For anyone who’s been following Twitter lately, it’s becoming apparent that the Biden Campaign and subsequently his Administration (and even mainstream Republicans who served in the Trump Administration) are being schooled at Orban’s knee.
Like Orban, they worked assiduously to undermine a free media and convert it into a vehicle of state propaganda. They also emulated Orban in their attempt to turn both the foreign intelligence services and the domestic federal police into co-conspirators promoting the regime’s ideas and policies.
While the recent revelations don’t yet indicate that the United States has reached the level of authoritarianism Orban has achieved in Hungary, they certainly reveal an attempt by Democrats (and establishment Republicans) to move the United States in that direction.
There is nothing that establishment types hate more than disintermediation, primarily because disintermediation impedes their control (and in the case of private companies, their profits). Twitter (like Substack which is thankfully less inclined to censorship than old-Twitter was) represents the ultimate in disintermediation. The establishment press and the reporters who work for it hate Twitter with all the verve with which Orban hates the idea of a free press in Hungary. For the Western press, Twitter represents a major threat to their profits and, for reporters, their salaries.
For political elites, especially but not exclusively Democrats, Twitter makes it dramatically harder to craft and disseminate a well-curated set of messages. It’s little wonder that the press, political campaigns and federal police agencies would all be motivated to insure that Twitter was under their thumbs. Next thing you know, Elon came along and those same nefarious players are doing everything they can to criticize him with the same vigor with which Orban criticizes Soros.
Orban must be looking at the revelations from the Twitter files and laughing his tuchas off.
Actually, come to think of it, I got this wrong. Biden, the US intelligence services and law enforcement weren’t schooled at Orban’s knee, it’s the other way around. American authoritarians have a thing or two to teach Orban. After all, they’ve come up with a brilliant and remarkably creative strategy. It’s a strategy that puts anything Orban has cooked up to shame.
Biden, his perfidious allies in both political parties and the mainstream press all yearn for the censorship of any message that challenges their sovereignty but they don’t want to do the censoring themselves.
Instead, they’ve deputized purple-haired, pronoun bedecked youngsters toiling away in over-priced San Francisco apartments to do the censoring for them. These young Twitter CITs (censors in training) spend untold hours, day after day, gazing at their computer screens toiling to catch any tweet that falls somewhat outside the constrained worldview that Biden and his elite brethren might comfortably endorse.
If they catch an offending tweet, their Twitter-superiors once alerted have numerous ways to dispatch the tweet (and its author)to purgatory or hell depending on their mood at the moment. So hard working are the youngsters that they spent the better part of the past two or so years locked safely in their homes, never leaving save for occasional latte runs.
The good news is that the story ends happily ever after thanks to a hero named Elon Musk. Sadly for Elon, his detractors who benefited from the system which he vanquished are infuriated with him. Why wouldn’t they be? He’s left each and every one of them like a tree unbarked. Their ravings are remarkably reminiscent of the ravings of Orban and his allies about Mr. Soros. There’s no need to worry about Elon. If he’s feeling depressed he can always go cry in a bucket of money.
There’s just so much that the Americans can teach Orban about censorship. I wonder if he’s taking notes.
I was today years old before I knew any of this. It’s both useful and hugely disturbing, not the least of which is that EU leaders knew most of it before granting Hungary membership.
I'm very gratified to read this. As I was writing this, I was unsure whether everyone knew all of this already--most of it has been reported already, albeit some of it only in more specialized and academic literature--and very worried about how long it was. (I still am.) I was afraid no one would read it. But I had this feeling, based on the way the legacy media discusses Orbán (rarely, and even if they allude to this, never in historic context, and usually in the same tone they use to describe the latest object of our racial hysteria, like that hapless neurotic who called the cops on birdwatcher in Central Park. When you denounce everyone as a reactionary white supremacist, it takes the sting out of things when you *need* those words). I felt this case should be assembled clearly, with everything people need to know to *get* this, all in one essay. It would be better if I'd been able to fit it all in one document, and maybe I could have if I'd tried for another week, but I also worried my readers might begin to worry I was dead. (I hate the schedule this newsletter, by its nature, imposes on me; I never feel I've revised anything enough before sending it--but I'm so grateful that it allows me to write what I want to write that it's a compromise I'm happy to make.)
