Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said an inglorious period of Western civilisation could be brought to an end this year, by replacing the world built on progressive-liberal hegemony with a sovereigntist one.
Speaking at the CPAC Hungary conference, PM Orbán said that the progressive-liberal world order had failed as it had only brought about wars and discord, economic collapse and chaos. Its followers wanted to realise their own ideals rather than representing the people, he said, adding that they divided the world into democracies and autocracies and said that their role was to wage a crusade against autocracies. The leaders emerging from that world order were “unfit for the task, heap error upon error, and end up walking into their doom”, he said. Liberal leaders thought that “everyone aligning themselves with a hegemonious ideological control” was necessary for peace. This year, there was a “unique chance” to replace that declining progressive liberal zeitgeist, he said. The sovereigntist world order had no global ideology because states’ actions were determined by national interests, he said. In a sovereigntist world order, “the people are the ones who are truly sovereign,” and elected representatives and politicians will determine the right course of action “rather than suspicious experts”, PM Orbán said.
The prime minister added that rather than building American financier George Soros’s open society, the sovereigntist world order will construct a “protected society”, protecting the borders rather than managing migration, where raising a family is a value and families are protected as an important institution of the nation, he said. The sovereigntist world is organized without ideologies, along mutual interests, he added. “Advocates of this old world are still sitting in Brussels, and, although it is not my job to intervene in American politics, I’m afraid they are still there in Washington as well,” PM Orbán warned. “This year, we will do our best to drive them out of there,” PM Orbán said. “Let the age of the sovereigntists finally come, let’s return to the peaceful and safe path that made the West great,” he added. “Make America great again, make Europe great again, go Donald Trump, go European sovereigntists!” Hungary is nowadays “a conservative island in the European progressive liberal ocean”, Orbán said. Hungary today has a reputation in international politics, the prime minister said, adding that this was “unusual” given that it is a country of 10 million people with a “modest army” and a medium-sized GDP.
Most of the interest in Hungary, he said, was driven by the fact that while “the entirety of Europe has been flooded by a progressive liberal ocean, by some miracle there remains a conservative island, an island of difference, that defies the liberal tide, the thunder of Brussels and the hurricane of Washington”. “Not only is it defiant, but it survives and prospers and keeps winning again and again,” the prime minister added. PM Orbán said CPAC’s Budapest event was a conservative conference in Europe which was not under threat of being shut down, whose organisers were not threatened and which did not have the police called on it the way it had happened last week in Brussels. Contrary to widespread reports, the rule of law is robust in Hungary, “where people are free to organise any conference they choose, rent the place they like and say what they like”. Referring to the NatCon conference in Brussels earlier this month, Orbán said he could not influence judges to issue decisions on such issues even if he wanted to. “Hungarians don’t like interference in their affairs.”