The Fascism of Now: Lessons from Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism
The word "fascist" is often thrown around peremptorily to describe anything threatening or sinister, but a close reading of recent history warrants its use to describe the modern US.
Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism lays out 14 defining characteristics of the fascism he experienced firsthand growing up in Italy in the 1930s and 40s. At age 10, he was given the essay prompt “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” His positive response won him the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles, “a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists – that is, for every young Italian.” Eco’s defining characteristics of fascism are applicable to the current political order in the United States and will only become more aptly descriptive as climate and environmental pressures combine with the government’s unwillingness to meaningfully address either the cause or the symptoms of these stressors, necessitating the use of Big Lie propaganda and other methods of social control to keep these suffering, restive masses at bay. The 14 critical aspects of fascism can be seen in 2020s America and we can in good conscience use the word “fascist” to describe our political climate despite the inevitable pat charges of incendiary exaggeration and politicization from the fascists themselves.
“1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.”
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice"; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
The emerging backlash against reproductive rights (such as they are) and LGBTQ+ equality in the US is closely tied to the traditional view of the family as the main organizational force of a healthy society and as an inherent good in and of itself. This traditionalist view is a cult because it is unsupported by anything other than the assumption that all tradition is worth preserving, the assumption that past practices must have existed for a legitimate reason which we can only stray errantly from. It is a cult because it is selective in its memory and silently abandons many less palatable traditions such as segregation and forced marriage, though these are often an undercurrent of the more sanitized fascist movements. The cult of tradition also opposes progress as a loss of traditional control, yet the movement itself is often revolutionary and unlike anything that came before it.
The tradition need not have actually existed to be revered, only the idea of it. To use reproductive rights as an example, abortion is a much less common practice today than 40 years ago (and overwhelmingly takes place very early in the pregnancy), yet it is seen as an increasingly common evil which must be stopped because it was more stigmatized in the past. Even the Supreme Court, a putative check against creeping fascism, noted recently that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s histories and traditions.” The cult of tradition is also closely tied to the desire for parental approval, and the idealized past typically only extends a generation or two for most issues, with the seemingly-contradictory exceptions of the worship of ancient Greek fascist iconography and militarism. On its most basic level, this myopic traditionalism fails to consider the basic truth that each generation makes its own progress, and the tradition of one’s parents is distinct from the tradition of their grandparents or great-grandparents. The fascists’ own fascist great-great-great-grandfather would likely be horrified by what passes for tradition in the modern era, yet this contradiction must remain unexamined in their mind.
“2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.”
Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
Even non-traditional regressive practices such as holistic medicine and polygamy purport to be based on the unearthed wisdom of some mythic forgotten past which has been unfairly maligned by the overweening establishment, which in fascism has to be seen as ossified, unwieldy, and oppressive to dissent. The glut of dangerous and ineffective alternative Covid treatments that sprang up when it was decided that rational non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masking and distancing were too difficult and unpopular to maintain were steeped in this kind of reasoning. There is the thrill of discovery of uncovering some ancient or traditional truth the so-called mainstream medical establishment wishes would stay buried, such as the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid (recently established as entirely useless to no surprise). The prohibition against dangerous and unproven treatments is twisted into a positive in the mind of a fascist, because if modernism is wrong, and modernism rejects unproven scientific claims in favor of established and tested treatments, then it must be safe and effective to consume radium or perform an exorcism in lieu of prescribing therapy or medication, for example.
One contradiction of many can be found here: fascism is highly capitalistic, but the modernist mainstream must be seen as motivated by greed and prurient financial interests (which are also quite traditional) at the expense of all other concerns. Many who questioned the Covid vaccination programs were skeptical of the big pharmaceutical companies’ motives in creating the (unenforced) mandates and quashing alternative treatments, yet these are the same capitalists whose penchant for deregulation has allowed the big pharmaceutical companies to become the unduly powerful behemoths they are, to our unending detriment—see for example their role in the opioid crisis or the inflated price of insulin. In the mind of the modernism-rejecting fascist, a sufficiently empowered corporation is indistinct from an authoritarian government, yet the kind of socialist, progressive government they would criticize is necessary to thwart corporate overreach and allow for the freedom to afford and pursue any medical treatment.
“3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.”
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering's alleged statement ("When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," "universities are a nest of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
The modern conservative distrust of academia is expressed in another contradiction: US colleges are motivated by profit and seek to train the next generation of workers in an explicitly capitalist system—they are hardly a “nest of reds.” Yet much like the small reproductive rights victories of the last 50 years lead to a disproportionate backlash that could see even the wide availability of birth control fall by the wayside soon, the tendency for free thought in colleges to sometimes lead students to a polite, constructive criticism of the capitalist system leads to histrionic calls of unfairness and a lack of representation. The same attitude was seen in the academic criticism of creationism decades ago—despite there being no evidence for it and therefore no reason for it to be taught in any science class, creationists used the liberal language of inclusion and fairness to argue for the teaching of their alternative theory and cried oppression when it was occasionally rejected.