Anyway, I thought, "I suspect much of this or all of it will all come as news to my readers, and if so, this will be worth doing." But I just wasn't sure. And I really wasn't sure whether anyone would have the patience to read it through: Attention spans are so attenuated now that newspaper editors rarely publish anything longer than 800 words--which is precisely why no one knows all of this.
So thank you for telling me. You'd be surprised how much it means to me and encourages me.
I had more European history in high school than I did college, but it was pretty Western Europe focused. In 2022, we all need to know so much more than we do when we try to make sense of the headlines. Otherwise, we don’t make sense of the headlines. Oops. My goal in the next few months is to learn as much about the Ottomans as I can. Your sense on irredentist moves in several countries is a threat I’m really not able to assess.
P.S. It’s so good to finally learn why Captain Von Trapp was a naval captain, even though he lived in a landlocked country. :-)
I know they were, but I’m still kind of surprised. Then again, I shouldn’t be, I suppose. I have never met a German who didn’t have horror stories about Russians when WWII ended, never mind the Wall and subsequent KGB/FSB assassinations on German soil. But that didn’t prevent them from making themselves hostage to Russian oil and gas.
Thank you Claire. I now know a lot of (depressing if unsurprising) facts about Hungary, and also went and googled Rod Dreher. Cosmo Globo delivers again!
Excellent piece. Just one small correction. Count Tisza and other Hungarian leaders in the Dual Monarchy, while fiercely anti-Serbian, opposed going to war in 1914 and were reluctant to support it after being beaten down by Conrad von Hötzendorf, Berchtold, and the rest of the Austrian pro-war faction. So I wouldn’t be so hasty to pin the cause of the Great War on the Hungarians.
Tisza gave in and supported it enthusiastically. Tisza's in many ways a tragic figure (who met a tragic end, as pretty much everyone in this story does). But I can't bring myself to forgive any of the men responsible for this war. If they surely didn't will the outcome, some mistakes are too great for historians to say, "Well, mistakes happen to the best of us."
As my father writes about the origins of the Great War, we understand how the war came about. What we'll never understand is *why?* (Did you read that at the time? It's here. https://www.cosmopolitanglobalist.com/the-first-world-war/)
Claire,it’s no great revelation that Europe has been a bastion of antisemitism from time immemorial and it’s certainly no revelation that in the mid 20th century Europe, Jew-hatred reached new heights. The history of Hungarian anti Semitism that you cited was recapitulated throughout Europe; there was absolutely nothing unique about Hungary.
As a matter of fact, when it comes to antisemitism, the Hungarian experience was arguably somewhat less sinister than the experience of Jews in the country where you now reside. Here’s Yad Vashem on the Vichy period.
“October 1940, the Vichy regime published the Law on the Status of the Jews, which essentially reversed the emancipation granted to the Jews of France and defined Jewish status in accordance with a racial criterion. The Jews were subsequently denuded of their civil rights and their property, dismissed from the civil service, and expelled from their businesses. Tens of thousands of businesses and thousands of apartments were confiscated from Jews; Jewish physicians lost their titles. The goal of the law was to purify the civil service, the education system, the media, the cinema and theater, and the officer ranks of the military, ridding them of Jews. In the same month, numerous laws were published that further excluded the Jews from French society. These included the law for the “Aryanization” of Jewish property in the Occupied Zone. As noted, the main victims of anti-Jewish policy during this stage were foreign Jews, rather than those who held French citizenship. Thousands of Jewish migrants were placed in forced labor camps or detained in camps established throughout France.”
French Jews as well as foreign Jews (who had migrated to France in the hope of escaping the Nazis) were shipped off in huge numbers to Auschwitz where most of them perished.
If I’m interpreting you correctly, you’re suggesting that antisemitism in contemporary Hungary is a natural extension of historical 20th century Hungarian antisemitism.
If this is true, isn’t it also true that contemporary French antisemitism is a natural extension of 20th century French antisemitism? I think in your previous post you provided data demonstrating that current Hungarian antisemitism is not any worse statistically than current French antisemitism.
You could argue that most antisemitic incidents in France emanate from the Muslim community but that would be a cop out. Jew-hatred amongst French intellectuals is far too common.
