“We need less drag queens and more Chuck Norris”

ungarn has almost ten million inhabitants, America 330 million. The state of Texas alone, in which Viktor Orbán is on stage on Thursday, is seven and a half times the size of the Eastern European country. But the Hungarian prime minister insisted on drawing parallels again and again in his speech. Orbán – “leader of a country under siege by progressive liberals day in and day out” and “the only anti-immigrant leader on our continent” – laments the perceived patronage from Brussels a good five and a half thousand miles from Hungary. Something that Texas also knows from the government in Washington. Hungary, he admits, is not a “global superpower” like the United States.

Unlike in most European countries, Orbán can hardly provoke with his statements here. That’s why he addresses the “left-wing media” right from the start, whose headlines he already wants to know about his appearance: Orbán, the European racist, the anti-Semite. The crowd in the Trinity Ballroom at the Dallas Hilton hotel laughs. That’s the tone that resonates with attendees at the gathering of America’s right-wing conservatives, which is also packed with Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists and religious right-wingers.

In the next half hour after this remark, the Hungarian Prime Minister says all sorts of things that would justify such lines. He rails against the Hungarian financial investor and sponsor of non-governmental organizations George Soros, who comes from a Jewish family. He is his opponent – “he doesn’t believe in anything we believe in,” Orbán calls out to the audience. Soros has an “army at his service”, non-governmental organizations, universities, research institutes. “He uses his army to impose his will on his opponents, like us Hungarians.”

Orbán wants to ‘strike back’ institutions in Brussels and Washington

The war rhetoric runs through the half-hour speech of the Hungarian prime minister, who speaks to several hundred people. “Hungary is an old, proud, but David-sized nation that stands alone against the woken, globalist Goliath,” says Orbán. “We need a total defense.” One should join forces, Orbán calls out in English. Hungarians know how to “defeat enemies of freedom on the political battlefield”. “We must strike back the institutions in Washington and Brussels.”

Orbán omits no topic that he knows can excite his mostly right-wing audience in Dallas: the nation, migration, religion and family politics. It was he who was the first to say no to illegal migration – it is the first long round of applause in his speech. Immigration, he says, is the “final and decisive battle of the future.” With the wall he built in Hungary, he hit a nerve in Texas. Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who spoke directly to Orbán at the start of the conference, wants to build a wall on the border between Mexico and Texas. He is sending migrants on buses to the capital, Washington, to demonstrate against the Biden government’s migration policies. Orbán says: “In Hungary we will never capitulate.”

There is also a particularly high level of approval for family policy, the “heart of our policy”. Progressives around the world, he claims, do not protect families, for them this construct does not exist. “When traditional families no longer exist, there is nothing that can save the best from ruin.” According to the Hungarian government, a couple should be heterosexual, married and have many children. However, it is mainly families with high incomes who benefit from the state subsidies for housing construction and cheap loans. “The mother is the woman, the father is the man, and leave our children alone,” Orbán shouted.

At this point there is the longest applause of the whole performance. A homosexual couple is not recognized as a family in Hungary. What is needed is not only a physical wall against migrants, says Orbán, but also a “legal wall around our children to protect them from gender ideology”. His government has decided that there is no need for more genders. “We need more rangers, fewer drag queens and more Chuck Norris.” Another plus point for Texas voters. Hungary, the prime minister assures, is the only country in Europe where it is safe to move around at night.

Orbán’s speech is a call to struggle. What was his answer to the question of how to fight? “Play by your own rules,” says Orbán. It’s easy. “You have to play to win.” He taunted the Biden administration: “Mayday, mayday, please help us – we need a strong America with a strong leader.” You’ve seen what kind of future the ruling class of the globalists have to offer. “But we have a different future in mind. The globalists can all go to hell. I came to Texas.”