CPAC Hungary and other bits of racism and authoritarianism

[massraider]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/21/trump-shares-cpac-hungary-platform-racist-antisemite?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1653129188 

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.

 

I know what you are saying:

Finally, a gathering of American Republicans in Hungary, what took so long?

[Philo Beddoe]

It has to be tough living in a country where the racists and authoritarians are winning and gaining Black, Brown and Asian voters in record numbers. 

[massraider]

29 minutes ago, Philo Beddoe said:

It has to be tough living in a country where the racists and authoritarians are winning and gaining Black, Brown and Asian voters in record numbers. 

I'm white, so.....it's not rough at all. 

[massraider]

Nothing says “America First” like CPAC meeting in Hungary.

[Alex P Keaton]

35 minutes ago, Philo Beddoe said:

It has to be tough living in a country where the racists and authoritarians are winning and gaining Black, Brown and Asian voters in record numbers. 

What does that have to do with the OPs link?

[Philo Beddoe]

22 minutes ago, Alex P Keaton said:

What does that have to do with the OPs link?

It’s a troll post. 

[BladeRunner]

This is the same type of post that the OP got admonished for yesterday by the FBG Moderator after he hit the report button on me.

This is pretty much his MO in the PSF.

Edited May 23 by BladeRunner

[JIslander]

14 minutes ago, Philo Beddoe said:

It’s a troll post. 

If it's "winning", why stop ? (apparently)

[Alex P Keaton]

9 minutes ago, BladeRunner said:

This is the same type of post that the OP got admonished for yesterday by the FBG Moderator.

This is pretty much his MO in the PSF.

If he removes the last sentence, I don’t really see the issue.  It’s newsworthy that someone with those views got an audience at the conference.

That said the last sentence is beyond unnecessary.

[timschochet]

6 minutes ago, BladeRunner said:

This is the same type of post that the OP got admonished for yesterday by the FBG Moderator.

This is pretty much his MO in the PSF.

The movement towards extremism on both sides of the political spectrum has been a major topic of discussion in this forum since it started. I think this story, if accurate, is pretty newsworthy. 

[BladeRunner]

2 minutes ago, Alex P Keaton said:

If he removes the last sentence, I don’t really see the issue.  It’s newsworthy that someone with those views got an audience at the conference.

That said the last sentence is beyond unnecessary.

 

that's the problem - he can't ever stop himself from making those type of incendiary and trollish comments.

The fact that he insists on adding those type of comments means he isn't really serious about reporting news and having a quality discussion - it's just trolling. 

Edited May 23 by BladeRunner

[Captain Cranks]

1 minute ago, BladeRunner said:

 

that's the problem - he can't ever stop himself from making those type of incendiary and trollish comments.

Trollish comment aside, what are your thoughts on the gathering in Hungary with people like Bayer as speakers?

[BladeRunner]

4 minutes ago, Captain Cranks said:

Trollish comment aside, what are your thoughts on the gathering in Hungary with people like Bayer as speakers?

 

Well, yeah, it's not good for sure.  Did those US speakers know this guy was going to be there?

[Alex P Keaton]

6 minutes ago, BladeRunner said:

 

that's the problem - he can't ever stop himself from making those type of incendiary and trollish comments.

The fact that he insists on adding those type of comments means he isn't really serious about reporting news and having a quality discussion - it's just trolling. 

I’m probably so used to trolling in here that it’s easy to ignore the single sentence add ons.

[timschochet]

1 hour ago, Philo Beddoe said:

It has to be tough living in a country where the racists and authoritarians are winning and gaining Black, Brown and Asian voters in record numbers. 

The “record numbers” is wrong. George W Bush had over 40% Hispanic support. No current Republican has come close to that number, and the amount of blacks who support Democrats remains incredibly high. I’m not sure about the Asian breakdown, though it was majority Democrat in the last election. 

That being said, there IS movement, largely due to inflation. If inflation continues to get worse (and unfortunately there are many signs that it will) it will become the only issue for most voters, amd they will choose Republicans because Democrats are the ones currently in charge. 

[Ramblin Wreck]

Great.  I won't ever vote for Bayer for President.  Thanks for the heads up

[timschochet]

It should be remembered that it was inflation that caused the Nazis to come to power in 1933. 

