I met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn in May of last year. With a few others, we shared breakfast before the opening session of the second Budapest Demographic Forum. He was every bit the “footballer” I had been told to expect. Of modest stature, he moved—even at age 54—with an assured athleticism. This event was...
“What’s past is prologue.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest Situated between Austria and Rumania, Hungary has a rich history worthy of many books. And though this country of less than ten million people is the size of the state of Maine, her role on the world stage is only increasing. She has declared war on billionaire deconstructionist...
Viktor Orbán was voted out last month, but he remains Western civilization’s indispensable man as Europe suffers its dark night of the soul.
America’s “collective West” is plagued with serious neuroses. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently provided a compelling summary.
When Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP alliance swept to victory on Sunday, thereby guaranteeing the Hungarian premier a fourth term with a large parliamentary majority, it proved that a national conservative could win in a Western country. It is the greatest victory of national democracy that we may see in our lifetimes and a deserved...
Although Hungary ousted its pioneering national conservative leader after his long incumbency, the movement he started is far from finished.
Three speeches given on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War reveal that the most principled voice of realism and moderation is coming from a small European nation, Hungary, whose leader is keeping his nation out of the unfolding tragedy.
As the NATO proxy war in Ukraine reached its first anniversary, Hungary’s leaders suggested investigating the U.S. for the Nord Stream sabotage, and creating a new European alliance—without the U.S.
Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban call for Christian unity and solidarity against the rising tide of woke degeneracy in the Western world.
The U.S. should have encouraged broader engagement with European allies like Viktor Orbán to prevent the ascendancy of the leftist European Union.
The clear vision—but slim hope—of peace and prosperity in Europe was on display at a recent conference in Vienna.
Establishment conservatives delighting in the loss of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and, they imagine the “postliberals” with him, have forgotten the legacy of their own heroes.
Last week I traveled to Budapest to attend a conference on the thorny issue of EU-Ukraine relations. The visit prompted me to explore an apparent paradox. Here is a decent little country in the heart of Europe—good food, safe streets, rich soil—which could be a Pannonian version of Holland, but it is not a happy place....
A fortnight ago, Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party won enough seats in the Hungarian parliament to rewrite his country’s constitution. To progressives across the West, this was disturbing news. For the bête noire of Orban’s campaign was uber-globalist George Soros. And Orban’s commitments were to halt any further surrenders of Hungarian sovereignty and independence...
I have come to see myself as a morale officer for the Deplorables. When a fellow conservative writer recently asked what I hoped to accomplish by writing about ideas the left would either ignore or demonize, I said my hope was to give support to those otherwise inclined to view the left’s ideas as irrefutable...
Upon his return from a week-long stay in Budapest, Srdja Trifkovic provides an assessment of Hungary’s current political scene in his weekly roundup of world affairs for Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV network. He also looks at the central European country’s role in EU politics, which occasionally may appear disproportionate to its modest size and resources....
Respect LBGT rights or get out of the EU, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte instructed Hungary’s Viktor Orban at last week’s gathering of the European Union in Brussels. According to Reuters, attendees described it as the “most intense personal clash among the bloc’s leaders in years.” What caused the clash? Hungary just passed a law...
“A modern day mass migration is taking place . . . that could change the face of Europe’s civilization,” warned Hungarian President Viktor Orban. “If that happens, that is irreversible. . . . There is no way back from a multicultural Europe,” said Orban. “If we make a mistake now, it will be forever.” Orban...
Chronicles’ readers probably know James Kirchick better as the author of articles on Ron Paul’s newsletters than as an expert on European politics. The up and coming neoconservative journalist published his exposés of Ron Paul in The New Republic in 2008 and revisited the issue in the pages of The Weekly Standard in 2011. Friends...
The European version of wokedom is unfolding under the watchful eye of Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. As discussed in a previous article, Baerbock looks like she will be the most interventionist-minded, Russophobic, and Euro-federalist German foreign minister ever, one who promotes a nebulous concept of European strategic sovereignty. Europe’s leftists are positively elated...
The European version of wokedom is unfolding under the watchful eye of Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. As discussed in a previous article, Baerbock looks like she will be the most interventionist-minded, Russophobic, and Euro-federalist German foreign minister ever, one who promotes a nebulous concept of European strategic sovereignty. Europe’s leftists are positively elated...
Given the opportunity to make endless billions off the war in Ukraine, the military-industrial-congressional complex is likely to prevail over the growing chorus of reasonable voices seeking to end the conflict.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West has unsuccessfully tried to force its preferred topography of political memory upon former Eastern bloc nations.
The idea that everyone to the right of Commentary’s current positions on social and moral issues is somehow an “America-hater” is an absurd and novel view—even for Commentary.
Angela Merkel’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of Islamic migrants into Germany won her praise from the press last year, with the Guardian reporting that grateful migrants had dubbed her “Mama Merkel” and TIME naming her Person of the Year. The migrants are still looking up to Merkel—one of those arrested after the mass...
Not for the first time the government of Germany is acting as if it owned Europe. On two occasions in the 20th century it sought to occupy most of Europe; this time, with almost equal arrogance, it is trying to bully the rest of Europe into not resisting the ongoing Muslim occupation. The consequences of...
In the United States, the forces of the cultural left have been particularly aggressive in seeking to diminish the influence of our Christian heritage on American society. The Obama administration has led the campaign for the complete separation of religion from the public square. It has used executive orders, regulatory rule-making authority, and the bully...
On Dec. 15 the Hungarian Parliament passed a constitutional amendment banning adoption of children by same-sex couples. The government-sponsored Ninth Amendment declares, succinctly and clearly, that a child’s parents are “the mother, a woman, and the father, a man.” It defines family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation” and forbids homosexual propaganda directed at minors. The gender of a...
