Hungarian Racist Featured Speaker at US Republican Political Event in Budapest

UK media is report­ing that what is described as a “noto­ri­ous Hun­gar­i­an racist” was a fea­tured speak­er on the sec­ond day of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC), a US Repub­li­can event being held this year in Budapest. Accord­ing to The Guardian report, the event was head­lined by Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban and also fea­tured speech­es from Don­ald Trump, Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son, and Trump’s for­mer White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows:

May 21, 2022 A noto­ri­ous Hun­gar­i­an racist who has called Jews “stink­ing excre­ment”, referred to Roma as “ani­mals” and used racial epi­thets to describe Black peo­ple, was a fea­tured speak­er at a major gath­er­ing of US Repub­li­cans in Budapest. Zsolt Bay­er took the stage at the sec­ond day of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) Hun­gary, a con­ven­tion that also fea­tured speech­es from Don­ald Trump, Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son, and Trump’s for­mer White House chief of staff, Mark Mead­ows. The last fea­tured speak­er of the con­fer­ence was Jack Poso­biec, a far-right US blog­ger who has used anti­se­mit­ic sym­bols and pro­mot­ed the fab­ri­cat­ed “Piz­za­gate” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry smear­ing promi­nent Democ­rats as pedophiles. Bay­er, a tele­vi­sion talk­show host in Hun­gary, has been wide­ly denounced for his racism. Dur­ing the 2020 Black Lives Mat­ter protests, he wrote on his blog: “Is this the future? Kiss­ing the dirty boots of fuck­ing [racist epi­thet] and smil­ing at them? Being hap­py about this? Because oth­er­wise they’ll kill you or beat you up?” In 2011, he used the phrase “stink­ing excre­ment” to refer gener­i­cal­ly to Jews in Eng­land, and in 2013 wrote: “a sig­nif­i­cant part of the Roma are unfit for coex­is­tence. They are not fit to live among peo­ple. These Roma are ani­mals and they behave like ani­mals.” When he was award­ed the Hun­gar­i­an order of mer­it in 2016 by the country’s nation­al­ist prime min­is­ter, Vik­tor Orbán, the star speak­er on the first day of CPAC Hun­gary on Thurs­day, the US Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um protest­ed, say­ing it “reflects the long­stand­ing refusal of the lead­er­ship of Hungary’s rul­ing Fidesz par­ty to dis­tance itself from Bay­er, in spite of Bayer’s repeat­ed pat­tern of racist, xeno­pho­bic, anti­se­mit­ic, and anti-Roma incite­ment”. At the CPAC event on Fri­day, he appeared on stage with a promi­nent rightwing Hun­gar­i­an screen­writer talk­ing about gen­der issues. Bay­er focused on derid­ing Calvin Klein for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, com­par­ing a 2009 ad fea­tur­ing a white super­mod­el, whom Bay­er called “a very hot woman”, with a 2019 ad fea­tur­ing the Black rap­per Chi­ka who he described as “not so hot”, adding: “it’s clear that this ad was born under the aegis of Black Lives Matter”.

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to an ear­li­er Guardian report, Orban “laid out a 12-point blue­print to achiev­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er”, includ­ing call­ing for shows like Tuck­er Carlson’s to be broad­cast “24/7”.

The Hun­gar­i­an leader, Vik­tor Orbán, has told a con­fer­ence of US con­ser­v­a­tives that the path to pow­er required hav­ing their own media out­lets, call­ing for shows like Tuck­er Carlson’s to be broad­cast “24/7”. Orbán, recent­ly elect­ed to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blue­print to achiev­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er to a spe­cial meet­ing of the US Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC), under the slo­gan of “God, Home­land, Fam­i­ly”, held in Budapest. Hun­gar­i­an prime min­is­ter Vic­tor Orbán com­plains about migrants to Europe from ‘oth­er civ­i­liza­tions’. The Hun­gar­i­an prime min­is­ter said that with his fourth elec­toral vic­to­ry on 3 April, Hun­gary had been “com­plete­ly healed” of “pro­gres­sive dom­i­nance”. He sug­gest­ed it was time for the right to join forces. “We have to take back the insti­tu­tions in Wash­ing­ton and Brus­sels. We must find allies in one anoth­er and coor­di­nate the move­ments of our troops,” Orbán said.

Read the rest here.

Tuck­er Carl­son has fig­ured promi­nent­ly in a new and devel­op­ing alliance between US con­ser­v­a­tives and Euro­pean nation­al­ists, a poten­tial means for Rus­sia to exert covert influ­ence in Europe and the US, using Hun­gary as a plat­form. GIOR recent­ly pub­lished a report on this alliance titled “The Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Alliance: An Oppor­tu­ni­ty for Russ­ian Influ­ence?” The GIOR report details the role that Vik­tor Orban and the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment have been play­ing in the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Alliance.

The full report can be down­loaded here.

In April, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed on Carl­son’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port and defense of Hun­gary and Vik­tor Orban,

At the same time, we report­ed on the reelec­tion of Vik­tor Orban as Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter, described as “the Russ­ian Pres­i­den­t’s clos­est friend inside the EU and NATO.”