The LSU college football locker room, strikingly opulent when compared to the bare, underfunded classrooms where supposed communist indoctrination takes place
The preemptive nature of the criticism is the action for action’s sake, and the knee-jerk tendency to resort to violence is on display in every mass shooting in the US. The Buffalo terrorist, for example, was not reacting proportionally to any kind of real or even imagined threat. He was motivated by hatred, conspiratorial paranoia, and the kind of personal desperation that is only going to become more common as climate change and environmental breakdown lead to scarcity, disasters, and economic suffering on an unimaginable scale. This desperation will be molded by fascist propagandists into a resentment of the Other to ensure that the blame is never placed rightly at their feet.
Fascist action for action’s sake requires the actor to have nothing to lose.
“4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism.”
The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
Here the contradictions inherent in the fascist program are beneficial to it, because even if criticism cannot be shouted down as evidence of one’s dangerous bias (see for example the red scares of the 20th century or the current imbroglio over Critical Race Theory, which is nothing more than an honest examination of America’s racist past and present yet is seen as heretical anti-white reverse racism akin to their conception of affirmative action policies), the amorphous and irrational tenets of fascism cannot be meaningfully criticized. This explains the tendency for fascists to use underhanded and illicit methods to achieve their goals—they thrive in the shadows because the light will expose the irrationally hateful and hidebound nature of reactionary rightwing beliefs.
“5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.”
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
The growing popularity of the great replacement theory which motivated the Buffalo terrorist is an illustration of this fear of diversity as a loss of hegemonic social power. It is not necessary to show that the “invaders” are ill-intentioned or are moving to the country to do anything but escape an untenable situation in their own (a situation which was caused by economic imperialism, colonialism, and climate change, all authored by the US and its rich allies). All that is needed is an implication that their presence is quietly menacing in some way, and crucially it is impossible to prove or disprove the charge that the out-group might be plotting something.
This fear of pluralism is turned around in fascist propaganda as a charge against socialism, another key aspect of its strategy: in committing the exact sin one charges their opponents of doing, the fascist deftly moves the burden of proof onto the anti-fascist, who must then either disprove the accusation (thereby deemphasizing the fascist’s own spurning of open debate and implicitly accepting the validity of the baseless accusation) or note the fascist’s hypocrisy on that issue, which will always be ineffective because there are many fascists who might not be hypocrites and such contradictions are not meaningfully inimical to fascism.
“6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.”
That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
The many personal problems of mass murderers in particular and fascists in general are widely noted and their revelation no longer novel, especially in the age of social media, in which a killer’s online presence leaves no doubt what consciously and subconsciously led them astray. Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people in 2014, was part of a community of sexually unsuccessful “incels” (involuntary celibate) who blame modern conceptions of gender equality on their romantic failures:
The incel community is just one of the misogynistic groups that exist within the so-called "manosphere" - a web of online blogs and forums which reject mainstream conceptions of gender inequality.
Others include Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), a group which focuses on male self-ownership and believes men have been disadvantaged by modern society's development.
Arguably the best known group is the "The Red Pill" - a Reddit subforum with more than 200,000 members which says its focus is a "discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men".
Many of these communities celebrated his actions and at least one killer was directly inspired by Rodger’s fascist manifesto against modern gender relations:
In a four-hour interview after his arrest, the transcript of which was unsealed by a judge and released on Friday, Minassian admitted that the attack had been motivated in large part by his resentment toward “Chads” and “Staceys,” incel terminology for conventionally attractive men and women, respectively. He said that he was a virgin and that he resented women for having sexually rejected him in favor of “giv[ing] their love and affection to obnoxious brutes.”
Minassian also told police that he intended the attack to serve as a call to arms for a “beta uprising,” meaning that he hoped to encourage other disaffected young men (or “betas”) to commit acts of violence. “I was thinking that I would inspire future masses to join me,” he said during the interview.
“7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.”
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
Nativism in an increasingly diverse country must evolve into irrational fascism because more and more of the nation’s purported enemies will be born inside of it, so the propagandistic fear of the Other must simultaneously be for and against birthright citizenship: for it, because Americans are united by being born here and not having come from somewhere else; against it, because those invaders will inevitably have a child on US soil and there must exist a reason to exclude that child that is not too overtly racist. Here we see the employment of codewords such as “communist,” “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” “atheist,” and “horde,” out-groups who are interested in organizing a “takeover,” “revolution,” or “replacement” of an ever-changing in-group. National identity likewise can only go so far, and as a consequence fascism will restrict the category of real Americans to those who agree with them, just as the Nazis imprisoned and killed many German citizens for their supposed inauthenticity.