It should also be noted, at this time, that former President Donald Trump, in his latest repost on Truth Social, appears to be proposing or endorsing civil war in this country over inflation: 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-shares-post-suggesting-civil-003103426.html

[BladeRunner]

6 minutes ago, timschochet said:

It should be remembered that it was inflation that caused the Nazis to come to power in 1933. 

It should also be noted, at this time, that former President Donald Trump, in his latest repost on Truth Social, appears to be proposing or endorsing civil war in this country over inflation: 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-shares-post-suggesting-civil-003103426.html

 

Yeah, I don't endorse Civil War as much as I think we're headed that way between right/left.  Both sides are moving away from the center and that is NOT good.

[IvanKaramazov]

What would be the Democratic equivalent of something like this?  Holding a little conference in Cuba?  Or Venezuela?  

Has something like that happened before?  I honestly don't know.  It's not incredibly unusual for groups of congresspeople to take fact-finding trips to various parts of the world, but this sounds different than that.

[massraider]

1 hour ago, Philo Beddoe said:

It’s a troll post. 

Nah, yours was a troll comment. 

I pointed out something rather newsworthy. Let me know when you do the same

[ignatiusjreilly]

A plea to all the conservatives here: I don't know how much you follow what's going on in Hungary, but I lived there for three years in the '90s and have been following its politics ever since. You may vaguely know that Viktor Orban gets praised a lot by Tucker, that he "takes on the libs" and stands up for Christianity and against immigration. But I'm telling you, this guy is a corrupt thug and not someone you want to get in bed with. Think of how you feel when Bernie or a member of the Squad says, "At least Castro gave his people free health care," as if that makes up for him dismantling democracy.

Orban is smart in that he didn't just dissolve Parliament and declare himself ruler-for-life, nor does he send a bunch of goons to beat up opposition journalists and destroy their printing presses. But he has nonetheless achieved his goal of making Hungary effectively a one-party state with a pro-government media that would make Pravda blush. He tilts the playing field so much that it's basically impossible for his party to lose elections, and he's rigged the electoral system to the point where a small numerical voting majority becomes a legislative supermajority that allows him to do whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, if you want to get rich in Hungary you sing the government's tune, and if you don't do that they'll destroy you. So if you have an opposition newspaper, suddenly you find that no one wants to advertise and you have to shut down. But then, lo and behold, this rich dude (who happens to be from Orban's hometown) offers you a lifeline and buys the paper from you for more than its currently worth (if far less than it used to be worth). He fires all the journalists, the paper becomes slavishly pro-government, and what do you know? Advertisers come flocking back, and now he's tripled his investment.

I've honestly never understood the need for people on both the right and the left to support dictators just because they happen to be on the "correct" side. As someone on the left, I feel no more kinship with Kim Jong Un or Nicolas Maduro than I do with Putin or Orban. (It's also why, as a supporter of Israel, I'm profoundly uncomfortable with it cozying up to the Sunni dictatorships like Qatar and the UAE).  Respecting democracy is kind of a red line for me.

I get that sometimes we have marriages of convenience (Stalin during WW2, right-wing governments during the Cold War). But that doesn't me we ever forget who these people are.

[massraider]

1 hour ago, BladeRunner said:

 

that's the problem - he can't ever stop himself from making those type of incendiary and trollish comments.

The fact that he insists on adding those type of comments means he isn't really serious about reporting news and having a quality discussion - it's just trolling. 

More stalking. 

[massraider]

More relevant info on the CPAC speaker:

In a 2011 article for Magyar Hírlap, Bayer referred to Jews as "stinking excrement called something like Cohen". The previous year, he said the Hungarian Academy of Science had been affected by Jewish infiltration. In the Austrian daily Die Presse, the journalist Karl Pfeifer described Bayer as a "fecal anti-Semite" in an article published during 2011.

In 2013, Bayer wrote an opinion piece for Magyar Hírlap referring to the killings of Marian Cozma and Gergely Sávoly, where Roma were suspected of involvement, and commented that many gypsies are "animals... unfit to live among people" and "potential murderers [who] should not exist." The article generated negative reactions in Hungary and throughout Europe. A Fidesz spokeswoman said that Bayer's views were his own, while Fidesz communications chief Máté Kocsis said critics of Bayer's article were "siding with" Roma murderers. The Hungarian Media Authority fined the journal 250,000 forints and ordered the content removed from the Internet. Bayer said in 2016 that Pope Francis was “either a senile old fool or a scoundrel” for his pro-refugee sentiments.

