Following Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy, conservatives from across Europe convened at the Italian Nazione Futura conservative conference in Rome. Miklós Szánthó, director at the influential Center for Fundamental Rights (az Alapjogokért Központ), discussed the future prospects of Europe’s conservative movement and how Hungary can serve as a template for Italy’s national revitalization.
Szánthó began by offering his gratitude and congratulations to “all my friends on the Italian Right for the historic election victory.
“As we say in Hungary: ‘The timid, the shy ones do not conquer their enemies’ – and you were not timid, you stood up to the Left and vanquished them. It was you alone who achieved this triumph, this success, but please allow us to share in your joy because a friend is a friend in joy and in sorrow. And we Hungarian conservatives are your friends, come rain or shine.”
The Hungarian institute director, however, warned of the dire straits the continent of Europe finds itself in under the current trajectory of the European Union, claiming that “one victory will not save Europe” from the “grave distress” it currently endures.
“Europe is our home, the EU is our family — and you fear for your home and worry for your family, just as you worry for your children if they do something foolish,” Szánthó told the conference.
He accused Brussels of “behaving as if it were an infantile teenager,” accusing the bloc of ignoring warnings from the Hungarian government and others as it “continues to play with fire.”
Brussels is hurtling towards its federalist objective
Szánthó slammed the “Eurocratic elite of today, caught up in its wokeness and political correctness.” They remain intent on forcing upon the European people a political union, “a United States of Europe on our continent,” a move he believes goes against the “intentions of the founding fathers who knew full well, that although we were an extended large family, there was no such thing as a unified European demos.”
He described the approach taken by Brussels as “akin to a sex-change operation for an entire continent,” in which EU member states are being forced “under institutional pressure on the one hand and ideological pressure on the other.”
Specifically, he accused the European Union of appropriating the genuine European values of rule of law and democracy to push its federalist agenda through “creeping legislation by the Commission, the European Parliament, and the Court of the European Union.”
“When they do not like the outcome of certain elections, they tend to ignore the genuine democratic expressions of the popular will. They claim that in terms of legitimacy, compliance with the so-called EU values is more important than the voice of the people — as Jean-Claude Junker said earlier about the Hungarian referendum on migration, or as Ursula von der Leyen did when she recently declared that they have ‘the tools’ to deal with Italy if the Right should come to power. It seems as though Brussels has exported so much democracy abroad, that little is now left to limit their own actions.”
Szánthó claimed Eurocrats are hell-bent on putting countries under “ideological pressure” to renounce their conservative, Judeo-Christian principles “in the name of diversity,” and are intent on creating a “uniform commune in Europe” where a “multicultural, mixed society” exists everywhere.
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“Everything must be covered in rainbows, men must be able to give birth everywhere,” the Hungarian institute director said at the conference. For the European Union, Szánthó claimed, a democracy can only be liberal. “If it is not liberal, it is supposedly no longer a democracy,” he added.
“The denial of our roots, cancel culture, the abandoning of history for the supposed sins of our past, has led to political amnesia,” he claimed, arguing that the European progressive vanguard has “lost the political know-how, the political competence to deal with the historical conflicts that are very much still with us.”
The Left has imported the economic consequences of war into Europe
This, he claimed, is what is unfolding in Ukraine. As an “energy-dependent EU” continues to impose sanctions on Russia, one of the world’s largest energy exporters, Szánthó said, “sanctions are supposed to hurt the one that they are imposed upon more than the side that imposes them. However, this is clearly not the current state of affairs.”
Russia has not been brought to its knees by the punitive measures adopted by the West, Szánthó said. He added that “peace is slipping away, while in Europe, rising energy prices due to flawed sanctions are leading to an inflationary spiral and, as a result, an economic crisis.”
He further accused Brussels of importing the economic effects of war into the European Union.
Analyzing the “cyclical nature of politics,” Szánthó explained how “the Left comes to power by issuing wild promises, creates a crisis, and then people turn to the conservatives to put things right,” using Hungary, Poland, and now Italy as examples of this chain of events.
Conservatives must right the wrongs of the Left
“What is our task now to save our nations and to rescue Europe?” Szánthó asked before calling on European conservatives to “preserve the majority and serve the truth at the same time.”
The rallying of the Italian, Hungarian, and Polish Right in their respective countries shows that conservatives can be both strong and represent the cause of justice, Szánthó told the conservative audience, adding that their primary objective moving forward is to unite at an international level and “make the nightmare of the liberals a reality: the international cooperation of national forces.”
“Let us therefore focus not on what separates us, but on what unites us. We must realize that the triune value of God, Homeland, and Family is under a global assault that we cannot escape. Not here in Rome, not in Budapest, not in Warsaw, nor across the Atlantic. With common sense, with realistic pragmatism, but also with courage and integrity, we must take up the fight against the network of Open Society. We have to recognize that we are simultaneously threatened by two imperialist socialist dogmas, one from the West and one from the East. We reject both, we refuse to be absorbed into either.”
Hungary is the lead that others can follow
Hungary has laid down a marker in the past 12 years, Szánthó claimed, by “preserving our strategic autonomy in decision-making” and protecting “national culture, our state sovereignty, and our energy security.”
He praised the work undertaken by the Orbán administration to promote family values, to protect children, and to develop a “workfare society.” He claimed all of this was done by never forgetting the “first and most important rule of conservative politics: never play by the Liberals’ rules!”
Szánthó stressed, however, that it was not enough for just Hungary to be fighting against the wave of liberalism. It needs “strong and righteous allies.”
In a jab at the mainstream media, the Hungarian institute director said he hoped the New York Times and BBC would be proven right “for once” in its analysis that the new Italian administration will be a “cause for concern — for concern from Brussels, for concern from George Soros, and from the intellectuals who have turned from pink communists into shallow liberals.”
He maintained that Hungarian conservatives, on the other hand, are not concerned but elated by the victory of Meloni and her coalition parties.
We share your joy, we believe in you, our Italian conservative friends. And together, we believe in God, Homeland, Family, and a Europe that will – at the moment of its greatest moral, economic, and political peril – prove up to the challenge. We hope that the sovereign peoples of Europe will turn to common sense and offer the reins of government to a European conservative movement that has a shared voice across all our nations. One that will guide all of us to a safe harbor on these stormy seas of history.
“United we stand. Divided we fall,” Szánthó concluded.