“8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.”
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
“Ivory tower academics”
“Out of touch politicians”
“Rich Hollywood liberals”
There is a reason that the party of the rich in the US encouraged the celebrity of figures like Joe the Plumber, and it is not because they are genuinely enamored with the ideals of the working class. As noted above, the fascists will accuse their opponents of crimes they are currently committing openly and proudly.
They will accuse George Soros of using his fortune to unduly influence politics while the Kochs practice exactly that kind of influence peddling. The truth or falsity of the smear is immaterial and the hypocrisy of the accuser is of no consequence. Another key aspect of fascism is the disposable nature of everyone, including the fascists themselves, who will gladly offer themselves up for humiliation or worse in service of maintaining the Big Lie.
The enemies are both “too strong and too weak,” and so are the fascists, who present themselves as the masculine, no-nonsense warrior class but are quick to complain histrionically about any perceived slight, no matter how minor. They are the staunch defenders of traditionalism and moral absolutism who will at the earliest convenience retreat to moral relativism, solipsism, and majoritarianism whenever one of aspect of their credo is threatened. “You have your truth and I have mine” is the cry of the temporarily-embarrassed fascist.
“9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a "final solution" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
The 21st century’s endless wars against the shadowy enemy of terrorism, maintained and escalated by Republican and Democrat alike, show that war is more than good business—it helps to get undeserving politicians elected and provides a ready-made rationalization for the dissolution of civil liberties. If one wants to abrogate a human right but is worried about optics, a good war is all that is needed—even addressing the existential threat of climate change can be put on hold as a result with relatively little outcry, torture can be practiced with no real ramifications for the program’s architects or the torturers themselves, and the right to privacy can be virtually abandoned. In such an environment, even the rights of the hegemonic group can be threatened with impunity.
The current crop of politicians may have solved Eco’s dilemma above. Perpetual war no longer needs to have a conceptual endpoint, because the war itself wreaks death, desperation and poverty on a newly resentful foreigner, whose growing opposition can be cited as a reason to continue the war (and, just as conveniently, a reason to keep them from immigrating to the US).
“10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.”
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.
“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.” - George W. Bush in July 2001
The fascist idea that we are the hero of our own stories and not merely one human out of many in a community is noxious and quickly leads to delusions of grandeur whose shattering engenders the kind of desperation seen in the violent outbursts of terrorists and mass murderers. The hero myth blames the individual for all of their failings—if anyone can succeed in the fascist project, it follows that individual weakness must be what causes all of one’s problems. A non-fascist society will gladly share in some of the blame, but this is collectivist and socialist, not the kind of rugged individualism that will be facilitated when the promised fascist revolution materializes. There is another contradiction here: the kind of “hero” who is romantically successful compared to an “incel” (for example) is seen as both too strong and too weak, the product of an unfair, conceptually contradictory system which both rewards brutes and bullies for their brash machismo and encourages the kind of feminism that excessively empowers women to unfairly make their own choices of partner.
This militaristic elitism is also part of a command structure that has been used to justify the commission of unspeakable atrocities in the service of one’s superior officers. The “just following orders” defense is one of the most important aspects of fascism, because it argues that one can forsake their very moral agency if they are ordered to do so. This is a costless and convenient way to summarily dehumanize anyone and cast them as expendable and undeserving of rights. All militaries are fascist in this way, and the results have historically been disastrous for both the warfighters and their myriad victims.
“11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.”
In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as "Long Live Death!"). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
Mass murderers are driven not only by paranoia and conspiracy theory radicalization, but by the idea of becoming famous for their actions as an end goal in and of itself; that many of them commit suicide after their act (or attempt to) is evidence that they are not fighting for a noble or just cause whose fruits they wish to experience. If the killer truly believed in the well-examined truth of their cause, they would expect vindication, if not immediately then eventually as their example and message radiates through the unjust society that originally spurred them to action. The fascist does not value life, their own included.
If everyone is a hero, then no one is a hero. Similarly, the reduction of all experience to either maximalist or minimalist outcomes is a newspeak version of amorality that forsakes nuance in favor of eliminating all possibility for comparison and therefore the ability to rationally judge any action or policy. Any cost or negative outcome associated with Covid protective measures can be exaggerated as an unacceptable outcome, for example. Masking may cause some stress and developmental delays in children, but this can be addressed easily via further education programs and need not call into question all masking policies. To the reactionary, any slight misgiving can be amplified into outright opposition because everything is simultaneously nothing (see also the common dismissal of funding increases to address shortfalls as “throwing money at the problem”; by this logic, no program would ever see an increase in funding).