In a November 2020 opinion article in Magyar Nemzet, "Breaking the Taboo" Bayer called black criminals "s". The article was later censored by Magyar Nemzet.

In December 2020, Bayer said on HírTV that an "old friend and comrade" admitted to him two decades ago that he liked to go to Thailand "because young boys were also available", indicating Bayer had knowledge about sexual abuse of minors. There is no record showing that Bayer ever reported this to the relevant authorities.

In 2022, he promoted pro-Russian views during the invasion of Ukraine.

[massraider]

7 minutes ago, ignatiusjreilly said:

A plea to all the conservatives here: I don't know how much you follow what's going on in Hungary, but I lived there for three years in the '90s and have been following its politics ever since. You may vaguely know that Viktor Orban gets praised a lot by Tucker, that he "takes on the libs" and stands up for Christianity and against immigration. But I'm telling you, this guy is a corrupt thug and not someone you want to get in bed with. Think of how you feel when Bernie or a member of the Squad says, "At least Castro gave his people free health care," as if that makes up for him dismantling democracy.

Orban is smart in that he didn't just dissolve Parliament and declare himself ruler-for-life, nor does he send a bunch of goons to beat up opposition journalists and destroy their printing presses. But he has nonetheless achieved his goal of making Hungary effectively a one-party state with a pro-government media that would make Pravda blush. He tilts the playing field so much that it's basically impossible for his party to lose elections, and he's rigged the electoral system to the point where a small numerical voting majority becomes a legislative supermajority that allows him to do whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, if you want to get rich in Hungary you sing the government's tune, and if you don't do that they'll destroy you. So if you have an opposition newspaper, suddenly you find that no one wants to advertise and you have to shut down. But then, lo and behold, this rich dude (who happens to be from Orban's hometown) offers you a lifeline and buys the paper from you for more than its currently worth (if far less than it used to be worth). He fires all the journalists, the paper becomes slavishly pro-government, and what do you know? Advertisers come flocking back, and now he's tripled his investment.

I've honestly never understood the need for people on both the right and the left to support dictators just because they happen to be on the "correct" side. As someone on the left, I feel no more kinship with Kim Jong Un or Nicolas Maduro than I do with Putin or Orban. (It's also why, as a supporter of Israel, I'm profoundly uncomfortable with it cozying up to the Sunni dictatorships like Qatar and the UAE).  Respecting democracy is kind of a red line for me.

I get that sometimes we have marriages of convenience (Stalin during WW2, right-wing governments during the Cold War). But that doesn't me we ever forget who these people are.

Why would any American party throw an event in a place like this? 

[rockaction]

This has been coming for a while with the U.S. right cozying up to Orban. Orban, who apparently started out as a leftist-populist, is the model of the new intellectual right, an intellectual right that is outspokenly illiberal in outlook. 

I've been writing about this on this board for a bit now. That this racism and illiberalism goes abroad to roost is no surprise because it is otherwise gutless and toothless if the truth is spoken at home. 

Edited May 23 by rockaction

[Desert_Power]

3 hours ago, massraider said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/21/trump-shares-cpac-hungary-platform-racist-antisemite?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1653129188 

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.

 

I know what you are saying:

Finally, a gathering of American Republicans in Hungary, what took so long?

To paraphrase Dennis Green (RIP), they are who we thought they were.

[timschochet]

4 minutes ago, rockaction said:

This has been coming for a while with the U.S. right cozying up to Orban. Orban, who apparently started out as a leftist-populist, is the model of the new intellectual right, an intellectual right that is outspokenly illiberal in outlook. 

I've been writing about this on this board for a bit now. That this racism and illiberalism goes abroad to roost is no surprise because it is otherwise gutless and toothless if the truth is spoken at home. 

It’s interesting, and a little scary, but in terms of ramifications for this country I’m not much impressed. Extremist ideas on the left and the right are always prevalent and rarely influential. 
 

The scary thing, the thing that could lead to extremism among the general population, isn’t these folks on the right, and it isn’t woke college students. It’s inflation. If inflation continues out of control you’re going to get regular folks to listen to this garbage. Thats the key. 

