GIOR Analysis — National Conservatism’s Weimar Echo (Series Part 3 of 3)

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) is pleased to present Part 3 of our series on the threat posed by the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA):

“We are not provinces of an empire,” Marine Le Pen declared to 6,000 sup­port­ers at the Patri­ots Europe ral­ly in Mor­mant-sur-Vernisson, France, in June 2025. Vik­tor Orbán pro­claimed that Hun­gary had become “the night­mare of the Euro­pean Union” and “the last bas­tion of Chris­t­ian Europe.”

The gath­er­ing sum­moned a ghost of pre-Hitler Weimar Ger­many: the Harzburg Front ral­ly of Octo­ber 1931, where Alfred Hugen­berg and his DNVP con­ser­v­a­tives formed what they called the “Nation­al Oppo­si­tion” with Hitler’s Nazis.  Hugen­berg planned to use the ral­ly “as a plat­form to orga­nize a shad­ow cab­i­net under his lead­er­ship that would unite the Right,” con­vinced he could con­trol the Nazi move­ment for his own polit­i­cal ends. With­in six­teen months, Hitler ruled alone. (The Ger­man Nation­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty (Ger­man: Deutschna­tionale Volkspartei, DNVP) was a nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive and monar­chist polit­i­cal par­ty in Ger­many dur­ing the Weimar Republic.)

That bargain—respectability rid­ing rad­i­cal­ism-now pow­ers a 21st-cen­tu­ry coalition.

The Global National Conservative Alliance

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) is an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion span­ning continents—Orbán’s Fidesz in Hun­gary, Le Pen’s Nation­al Ral­ly in France, Ger­many’s AfD, Spain’s Vox, Poland’s Law and Jus­tice par­ty, and the MAGA wing of the US Repub­li­can Par­ty. Think of it as a con­stel­la­tion of par­ties, think tanks and influ­encers linked by three core instincts: nation over supra­na­tion­al rules, cul­tur­al homo­gene­ity over plu­ral­ism, and deep sus­pi­cion of glob­al institutions.

For­eign autoc­ra­cies ampli­fy this net­work through what intel­li­gence ana­lysts call an engi­neered feed­back loop: mes­sages orig­i­nate in Moscow or Bei­jing, get pack­aged through encrypt­ed chan­nels, then re-enter West­ern debate as seem­ing­ly grass­roots content.

Hun­gary sup­plies the nerve cen­ter. The Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium (MCC), Orbán’s edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty and “key part of the gov­ern­men­t’s strug­gle to con­trol Hun­gar­i­an high­er edu­ca­tion,” has expand­ed its reach by estab­lish­ing MCC Brus­sels. Hun­gar­i­an crit­ics call it an “anti-EU, far-right polit­i­cal pow­er­house in Brus­sels.” The facil­i­ty, fund­ed by a mas­sive stock gift from the Orbán gov­ern­ment, spon­sors events and teach­ing posi­tions for promi­nent US right-wing fig­ures. “Trumpian Amer­i­can celebri­ties” reg­u­lar­ly vis­it Budapest. The Brus­sels cen­ter, led by direc­tor Frank Fure­di—also a con­trib­u­tor to RT, the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da outlet—aims to shake up the Brus­sels think tank ecosys­tem with its anti-EU, nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive ideology.

Orbán is can­did about the ide­ol­o­gy: “We are build­ing an illib­er­al state, a Chris­t­ian democ­ra­cy that breaks with dog­mas set by lib­er­als,” he declared in 2014. Eight years lat­er he dou­bled down: “We are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race.” Those lines now echo from Dal­las to War­saw, as many of Don­ald Trump’s appointees have attend­ed these con­fer­ences, under­scor­ing the alliance’s grow­ing influ­ence in U.S. pol­i­tics. Orbán’s ide­o­log­i­cal kin­ship with Moscow runs deep­er than rhetoric—Hun­gary has become Putin’s clos­est ally with­in the EU, block­ing sanc­tions and main­tain­ing ener­gy depen­dence even as oth­er Euro­pean nations cut ties.

The Moscow con­nec­tion runs deep­er than ide­ol­o­gy. Putin wants Rus­sia as “ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter” of “a new glob­al con­ser­v­a­tive alliance,” and Euro­pean far-right lead­ers have embraced sim­i­lar ide­ol­o­gy. Rus­sia has already begun employ­ing Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive themes in its influ­ence oper­a­tions, find­ing a more recep­tive West­ern audi­ence than in the past.

