Tucker So Mad Everybody Calling His Dirty Fascist Hungarian BFF A Dirty Fascist

Birds of a feather.

We've been trying to avert our eyes all week from the fact that Tucker Carlson is in Hungary, bouncing on fascist dictator Viktor Orbán's lap with the glee of a child who thinks he's met the real Santa. Of course, in this case, the Santa is a white supremacist who hates gays, but hey look, so is that weird child on his lap.

Broadcasting from Budapest last night, Tucker got real pissed at mean democracy-loving people who keep calling his BFF a dirty fascist:

TUCKER CARLSON: Because the example of Hungary is so powerful — not just in Europe, but to the world, to the entire world, not simply the West — what you can do with a relatively small economy and not many people, if you're just serious about keeping your nation from being destroyed. Because the lessons are so obvious, and there's such a clear refutation to the policies we currently have, and the people who instituted those policies, Hungary and its government have been ruthlessly attacked and unfairly attacked. "It's authoritarian, they're fascists!" That is — there are many lies being told right now, that may be the greatest of all.

Haha, what delusions you must suffer to actually look up to what's become of Hungary AKA Europe's embarrassment.

Here's The Hungary Tucker Is Creaming Himself Over

Literally last month, the European Union was having to punish Hungary for its insane new anti-gay law, which says gays are the same as pedophiles, and, much like Russia did several years ago with its "gay propaganda law," bans showing the positive existence of LGBTQ people to kids under 18. There's obviously no marriage equality in Hungary. Same-sex couples can't adopt kids. Transgender people are basically banned from being recognized by the government. And that's just some of the stuff Orbán's government has done to steal its citizens' rights since he seized power.

Guessing Tucker "Dan White Society" Carlson thinks all that is pretty great. He after all once left a snail trail all over a TV studio telling the story of the time he beat up a gay guy in the bathroom.

Last year, Hungary's parliament, which has been effectively stolen by Orbán's ruling party, voted to give Orbán the power to simply rule by decree. This was an actual tyrannical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as Lawfare explains, that 2020 action was really the culmination of Orbán's decade of boiling Hungary like a frog in water:

For Hungary, the coronavirus has accelerated a decade-long democratic crisis , during which Orbán has gradually consolidated his power and weaponized rhetoric to emphasize an ethnic Hungarian identity, target vulnerable groups, and dismantle the institutions responsible both for protecting those groups and for checking executive power—ultimately transforming Hungary into an illiberal state.

Orbán has gradually remade Hungary in his image since 2010, when his Fidesz party retook a majority in parliament on the heels of the financial crisis and growing anti-establishment sentiment in Hungary. After an initial term as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, Orbán reportedly determined that if he ever came back to power he would not be so easily removed . Upon reclaiming the prime minister's office, he made good on his word. He packed the judiciary with Fidesz loyalists , redrew the electoral map and changed electoral laws , gave ethnic Hungarians who had never set foot in Hungary voting powers , gutted the civil service , appointed party loyalists to watchdog agencies, consolidated the media and amended the constitution .

Lawfare notes that there was a hiccup along this road in 2015, when Fidesz actually lost its supermajority in parliament. No matter, though, because Orbán just hunkered down on demonizing Muslims and other immigrants, replete with "preserve Hungary for [white Christian] Hungarians" rhetoric, and everything was back on track. Dude even built a fucking wall on Hungary's southern border. And the Fidesz supermajority was back by 2018!

Any of this sound familiar?

Measures targeting migrants and refugees (and those who help them) were portrayed as necessary, even praiseworthy actions to protect the Hungarian " way of life, our culture, our customs and our Christian traditions " and to prevent the Hungarian people from " dying out ."

Replacement theory? Tucker's down for that. (By the way, Newt Gingrich also embraced replacement theory on Fox News this week, like it was a new wife to replace the one with cancer. They're going all in on this.)

What about this stuff, does it sound familiar?

The government also revamped the school curriculum to better reflect "Hungarian values"; created a National Culture Council to ensure that cultural institutes "defend the interests of the nation's well-being"; and picked a months-long legal battle with Central European University (founded by George Soros and one of the region's premier universities and migration departments), eventually driving the university to leave Hungary and relocate to Vienna . With the media under his control, a financially besieged and demonized civil society, and co-opted cultural institutions, Orbán had successfully enfeebled the remaining challengers to Fidesz narratives and checks on his power, though the facade of democratic institutions remained .