Just recently, a Jewish professor was interviewed on a French television channel and was attacked with crazy Judophobic expressions by the interviewers:
“Why do you wear a religious symbol in the studio? Keep your Jewish identity for yourself" the reporter insisted. The video is readily available to view on Twitter.
You might argue that French intellectuals hate any demonstration of religious identity not just Jewish identity. This argument doesn’t hold water; you can’t excuse antisemitism by claiming it’s okay because the perpetrators also hate Muslims and Christians.
As far as I know, it’s safer to walk into Kosher supermarkets in Budapest than in Paris. Violence against Jews (as opposed to less life-threatening forms of antisemitism) is clearly worse in France than it is in Hungary.
Maybe now that you’ve done Orban and Hungary you should turn your attention to France.
One more thing; Franz Ferdinand may have been the dumbest Habsburg of them all, which is saying alot considering how overwhelmingly stupid most of the Habsburgs were. Half of Europe knew he would be assassinated if he made his ridiculous trip. He was so arrogant he went anyway. Had he not been killed by his assassin, he might have been killed by one of his own family members. Had he become Emperor, none of his plans for Hungary or anywhere else would have become a reality.
Yes, I get that, but that’s far less important than the physical safety of Jews which is worse in France than most other places in Europe. Given the historical enmity of the French towards their Jewish neighbors one can’t help but wonder whether contemporary French antisemitism is a natural outgrowth of France’s historical antisemitism in precisely the same way that Orban’s supposed antisemitism is, as you suggest, a natural outgrowth of Hungary’s historical antisemitism.
Whether Orban is following the rhetorical lead of his predecessors is an academic question with little pertinence to the actual safety of Hungarian Jews.
I would also point out to you that on more than one occasion, Orban has prevented the EU from criticizing and even sanctioning Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.
If it’s antisemitism that you’re talking about, you have to acknowledge that by words and deeds, Orban is far less antisemitic that large swaths of the EU governing apparatus and also far less anti-Israel and antisemitic than many member nations of the European Union. Ireland, for example comes to mind.
Which country is more tolerant of Islamic extremism and terrorism that disproportionately targets Jews; Hungary or France? Any objective analysis would have to say, France.
Claire, do you acknowledge that while Orban may have infuriated his fellow EU potentates by refusing their request that he admit his “fair share” of immigrants, it is safe to assume that his decision enhanced the security of Hungarian Jews?
While Orban is certainly an authoritarian leader who has many potentially dangerous flaws, your argument that one piece of evidence of this is his antisemitic tendencies just doesn’t hold water.
Ask millions of Jews in Israel, most of whom are descendants of innocent people expelled (or worse) from European and Arab lands, whether Orban or Macron is a more trustworthy friend and I venture to guess that most would say Orban.
Netanyahu certainly would but I suspect that along with Orban, Trump and Modi, he’s a member of your gallery of horribles. But if you asked, and they were being honest, Gantz, Lapid and Bennett would all pick Orban over Macron any day of the week.
Thanks for this Claire - there's a huge number of things that I wasn't aware of. As you say, it puts Orban in a much scarier context.
This recurring theme of weakened nation states with a deep sense of grievance keeps causing problems - Russia obviously, right now, and however the war with Ukraine ends it's unlikely the Russian attitude is going to improve overnight. Hungary sounds like another, albeit smaller, example. One of the miracles of the twentieth century to me was the rehabilitation of (west) Germany and Japan after the war. So far both have done a commendable job of facing up to their past and doing better (although the recent arrests in Germany are perhaps a reminder that there's always someone wanting to hark back to an imagined glorious past).
Watch out for Turkey, too. The empires that lost in the First World War are just not getting over it. Germany and Japan seem to be the exception, for which they both deserve great credit.
It breaks my heart every time I read about another retrograde step in Turkey. I spent a fair bit of time wandering around Turkey back in 2013 (post Taxim square), and it felt like there was so much promise. The people were so friendly - and mostly optimistic, as well. It was only when I started following your tweets and journalism a little later that I realised Turkey was on a much more illiberal path than I had thought. Such a shame - as a country it has so much going for it.
For anyone who’s been following Twitter lately, it’s becoming apparent that the Biden Campaign and subsequently his Administration (and even mainstream Republicans who served in the Trump Administration) are being schooled at Orban’s knee.