The Weimar Precedent: How Germany’s Conservatives Pioneered the Playbook

The DNVP was Ger­many’s main con­ser­v­a­tive party—the estab­lish­ment right that rep­re­sent­ed big busi­ness, landown­ers, and tra­di­tion­al­ists who hat­ed democ­ra­cy but loved order. They saw Hitler’s Nazis as use­ful thugs who could break the left and restore author­i­tar­i­an rule. The plan was sim­ple: give Hitler the chan­cel­lor title but sur­round him with con­ser­v­a­tive min­is­ters who would call the shots. They con­trolled the mon­ey, the news­pa­pers, and the social respectabil­i­ty the Nazis lacked.

What could go wrong?

The DNVP pio­neered what we now call nation­al con­ser­vatism. They preached Ger­man sov­er­eign­ty against the ‘dik­tat’ of Ver­sailles, demand­ed cul­tur­al puri­ty against ‘cos­mopoli­tan’ influ­ences, and promised to restore tra­di­tion­al hier­ar­chies that lib­er­al­ism had dis­rupt­ed. Like today’s GNCA, they built a respectable-sound­ing move­ment that chan­neled pop­ulist rage against inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and cul­tur­al change.

The tragedy was­n’t that they were so dif­fer­ent from the Nazis—it was that their ‘respectable’ nation­al con­ser­vatism had already pre­pared the ground for every­thing that followed.

Four Democracies Where the Pattern Repeats

What took the Nazis months now hap­pens in weeks.

Hungary – Orbán’s Regulatory Boa

Free­dom House rates Hun­gary 43/100, drop­ping it into Part­ly Free sta­tus. The coun­try serves as a lab­o­ra­to­ry for soft authoritarianism—maintaining democ­ra­cy’s form while gut­ting its substance.

The 2024 Sov­er­eign­ty Pro­tec­tion Act estab­lished a pow­er­ful new body with sweep­ing inves­ti­ga­to­ry pow­ers to com­bat “for­eign influ­ence.” The Sov­er­eign­ty Pro­tec­tion Office can demand doc­u­ments and tes­ti­mo­ny from any indi­vid­ual or organization—including jour­nal­ists and civ­il soci­ety groups—without requir­ing crim­i­nal sus­pi­cion or judi­cial review. Inde­pen­dent sta­tion Klu­brádió lost its license; watch­dog site Direkt36 faces month­ly tax audits; NGOs, oppo­si­tion fig­ures and even church aid groups must pub­lish donor lists or risk crip­pling fines. Hun­gary inten­si­fied restric­tions on Pride events in 2025 to the point of effec­tive pro­hi­bi­tion in Budapest, with orga­niz­ers fac­ing legal threats and fines.

The mechan­ics mat­ter more than the rhetoric. Orbán did­n’t seize pow­er overnight—he method­i­cal­ly cap­tured reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, packed courts with loy­al­ists, and stran­gled inde­pen­dent media through adver­tis­ing boy­cotts and tax harass­ment. The EU’s Arti­cle 7 pro­ceed­ings against Hun­gary have dragged on for years. The dam­age com­pounds daily.

United States – Project 2025’s Institutional Capture

The Her­itage Foun­da­tion’s Project 2025 work­shop con­vened archi­tects of Trump’s agen­da for a closed-door ses­sion on over­haul­ing the Euro­pean Union, show­ing the transna­tion­al nature of the move­ment. Amer­i­can nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives study the Hun­gar­i­an mod­el with admiration—and adap­ta­tion. Project 2025, designed by Her­itage, could let a pres­i­dent purge 50,000 civ­il ser­vants in 90 days.

Since 2020, 27 U.S. states have banned trans­gen­der youth from school sports, a cam­paign Nat-Con strate­gists frame as restor­ing “tra­di­tion­al” gen­der norms. Each leg­isla­tive ses­sion brings new restric­tions on vot­ing access, repro­duc­tive rights, and class­room discussions—death by a thou­sand cuts.

The Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty blessed pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty for “offi­cial acts” in Trump v. Unit­ed States, rul­ing that pres­i­dents have “absolute immu­ni­ty” for core con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers and “pre­sump­tive immu­ni­ty” for all offi­cial acts. The Court also weak­ened fed­er­al agen­cies’ reg­u­la­to­ry pow­er in Lop­er Bright Enter­pris­es v. Rai­mon­do, over­turn­ing the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine.