“12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.”
This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons – doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
The psycho-sexual contradiction here is simple: the homophobic fascist worships traditional masculinity but must also spurn it in the act of declaring themselves as straight as an arrow. Alternative sexuality is seen as non-traditional and associated with socialist systems designed to protect the weak, forgetting that human rights are economic rights, not sexual or social ones. A communist would never “redistribute” sex or peer into the private lives of others so long as their survival needs were being met. Sex is not a finite resource and its hoarding by some individuals does not prevent others from being able to enjoy it, but to the fascist, it is not enough to be successful here, others must fail.
Importantly, women are not above facilitating outmoded gender and sexual norms in this way, though often their fascism tends toward the reinforcement of toxic masculinity in their sons and husbands from a uniquely feminine position (urging their husbands to fight in a war, for example). To misogynistically argue that women are incapable of being just as vicious and reactionary as men is to dismiss a powerful potential force for regression. Fascism is mostly a chauvinist exercise, but all can play at that game.
White nationalist activist and livestreamer Nick Fuentes recently commented on the sex issue, arguing that male-female intercourse itself is homosexual:
Fuentes complained about "people calling me gay because I've never had a girlfriend."
"I think if anything — if anything — it makes me less gay. If anything, it makes me not gay — as opposed to less gay, not that there's any gay, but it makes me not gay," he argued.
Fuentes went on to describe how he has never been in a romantic relationship or had sex with a woman, but is "more heterosexual than anybody."
"If we're really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman, really makes you more heterosexual, because honestly, dating women is gay," he claimed. "And if you want to know the truth, the only really straight, heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel."
The sheer inanity of this quote is emblematic of fascist non-thought. It might be argued that deigning to highlight his comment is slumming or cherry picking, but this is the general quality of reactionary thought—even recognizing its existence falsely legitimates it, but reality dictates that we engage it, whether its purveyors deserve our time or not.
“13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.”
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view – one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction.
The contradiction here is again collectivism versus individualism. Fascism demands sacrifices for the collective while preaching its non-existence. This selective populism shifts between the individual, their in-group (i.e. whites), and the nation at will. How else would an individualistic, free market ideology ask its adherents to sacrifice themselves for the greater good in a war of conquest? There is no such greater good in fascism, just a fictionalized conception of personhood that exists only insofar as it can be exploited. Just as the “just following orders” excuse allows a warfighter to commit any atrocity and expect to be protected by the chain of command, the simultaneously collective and individualistic aspects of fascism come together to form an all-encompassing culture that strives to meet its adherent’s every need, both economic and social. It was no accident that the Nazis had their own version of all aspects of German life, from Nazi alternative art and music to Nazi sports. Fascism is at once everything and nothing.
“14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism.”
But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
What exactly is meant by the Newspeak word “wokeness?” It might be defined as a slavish devotion to political correctness and the strict avoidance of offending anyone, but the fascist will be quick to take offense at its use in schools or in the workplace, so that definition falls short. Is it the enforced consideration of the feelings of others?
Whatever “wokeness” is, it has become the bane of fascists, a newspeak non-word that, along with “critical race theory,” “groomer,” and “liberal,” no longer means anything. Anti-trans reactionaries have occasionally attempted to turn this on its head by alleging that defenders of trans rights are victimizing women by failing to clearly delineate what is meant by womanhood, creating a false dichotomy between cisgendered women and trans women. In doing so, they attempt to turn femininity itself into newspeak by pitting one marginalized group against another and asking them to exclude others in turn, failing to recognize that the precise platonic definition of womanhood is irrelevant even in a medical context. Like all attempts by fascists to coopt the language of inclusion, this one is insincere and meaningless, and this is characteristic of their perversion of language. Even fascism itself, in the hands of a fascist, is undefinable.
This last primary characteristic of fascism is its main unique aspect—its incongruence and willful irrationality precludes the act of defining and delimiting it. If no one is unable to understand fascism, they will be unable to fight against it. In this way, fascism unintentionally legitimates the use of force against it: if it cannot be thwarted with words and laws, and reactionaries wield it as an existential threat to anyone who opposes it, the only recourse is one of violence, and any hesitation to preserve universal human rights via forceful and coordinated action is itself a form of Ur-fascism. In abandoning reasoned argument and deliberation, the fascist admits to being no better than a rabid dog.
Addendum: Hungarian fascist Viktor Orban called on conservatives to “reconquer the institutions in Washington D.C. and Brussels” yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. From Reuters:
Conservatives in Europe and the United States must fight together to "reconquer" institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals who threaten Western civilisation ahead of votes in 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday. …
"Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies ... want to annihilate the Western way of life that you and us love so much," Orban told the conference.