(This article is a translation of an original interview by Branimir Stanić and Ivan Tašev) Earlier this month Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—long maligned by the Brussels machine as an authoritarian reactionary inside the ever-so-progressive European Union—gave an interview to the Croatian Catholic weekly Glas Koncila (The Voice of the Council, 20 June 2021). Orbán made several...
A recent posting on neocon-lite website, Quillette, by its go-to authority on foreign affairs, Ronald Radosh, makes unkind references to Pat Buchanan, Pedro Gonzalez, and me: The current issue of Chronicles, meanwhile, includes an article by Pat Buchanan condemning President Biden’s “vilification” of Putin, while in another, Paul Gottfried cries “Long Live Orbán!” and elsewhere...
In Hungary last October, U.S. diplomat André Goodfriend noted that Americans’ “right to express their views would be protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” Making clear that his sympathies lay not with U.S. citizens arrested in Budapest but with the Hungarian officials who had arrested them, he hastily added, “We’re glad to...
During the centuries of struggle between European Christianity and Islam, various countries were referred to as “Antemurale Christianitatis,” the bulwark of Christendom. Today, with the torrent of mostly Islamic “migrants” heading toward Europe only increasing, that title belongs to Hungary. Hungary was roundly condemned in the international press for seeking to enforce EU rules, which...
Letters between Polish-American Chronicles columnist Tom Piatak and Polish national Michal Krupa, debating Poland's role in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Donald Trump has inspired a patriotic movement well beyond America's borders. "Make America Great Again" has birthed "Make Europe Great Again!"
The EU’s censorship regime, with an assist from U.S. affiliated agencies claiming to “promote democracy,” has put electoral victory out of reach for Europe’s conservative nationalist movements.
A little over 30 years ago, I was attending a conference in a faraway place when disaster struck. I became sick, really sick—the sort of illness where one can barely crawl out of bed, let alone attend conference sessions. Lacking care of any sort, I lay in bed for two days, waiting for some semblance...
That Europe is in mortal danger from the ongoing, overwhelmingly Muslim immigrant deluge and from its ruling elites’ spiritual degeneracy is beyond dispute. This phenomenon of world-historical significance has several causes, but the most important one is in the divorce of reason from faith. As a result, post-Christian Europe is rapidly sinking into self-destruction. The...
April 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which established the European Coal and Steel Community. The leaders of France, West Germany, Italy, and the three Benelux countries thus laid the foundation for European integration. It was primarily meant to facilitate economic recovery, but also to help overcome old...
“Let Poland be Poland!” That was the call of American conservatives, four decades ago, when the Solidarity movement of labor leader Lech Walesa arose in the port city of Gdansk to demand their freedom of the Communist system imposed upon Poland by the Soviet Union after World War II. A decade later, Poland broke free...
If the proposed Israeli judicial reforms are passed, the State of Israel would be more democratic than it presently is, not less.
There is no need to compare Trump to some biblical hero or a mythic savior in order to state one’s agreement with one or more of his stated policies.
“Abe tightens grip on power as Japanese shun election.” So ran the page one headline of the Financial Times on the victory of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sunday’s elections. Abe is the most nationalistic leader of postwar Japan. He is rebooting nuclear power, building up Japan’s military, asserting her rights in territorial disputes with...
Last week, the European Union voted to require members to accept a portion of the migrants who have been coming into Europe over the Mediterranean and through the Balkans. Four states voted no—Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Romania—and both Hungary and Slovakia say that they will fight the mandate to accept migrants in the...
“The Third Muslim Invasion of Europe is entering its mature stage by sea,” I observed in these pages in June, as thousands of Middle Eastern and African illegal immigrants sailed from Libya to Italy day after day. In the intervening four months, in a dramatic development, a new southeastern land route was stormed by a...
Jean Raspail, the French novelist and explorer, now 90 and living in a suburb of Paris, must be experiencing the eerie feeling of living inside The Camp of the Saints, his most famous work, as he follows the contemporary news reports from across the Continent. The tens of thousands of Third World migrants are arriving...
This is a brilliant and disturbing book. Its opening sentence is “Europe is doomed.” If you think that this is simply colorful rhetoric, read on. Hasta la Vista Europe is not alarmist; it is alarming, making its case in great detail ranging over many issues and countries. The pseudonymous author represents a number of researchers...
Once upon a time the American Establishment enjoyed business paragons such as David Rockefeller, Daniel Ludwig, William S. Paley, Henry Ford II, not to mention Thomas Watson and his son Thomas Watson, Jr. Toward the end of the 20th century, that old power elite had gone with the wind, replaced by people that Hilaire Belloc...
Recently, a columnist-friend, Matt Kenney, sent me a 25-year-old newspaper with his chiding that my column had been given better play. Both had run in The Orange County Register on June 30, 1991. “Is there no room for new nations in the New World Order?” was my title, and the column began: “In turning a...
On December 20 the European Commission (EC) took the unprecedented step of activating Article 7.1 of the Lisbon Treaty against Poland. The EC accuses the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Warsaw of “putting fundamental democratic rights at risk” by enacting 13 laws to reform the country’s judiciary which make it easier to replace the...
“Never lose your temper except on purpose” was a firm maxim of Dwight Eisenhower’s. Donald Trump seems generally to observe the same rule, though certainly not always. His critics failed to understand this during the primaries in 2016, and they have continued to do so since. Gleefully, they report daily—almost hourly—on the President’s latest “belittling,”...