Replace all the proper nouns in the Mad Libs and you've got exactly what the Right wants to do to America. (We guess you don't have to replace the proper noun "George Soros." That one translates directly.)

Hungary is, quite simply, a shell of what it used to be, is no longer a democracy in any sense, and has in the space of a decade become Europe's shithole. That's thanks to Viktor Orbán.

That's also the future the fascist American Right wants.

Tucker Finds A Home Where Nobody Makes Fun Of The Way He Laughs

Orbán has for the last several years been courting, and has been courted by, the worst American also-rans of the failed culture wars. He's been buddying up to disturbed theocrats like Brian Brown, who used to run the National Organization for Marriage hate group. (Brown now runs something called the International Organization for the Family.) This is part of an exodus that really began about a decade ago, once American religious Right losers realized they'd lost the marriage equality battle at home, and therefore started going abroad to see if they could find some white people whose hearts were filled with the same hatred toward LGBTQ people theirs were. They all just love Orbán. All of them.

And that's just on LGBTQ issues. The entire fascist anti-American Right has a super hard-on for Orbán, and has for years, as religion writer Sarah Posner explains in this excellent thread. 

Tucker Carlson is actually a late-comer to the American right's love affair with Viktor Orban. A thread (1/n):

— Sarah Posner (@Sarah Posner)1627994439.0 

Some familiar names come up in Posner's charting of the rightwing American connections to Orbán's rise. Arthur Finkelstein, the now-dead Republican ratfucker who was pals with Roy Cohn, Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort, basically got Orbán elected in 2010. Or there's former House Freedom Caucus GOP Congressman Connie Mack, who in 2014 as a lobbyist really opened doors for Orbán in Washington. Or there's Fucking Dana Rohrabacher. 

For the fascist American Right, Orbán is kind of an idealized version of Donald Trump, one who's not so stupid or lazy or easily distracted by "Saturday Night Live" hurting his feelings. (Trump, of course, effing loves Orbán. Wished he could be a leader like Orbán. Failed.)

Therefore, Tucker jumping into Orbán's pants is kind of a natural progression. But this public spectacle, of Tucker setting up public camp in Hungary so he can jizz on it for a week, is different. All these other rightwing fascist white men have been building their alliances with folks like Orbán (and Vladimir Putin, inside whose ass Orbán has a nice pied-à-terre ) in a quieter, more happening-right-under-your-nose kind of way. Tucker moving the show to Budapest is a much more fundamental and in-your-face abandonment of American values from Republican TV's biggest cover boy.

Tucker said from Hungary this week that "If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now." All those words are white supremacist Christian nationalist code words.

Jonathan Chait wrote this week that Tucker "is laying down a marker in the highest profile way he can that Orban's iron fist is the future the Republican Party should want." Russian activist and freedom fighter Garry Kasparov told CNN's John Avlon that he's "sure Tucker can pick up some useful tips [in Hungary] to bring home about crushing an independent judiciary, attacking the free press, and hijacking elections..."

Josh Kovensky writes at Talking Points Memo of the particular events that landed Tucker in Orbán's lap, where Tucker has met with Orbán, and is speaking this weekend at something called MCC Fezst, some kind of jackoff young fascist event for the Charlie Kirks of Hungary. American wingnut leaders apparently love to go to this thing.

 Bizarre and viciously anti-gay rightwing "thinker" Rod Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative, just loves the event, and he clearlygets real mad when you say mean words about his favorite all-night Hungarian fascist bareback fuck party:

Ridiculous. It's not a "far-right conference". It's a conservative student festival. Typical US media bullshit abou… https: //t.co/kg1xT5U70a

— Rod Dreher (@Rod Dreher) 1627942198.0 

By the way, Dreher, who apparently lives in Hungary now, is taking credit for making Tucker's summer vacay on the Danube happen.

In Chait's piece, he writes that "If America ceases to be a democracy, it will likely follow a path similar to Orbán's." If you've been paying any attention the last five years, you know with 100 percent certainty that that's exactly what white ethno-nationalists like Tucker, Donald Trump, and the modern GOP want.

For far deeper dives into Tucker's fully erect embrace of Hungarian authoritarianism, and indeed that of the entire American Right, check out Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post , Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC, and Caleb Ecarma at Vanity Fair .

These people, they are not like us, and they are not Americans.

[ Media Matters / Lawfare / Talking Points Memo ]

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