Like Orban, they worked assiduously to undermine a free media and convert it into a vehicle of state propaganda. They also emulated Orban in their attempt to turn both the foreign intelligence services and the domestic federal police into co-conspirators promoting the regime’s ideas and policies.
While the recent revelations don’t yet indicate that the United States has reached the level of authoritarianism Orban has achieved in Hungary, they certainly reveal an attempt by Democrats (and establishment Republicans) to move the United States in that direction.
There is nothing that establishment types hate more than disintermediation, primarily because disintermediation impedes their control (and in the case of private companies, their profits). Twitter (like Substack which is thankfully less inclined to censorship than old-Twitter was) represents the ultimate in disintermediation. The establishment press and the reporters who work for it hate Twitter with all the verve with which Orban hates the idea of a free press in Hungary. For the Western press, Twitter represents a major threat to their profits and, for reporters, their salaries.
For political elites, especially but not exclusively Democrats, Twitter makes it dramatically harder to craft and disseminate a well-curated set of messages. It’s little wonder that the press, political campaigns and federal police agencies would all be motivated to insure that Twitter was under their thumbs. Next thing you know, Elon came along and those same nefarious players are doing everything they can to criticize him with the same vigor with which Orban criticizes Soros.
Orban must be looking at the revelations from the Twitter files and laughing his tuchas off.
Actually, come to think of it, I got this wrong. Biden, the US intelligence services and law enforcement weren’t schooled at Orban’s knee, it’s the other way around. American authoritarians have a thing or two to teach Orban. After all, they’ve come up with a brilliant and remarkably creative strategy. It’s a strategy that puts anything Orban has cooked up to shame.
Biden, his perfidious allies in both political parties and the mainstream press all yearn for the censorship of any message that challenges their sovereignty but they don’t want to do the censoring themselves.
Instead, they’ve deputized purple-haired, pronoun bedecked youngsters toiling away in over-priced San Francisco apartments to do the censoring for them. These young Twitter CITs (censors in training) spend untold hours, day after day, gazing at their computer screens toiling to catch any tweet that falls somewhat outside the constrained worldview that Biden and his elite brethren might comfortably endorse.
If they catch an offending tweet, their Twitter-superiors once alerted have numerous ways to dispatch the tweet (and its author)to purgatory or hell depending on their mood at the moment. So hard working are the youngsters that they spent the better part of the past two or so years locked safely in their homes, never leaving save for occasional latte runs.
The good news is that the story ends happily ever after thanks to a hero named Elon Musk. Sadly for Elon, his detractors who benefited from the system which he vanquished are infuriated with him. Why wouldn’t they be? He’s left each and every one of them like a tree unbarked. Their ravings are remarkably reminiscent of the ravings of Orban and his allies about Mr. Soros. There’s no need to worry about Elon. If he’s feeling depressed he can always go cry in a bucket of money.
There’s just so much that the Americans can teach Orban about censorship. I wonder if he’s taking notes.
I was today years old before I knew any of this. It’s both useful and hugely disturbing, not the least of which is that EU leaders knew most of it before granting Hungary membership.
I'm very gratified to read this. As I was writing this, I was unsure whether everyone knew all of this already--most of it has been reported already, albeit some of it only in more specialized and academic literature--and very worried about how long it was. (I still am.) I was afraid no one would read it. But I had this feeling, based on the way the legacy media discusses Orbán (rarely, and even if they allude to this, never in historic context, and usually in the same tone they use to describe the latest object of our racial hysteria, like that hapless neurotic who called the cops on birdwatcher in Central Park. When you denounce everyone as a reactionary white supremacist, it takes the sting out of things when you *need* those words). I felt this case should be assembled clearly, with everything people need to know to *get* this, all in one essay. It would be better if I'd been able to fit it all in one document, and maybe I could have if I'd tried for another week, but I also worried my readers might begin to worry I was dead. (I hate the schedule this newsletter, by its nature, imposes on me; I never feel I've revised anything enough before sending it--but I'm so grateful that it allows me to write what I want to write that it's a compromise I'm happy to make.)