Germany – AfD’s Kremlin Echo Chamber

AfD sup­port now exceeds 30 per­cent in sev­er­al east­ern Ger­man states, mak­ing it the sec­ond-largest par­ty nation­al­ly. The par­ty’s rise par­al­lels sophis­ti­cat­ed Russ­ian infor­ma­tion war­fare on Ger­man-lan­guage platforms.

A mas­sive increase of pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da has flood­ed Ger­man Telegram chan­nels, some with over 145,000 sub­scribers. The pat­tern extends across bor­ders: 22 Pol­ish-lan­guage Telegram chan­nels col­lec­tive­ly spread pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da, includ­ing staged videos and false claims about Ukrain­ian support.

Ger­man-speak­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Covid-19 skep­tics, anti-vaxxers, and far-right pop­ulists have proven more sus­cep­ti­ble to Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. Moscow inserts fear through Telegram chan­nels, GNCA net­works echo it, and Krem­lin out­lets cite AfD out­rage as Euro­pean “proof.”

AfD politi­cians now open­ly ques­tion Ger­many’s NATO mem­ber­ship while prais­ing Putin’s “tra­di­tion­al val­ues.” The par­ty that began as a Euroscep­tic move­ment has mor­phed into a poten­tial bridge between Ger­man nation­al­ism and Russ­ian authoritarianism.

Israel – The Supreme Court That Almost Fell

Ear­ly 2023 saw Netanyahu’s coali­tion push a bill allow­ing a sim­ple Knes­set major­i­ty to over­ride Supreme Court rul­ings. The pro­pos­al would have shat­tered the last insti­tu­tion­al check on majori­tar­i­an pow­er in a sys­tem already lack­ing a writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion or mean­ing­ful sep­a­ra­tion of powers.

Mar­kets tanked, reservist pilots threat­ened to strike, and 600,000 Israelis packed the streets. The mil­i­tary’s reserve offi­cer corps open­ly defied the gov­ern­ment they had sworn to serve. The vote paused but has resur­faced twice—evidence that once illib­er­al tools appear, they rarely vanish.

As of July 2025, the bill remains shelved, but the coali­tion vows to return.

Mass mobi­liza­tion can still work—barely. Israel’s protests suc­ceed­ed because insti­tu­tions remained func­tion­al enough to ampli­fy pub­lic pres­sure. But each attempt to revive the judi­cial over­haul nor­mal­izes the idea that courts should bend to polit­i­cal will.

The Israeli case reveals both the pow­er and lim­its of pop­u­lar resis­tance. When hun­dreds of thou­sands march, politi­cians notice. When they go home, the leg­isla­tive machin­ery resumes.

The Bargain Weimar Conservatives Already Lost

The time­line of con­ser­v­a­tive capit­u­la­tion in 1933 Ger­many reads like a mas­ter­class in insti­tu­tion­al destruction:

30 Jan­u­ary 1933 – Hugen­berg’s DNVP forms a coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Hitler’s Nazis. Hugen­berg becomes Eco­nom­ics and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, believ­ing con­ser­v­a­tive influ­ence could con­trol the Nazi movement.

February–March 1933 – Fol­low­ing the Reich­stag Fire, Hugen­berg and DNVP cab­i­net mem­bers vote for the Reich­stag Fire Decree, wip­ing out civ­il liberties.

23 March 1933 – DNVP deputies vote for the Enabling Act, giv­ing Hitler dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­ers while con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers main­tain they can still guide policy.

26 June 1933 – Hugen­berg resigns from the cab­i­net and the DNVP dis­solves under Nazi pres­sure, his polit­i­cal influ­ence finished.

The les­son isn’t that con­ser­v­a­tives embraced fas­cism; it’s that they hol­lowed out insti­tu­tions first—and only then real­ized who real­ly need­ed them.

Why Elites Keep Losing the Tiger They Saddle

Con­ser­v­a­tive enablers repeat the same three mis­cal­cu­la­tions across coun­tries and decades. Each mis­take com­pounds the oth­ers until the tiger breaks free.

Pro­pa­gan­da net­works out­grow their patrons. Hugen­berg’s news­pa­per empire could­n’t com­pete with Nazi radio’s reach and emo­tion­al inten­si­ty. Today a meme can sprint from Moscow to Michi­gan in min­utes while tra­di­tion­al media strug­gles with fact-check­ing and edi­to­r­i­al restraint. Russ­ian pro-Krem­lin Telegram chan­nels increase their sub­scriber base sub­stan­tial­ly faster than neu­tral chan­nels broad­cast­ing reli­able information.

