretty much the European Union's only authoritarian government?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: In 25 years, with the way the United States is going, with its democracy feeling a little shaky in our lifetimes, does the United States look more like Hungary? Or does the United States stay the United States we know.
--:-- Noelle King: Something kind of like Hungary is not implausible.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: You couldn't imagine any kind of top-down electoral rigging in the way that you get in Hungary, but what you could imagine is a basically successful attempt to change enough states into Hungary-like statelets or fiefdoms where national elections are no longer meaningfully competitive, or at least Democrats are playing on such an unlevel playing field that they almost never get to wield power effectively, especially given Republican control over the courts.
--:-- Noelle King: That's not inconceivable.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: It's also not inevitable, right? It depends on what Democrats choose to do. It depends on if Republicans continue down the path that they are on.
--:-- Noelle King: And what I do think we should be is alarmed, alarmed at the similarities between the situation
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Alarmed that in a country that has a much longer and much more robust tradition of democratic governance than Hungary does, that you're starting to see enough similarities that we could maybe think about ourselves as being in the same situation as Hungary right before Orban took over and authoritarianized the system.
--:-- Noelle King: Zach Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Kasanam? Kasanam.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Talima Shaw.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: [Over the phone] Kasanam?
--:-- Noelle King: It was edited by Jolie Myers and Matthew Collette.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: [Over the phone] Kasanam?
--:-- Noelle King: It was fact-checked by Tori Dominguez and Laura Bullard.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: [Over the phone] Kasanam?
--:-- Noelle King: And it was engineered by Paul Mounsey and Afim Shapiro.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: [Over the phone] Kasanam?
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
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