Anyway, I thought, "I suspect much of this or all of it will all come as news to my readers, and if so, this will be worth doing." But I just wasn't sure. And I really wasn't sure whether anyone would have the patience to read it through: Attention spans are so attenuated now that newspaper editors rarely publish anything longer than 800 words--which is precisely why no one knows all of this.
So thank you for telling me. You'd be surprised how much it means to me and encourages me.
I had more European history in high school than I did college, but it was pretty Western Europe focused. In 2022, we all need to know so much more than we do when we try to make sense of the headlines. Otherwise, we don’t make sense of the headlines. Oops. My goal in the next few months is to learn as much about the Ottomans as I can. Your sense on irredentist moves in several countries is a threat I’m really not able to assess.
P.S. It’s so good to finally learn why Captain Von Trapp was a naval captain, even though he lived in a landlocked country. :-)
Hungary was admitted to the EU before this happened. I'm sure they wouldn't, today.
I know they were, but I’m still kind of surprised. Then again, I shouldn’t be, I suppose. I have never met a German who didn’t have horror stories about Russians when WWII ended, never mind the Wall and subsequent KGB/FSB assassinations on German soil. But that didn’t prevent them from making themselves hostage to Russian oil and gas.
Thank you Claire. I now know a lot of (depressing if unsurprising) facts about Hungary, and also went and googled Rod Dreher. Cosmo Globo delivers again!
Excellent piece. Just one small correction. Count Tisza and other Hungarian leaders in the Dual Monarchy, while fiercely anti-Serbian, opposed going to war in 1914 and were reluctant to support it after being beaten down by Conrad von Hötzendorf, Berchtold, and the rest of the Austrian pro-war faction. So I wouldn’t be so hasty to pin the cause of the Great War on the Hungarians.
Tisza gave in and supported it enthusiastically. Tisza's in many ways a tragic figure (who met a tragic end, as pretty much everyone in this story does). But I can't bring myself to forgive any of the men responsible for this war. If they surely didn't will the outcome, some mistakes are too great for historians to say, "Well, mistakes happen to the best of us."
As my father writes about the origins of the Great War, we understand how the war came about. What we'll never understand is *why?* (Did you read that at the time? It's here. https://www.cosmopolitanglobalist.com/the-first-world-war/)
Of course I read it, Claire. I read everything the Cosmopolitan Globalists publish!
Claire,it’s no great revelation that Europe has been a bastion of antisemitism from time immemorial and it’s certainly no revelation that in the mid 20th century Europe, Jew-hatred reached new heights. The history of Hungarian anti Semitism that you cited was recapitulated throughout Europe; there was absolutely nothing unique about Hungary.
As a matter of fact, when it comes to antisemitism, the Hungarian experience was arguably somewhat less sinister than the experience of Jews in the country where you now reside. Here’s Yad Vashem on the Vichy period.
“October 1940, the Vichy regime published the Law on the Status of the Jews, which essentially reversed the emancipation granted to the Jews of France and defined Jewish status in accordance with a racial criterion. The Jews were subsequently denuded of their civil rights and their property, dismissed from the civil service, and expelled from their businesses. Tens of thousands of businesses and thousands of apartments were confiscated from Jews; Jewish physicians lost their titles. The goal of the law was to purify the civil service, the education system, the media, the cinema and theater, and the officer ranks of the military, ridding them of Jews. In the same month, numerous laws were published that further excluded the Jews from French society. These included the law for the “Aryanization” of Jewish property in the Occupied Zone. As noted, the main victims of anti-Jewish policy during this stage were foreign Jews, rather than those who held French citizenship. Thousands of Jewish migrants were placed in forced labor camps or detained in camps established throughout France.”
French Jews as well as foreign Jews (who had migrated to France in the hope of escaping the Nazis) were shipped off in huge numbers to Auschwitz where most of them perished.
If I’m interpreting you correctly, you’re suggesting that antisemitism in contemporary Hungary is a natural extension of historical 20th century Hungarian antisemitism.
If this is true, isn’t it also true that contemporary French antisemitism is a natural extension of 20th century French antisemitism? I think in your previous post you provided data demonstrating that current Hungarian antisemitism is not any worse statistically than current French antisemitism.
You could argue that most antisemitic incidents in France emanate from the Muslim community but that would be a cop out. Jew-hatred amongst French intellectuals is far too common.