Emer­gency pow­ers are one-way gates. Hun­gary’s “tem­po­rary” media author­i­ty from 2010 still muz­zles broad­cast­ers 15 years lat­er. Once lead­ers taste gov­ern­ing by decree, democ­ra­cy’s messi­ness becomes intolerable.

For­eign autoc­ra­cies help because illib­er­al democ­ra­cies make eas­i­er part­ners. GIOR inves­ti­ga­tions doc­u­ment Russ­ian fund­ing attempts across Europe: €250,000 offered to Dutch par­ties, €2,000 month­ly pay­ments to Bul­gar­i­an politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, and exten­sive ties with far-right par­ties across mul­ti­ple countries.

The pat­tern holds because each gen­er­a­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive elites believes they’re dif­fer­ent. They con­trol the mon­ey, the respectabil­i­ty, the insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge. What could a pop­ulist strong­man do with­out them? The answer arrives faster each time.

Can the Cycle Break?

His­to­ry offers glimpses of resistance—moments when insti­tu­tions held, when cit­i­zens mobi­lized, when the slide toward author­i­tar­i­an­ism paused or reversed. These vic­to­ries remain frag­ile, but they illu­mi­nate what’s pos­si­ble when demo­c­ra­t­ic defens­es still function.

EU finan­cial lever­age can con­strain illib­er­al gov­ern­ments. Poland’s Law and Jus­tice par­ty attempt­ed to pack courts and seize con­trol of judi­cial appoint­ments, fol­low­ing the Hun­gar­i­an play­book. But Poland faced coor­di­nat­ed EU pres­sure includ­ing Arti­cle 7 pro­ceed­ings and the with­hold­ing of COVID recov­ery funds worth €36 bil­lion. The finan­cial pres­sure, com­bined with mas­sive street protests, helped lim­it insti­tu­tion­al dam­age and con­tributed to their elec­toral defeat in 2023.

Relent­less report­ing can expose and dis­rupt infor­ma­tion war­fare. Roman­ian jour­nal­ists sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed how Telegram manip­u­la­tion boost­ed ultra­na­tion­al­ist can­di­date Călin Georges­cu from obscu­ri­ty to fron­trun­ner sta­tus through near­ly 25,000 coor­di­nat­ed Tik­Tok accounts acti­vat­ed in three weeks. Their inves­ti­ga­tion exposed the mechan­ics so thor­ough­ly that Roma­ni­a’s con­sti­tu­tion­al court report­ed­ly annulled the elec­tion results, though this out­come remains disputed—marking what would be the first time a Euro­pean democ­ra­cy nul­li­fied nation­al elec­tions due to for­eign interference.

Mass mobi­liza­tion can still derail illib­er­al legislation—if insti­tu­tions remain intact. When Netanyahu’s coali­tion moved to elim­i­nate judi­cial over­sight, 600,000 Israelis flood­ed the streets week after week. Reserve mil­i­tary offi­cers threat­ened not to serve under an author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment. The leg­is­la­tion paused twice, demon­strat­ing that pop­u­lar resis­tance could still force polit­i­cal retreat.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic resilience requires redun­dant defens­es. The suc­cess­ful cas­es share com­mon ele­ments: mul­ti­ple pres­sure points (finan­cial, legal, social), func­tion­ing inde­pen­dent media, and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions capa­ble of sus­tained mobi­liza­tion. No sin­gle insti­tu­tion proved sufficient.

But these vic­to­ries car­ry warn­ings. Each required hero­ic effort to pre­serve rou­tine demo­c­ra­t­ic func­tion­ing. Each left under­ly­ing insti­tu­tions weak­er than before. The GNCA learns from every defeat, adapt­ing faster than democ­ra­cies can repair themselves.

The Stakes in Plain Language

Every packed court, silenced news­room and weaponized scare cam­paign nar­rows the are­na where cit­i­zens can peace­ful­ly dis­agree and com­pro­mise. Once that space shrinks below a crit­i­cal thresh­old, pol­i­tics shifts from per­sua­sion to force—and force has its own logic.