[IvanKaramazov]

4 minutes ago, timschochet said:

It’s interesting, and a little scary, but in terms of ramifications for this country I’m not much impressed. Extremist ideas on the left and the right are always prevalent and rarely influential. 
 

The scary thing, the thing that could lead to extremism among the general population, isn’t these folks on the right, and it isn’t woke college students. It’s inflation. If inflation continues out of control you’re going to get regular folks to listen to this garbage. Thats the key. 

Your constant willingness to hand-wave this sort of thing is a big part of the problem.  It is not normal and should not be acceptable for members of a political party to openly embrace illiberal authoritarians.  Period.  

We had inflation in the 1970s, and nobody was worried about the American way of government getting overturned in the next election.  The fact that things are so delicate that they can be upended by moderate inflation is a clear and compelling sign that this problem is much worse than you've imagined it to be, and those of us who were trying to tell you that were right all along.

[Grace Under Pressure]

1 hour ago, rockaction said:

This has been coming for a while with the U.S. right cozying up to Orban. Orban, who apparently started out as a leftist-populist, is the model of the new intellectual right, an intellectual right that is outspokenly illiberal in outlook. 

I've been writing about this on this board for a bit now. That this racism and illiberalism goes abroad to roost is no surprise because it is otherwise gutless and toothless if the truth is spoken at home. 

 

1 hour ago, IvanKaramazov said:

Your constant willingness to hand-wave this sort of thing is a big part of the problem.  It is not normal and should not be acceptable for members of a political party to openly embrace illiberal authoritarians.  Period.  

We had inflation in the 1970s, and nobody was worried about the American way of government getting overturned in the next election.  The fact that things are so delicate that they can be upended by moderate inflation is a clear and compelling sign that this problem is much worse than you've imagined it to be, and those of us who were trying to tell you that were right all along.

Probably a good idea to listen to this. Democracy in the US is in trouble. There's a non-zero percentage of the population that will put the Constitution in the trash if it means their guy gets to be in charge. Book it. 

[BladeRunner]

2 hours ago, massraider said:

More stalking.

I think if there's one thing that's clear it's that you have no idea what the term "stalking" means.

You got called out on your BS yesterday and you're upset FBG Moderator didnt take your side after you reported me. Instead of just moving along now you just want to make wild claims to make yourself, once again, the victim.

If you're going to continue to make outlandish, incendiary and wild claims you're going to get called out on it. I don't know why that's so hard for you to understand.

I'm going to move along now. You should too. 

 

Edited May 23 by BladeRunner

[timschochet]

1 hour ago, IvanKaramazov said:

Your constant willingness to hand-wave this sort of thing is a big part of the problem.  It is not normal and should not be acceptable for members of a political party to openly embrace illiberal authoritarians.  Period.  

We had inflation in the 1970s, and nobody was worried about the American way of government getting overturned in the next election.  The fact that things are so delicate that they can be upended by moderate inflation is a clear and compelling sign that this problem is much worse than you've imagined it to be, and those of us who were trying to tell you that were right all along.

I will agree that we are in trouble. We disagree on the causes. We likely will continue to do so. 
 

The question is: what do we do now? 

[FBG Moderator]

7 minutes ago, BladeRunner said:

I think if there's one thing that's clear it's that you have no idea what the term "stalking" means.

You got called out on your BS yesterday and you're upset FBG Moderator didnt take your side after you reported me. Instead of just moving along now you just want to make wild claims to make yourself, once again, the victim.

If you're going to continue to make outlandish, incendiary and wild claims you're going to get called out on it. I don't know why that's so hard for you to understand.

I'm going to move along now. You should too. 

 

 

Everyone drop it and please move on. 

[massraider]

U.S. journalists have been denied entry to the Conservative Political Action Conference currently being hosted in Hungary.

Reporters from Vice, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The Associated Press, and others were reportedly barred from the Republican event, which is being held in Europe for the first time, Vice News reported.

Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s organizer, didn’t explain the ban. He chose to host the event in Hungary’s capital of Budapest, where American right-wingers have cozied up to the country’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

[Grace Under Pressure]

6 hours ago, timschochet said:

I will agree that we are in trouble. We disagree on the causes. We likely will continue to do so. 
 

The question is: what do we do now? 

Place a spotlight on it every day. This is 5 alarm fire stuff, meanwhile there’s literally a monkeypox thread with twice the activity. Doubt that’s a coincidence.