Just recently, a Jewish professor was interviewed on a French television channel and was attacked with crazy Judophobic expressions by the interviewers:
“Why do you wear a religious symbol in the studio? Keep your Jewish identity for yourself" the reporter insisted. The video is readily available to view on Twitter.
You might argue that French intellectuals hate any demonstration of religious identity not just Jewish identity. This argument doesn’t hold water; you can’t excuse antisemitism by claiming it’s okay because the perpetrators also hate Muslims and Christians.
As far as I know, it’s safer to walk into Kosher supermarkets in Budapest than in Paris. Violence against Jews (as opposed to less life-threatening forms of antisemitism) is clearly worse in France than it is in Hungary.
Maybe now that you’ve done Orban and Hungary you should turn your attention to France.
One more thing; Franz Ferdinand may have been the dumbest Habsburg of them all, which is saying alot considering how overwhelmingly stupid most of the Habsburgs were. Half of Europe knew he would be assassinated if he made his ridiculous trip. He was so arrogant he went anyway. Had he not been killed by his assassin, he might have been killed by one of his own family members. Had he become Emperor, none of his plans for Hungary or anywhere else would have become a reality.
WigWag, you're not getting it.
The French government is not rehabilitating Pétain.
Yes, I get that, but that’s far less important than the physical safety of Jews which is worse in France than most other places in Europe. Given the historical enmity of the French towards their Jewish neighbors one can’t help but wonder whether contemporary French antisemitism is a natural outgrowth of France’s historical antisemitism in precisely the same way that Orban’s supposed antisemitism is, as you suggest, a natural outgrowth of Hungary’s historical antisemitism.
Whether Orban is following the rhetorical lead of his predecessors is an academic question with little pertinence to the actual safety of Hungarian Jews.
I would also point out to you that on more than one occasion, Orban has prevented the EU from criticizing and even sanctioning Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.
If it’s antisemitism that you’re talking about, you have to acknowledge that by words and deeds, Orban is far less antisemitic that large swaths of the EU governing apparatus and also far less anti-Israel and antisemitic than many member nations of the European Union. Ireland, for example comes to mind.
Which country is more tolerant of Islamic extremism and terrorism that disproportionately targets Jews; Hungary or France? Any objective analysis would have to say, France.
Claire, do you acknowledge that while Orban may have infuriated his fellow EU potentates by refusing their request that he admit his “fair share” of immigrants, it is safe to assume that his decision enhanced the security of Hungarian Jews?
While Orban is certainly an authoritarian leader who has many potentially dangerous flaws, your argument that one piece of evidence of this is his antisemitic tendencies just doesn’t hold water.
Ask millions of Jews in Israel, most of whom are descendants of innocent people expelled (or worse) from European and Arab lands, whether Orban or Macron is a more trustworthy friend and I venture to guess that most would say Orban.
Netanyahu certainly would but I suspect that along with Orban, Trump and Modi, he’s a member of your gallery of horribles. But if you asked, and they were being honest, Gantz, Lapid and Bennett would all pick Orban over Macron any day of the week.
https://t.co/kHgGbm8w9e
Thanks for this Claire - there's a huge number of things that I wasn't aware of. As you say, it puts Orban in a much scarier context.
This recurring theme of weakened nation states with a deep sense of grievance keeps causing problems - Russia obviously, right now, and however the war with Ukraine ends it's unlikely the Russian attitude is going to improve overnight. Hungary sounds like another, albeit smaller, example. One of the miracles of the twentieth century to me was the rehabilitation of (west) Germany and Japan after the war. So far both have done a commendable job of facing up to their past and doing better (although the recent arrests in Germany are perhaps a reminder that there's always someone wanting to hark back to an imagined glorious past).
Watch out for Turkey, too. The empires that lost in the First World War are just not getting over it. Germany and Japan seem to be the exception, for which they both deserve great credit.
It breaks my heart every time I read about another retrograde step in Turkey. I spent a fair bit of time wandering around Turkey back in 2013 (post Taxim square), and it felt like there was so much promise. The people were so friendly - and mostly optimistic, as well. It was only when I started following your tweets and journalism a little later that I realised Turkey was on a much more illiberal path than I had thought. Such a shame - as a country it has so much going for it.