Insti­tu­tion­al destruc­tion fol­lows a pre­dictable sequence. First, cap­ture reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and pack courts with loy­al­ists. Sec­ond, stran­gle inde­pen­dent media through adver­tis­ing boy­cotts, tax harass­ment, and legal intim­i­da­tion. Third, hol­low out civ­il soci­ety by forc­ing NGOs to reg­is­ter as “for­eign agents” or face crip­pling audits. Fourth, manip­u­late elec­toral rules through ger­ry­man­der­ing, vot­er sup­pres­sion, and social media disinformation.

Each step makes the next eas­i­er, as few­er inde­pen­dent voic­es remain to sound alarms.

Nation­al con­ser­vatism does­n’t need a swasti­ka to be dan­ger­ous. It just has to make three ideas feel nor­mal: some peo­ple don’t belong here; law should bend to polit­i­cal will; democ­ra­cy is a lux­u­ry we can’t afford dur­ing this crisis.

Once those premis­es take hold, the rest fol­lows with bureau­crat­ic efficiency.

The time­line accel­er­ates with each iter­a­tion. Dig­i­tal net­works com­press the pro­pa­gan­da cycle from months to min­utes. For­eign fund­ing bypass­es tra­di­tion­al gate­keep­ers. Emer­gency pow­ers, once claimed, rarely expire. The DNVP need­ed twelve months to real­ize their mis­take. Today’s con­ser­v­a­tive enablers might have twelve weeks—or twelve days.

Democ­ra­cy’s great­est vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is its great­est strength. Open soci­eties cre­ate their own anti­bod­ies: inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, inde­pen­dent courts, com­pet­i­tive elec­tions, vibrant civ­il soci­ety. But open­ness also cre­ates attack sur­faces that closed soci­eties exploit.

The choice isn’t between per­fec­tion and cat­a­stro­phe. It’s between vig­i­lance and entropy, between insti­tu­tions that fight for them­selves and insti­tu­tions that qui­et­ly sur­ren­der. The GNCA suc­ceeds when democ­ra­cies treat pol­i­tics as a game rather than a strug­gle for the rules of the game itself.

The Last Photograph

The old con­ser­v­a­tive’s lega­cy is clear from the his­tor­i­cal record: he failed utter­ly in his attempt to use the Nazis for con­ser­v­a­tive ends, instead being out­ma­neu­vered and side­lined. The pho­to­graph from their 1933 coali­tion announce­ment shows Hugen­berg beam­ing beside the Nazi leader, con­vinced he held the real pow­er. With­in six months, his news­pa­pers were shut­tered, his par­ty dis­solved, his polit­i­cal career finished.

Today’s pho­to­graph might fea­ture Orbán and Le Pen at their June 2025 ral­ly, or Trump appointees vis­it­ing Budapest’s MCC cam­pus, or AfD lead­ers cit­ing Russ­ian Telegram chan­nels in the Bun­destag. The self­ies will age just as quick­ly. The smiles will fade just as fast.

Con­ser­v­a­tive elites keep believ­ing they can ride the tiger of illib­er­al nation­al­ism. They point to their mon­ey, their respectabil­i­ty, their insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge. They can­not imag­ine what a move­ment could accom­plish with­out them.

The tiger does­n’t care who bought the sad­dle. It nev­er stops being hun­gry. And it always remem­bers who thought they could con­trol it.

Sources & Further Reading

• Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report — Pri­ma­ry source for GNCA analy­sis and for­eign influ­ence documentation
• ARTICLE 19: Hun­gary For­eign Agents Law Analysis
• Telex: Sov­er­eign­ty Pro­tec­tion Author­i­ty Powers
• Wikipedia: Ger­man Nation­al Peo­ple’s Party
• Lar­ry Eugene Jones, “ ‘The Great­est Stu­pid­i­ty of My Life’: Alfred Hugen­berg and the For­ma­tion of the Hitler Cab­i­net, Jan­u­ary 1933,” Jour­nal of Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 63–87
• Spar­ta­cus Edu­ca­tion­al: Ger­man Nation­al Peo­ple’s Party
• Wikipedia: Human rights in Hungary
• Move­ment Advance­ment Project: Bans on Trans­gen­der Youth Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Sports
• Wikipedia: 2023 Israeli judi­cial reform
• Ger­man His­to­ry in Doc­u­ments: Alfred Hugen­berg at Harzburg Front
• Wikipedia: Alter­na­tive for Germany

For Part 1 of this series- Inside the GNCA: Anato­my of a Transna­tion­al Threat (Series Part 1 of 3)

For Part 2 of this series- How Close Is Nation­al Con­ser­vatism to Fas­cism? (Series Part 2 of 3)