The room is packed with radical right-wing activists and ultra-conservative politicians from all over the world. Viktor Orbán has just declared war on liberalism. And now it’s about Dordrecht on stage. “In that small town they give residents 1,000 euros to take security measures because of the arrival of an asylum seeker center.”
Eva Vlaardingerbroek is speaking. As a radical right-wing influencer, she is one of the poster children of this edition of CPAC, the conservative American political circus that is descending on Budapest for the third year in a row. Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, is the host.
Vlaardingerbroek is not the only Dutch representative at the European CPAC party. Geert Wilders is scheduled for Friday. The PVV leader said in an announcement on X that he looked forward to working together with “cultural conservatives who are on the rise in Europe.”
But who are these cultural conservatives? Anyone who listens to the speakers in Budapest on day one will hear that Vlaardingerbroek’s war rhetoric predominates. “I don’t believe in reform,” she tells the audience. “If the foundation is rotten, any attempt at rebuilding will crumble. The Tower of Babel must be destroyed. The elite is at war with us, so we must put on the armor of God, fight back and conquer!”
The audience claps loudly.
Conservative momentum
Ultraconservatives and radical right movements have momentum. They are doing well in national elections, they are looking forward to the European elections in June. This conceals the fact that there are quite a few differences between all the politicians who are riding this revolutionary wave.
The attitude towards Russia is such a stumbling block. Giorgia Meloni, who spoke at CPAC in Florida in 2022, has become far too anti-Russian for the taste of many in Budapest with her Ukraine policy as prime minister. And it also concerns the role of religion and Israel criticism, if you ask further questions.
“I hope they work on one together big tent, a broad movement,” says Elizabeth Haney on a terrace in front of the party tents that form the entrance to the conference grounds. She pokes a Hungarian black pudding with a fork and cuts a piece lángos Finished off, a Hungarian pizza with onions and cheese.
Prime Minister HungaryViktor Orban Let’s put on our armor, go to the battlefield and win!
The young Haney works at the American Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, where she heads the major donations department. Last week she was at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s estate in Florida. For what? “I can’t say.” What she does want to say is this: you have to think strategically if you want to beat your left-wing opponents.
The Trump movement in the US has already learned this hard lesson, she continues. “Trump initially did not realize that there was a big gap between the new right and the old right, the neocons. They are working on that now. If Trump becomes president, they will soon have two thousand people ready who can start working immediately. You have to, because before you know it the… Deep State obstruct.”
By this, Haney refers to civil servants and government services that would make Trump’s policy impossible. The idea that conservative think tanks, with their institutional revolution, have become one of their own deep state she thinks it’s nonsensical. “Our opponents are bureaucrats who have drifted away from the voters. We give those voters a voice.” Haney looks at the range of movements converging at CPAC with a mix of optimism and excitement. “If you are young and right-wing now, there are so many subcultures to choose from. That’s really new! But that also comes with a risk: fragmentation.”
Civilizational alarmism
The fact that a feeling of brotherhood prevails at the conference is due to the shared enemy that all speakers perceive on stage. That is the liberal and progressive West, which would do everything possible from Brussels, Washington and Davos to destroy the conservative world. The greater the impending bankruptcy of Western civilization, the greater the willingness to bridge mutual differences.
“Let us put on our armor, go to the battlefield and win!” Orbán shouts to the crowd in his opening speech. Eva Vlaardingerbroek strikes a similar tone in her argument: “If we do not take up the fight seriously, this time will go down in history as the moment when Western countries were no longer invaded to be conquered. Our corrupt elites have actively invited the invading power. And they made their citizens pay the price.”
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“Just like Satan, our enemy has many names: from neoliberalism to international communism,” says Jack Posobiec, shortly after Vlaardingerbroek on stage. Posobiec is an American influencer who praised Trump early on and played a leading role in spreading the Pizzagate conspiracy, the hot air-based story that a pizzeria in Washington would be the center of a pedophile network controlled by politicians. “It’s ironic, but only with our global movement can we fight the globalists!”
The alarmism of Posobiec and Vlaardingerbroek can coexist in the conference hall with the talk of former ministers who know power from within. Tony Abbott, the Australian former prime minister who built a detention center for refugees on an island in the Pacific Ocean, is one of the speakers on Thursday, as is Fabrice Leggeri, former boss of the border agency Frontex, who wants to enter the European Parliament for the Rassemblement National , and Slovenian former Prime Minister Janez Janša.
The agenda for Friday morning includes a gender debate with the evangelical former senator and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in addition to an appearance by the Polish former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. After the lunch break, Wilders will perform in the ‘Conservative Connectedness’ block, with Chilean presidential candidate and Pinochet admirer José Antonio Kast, among others.
In this way, relatively mainstream conservatives and influencers who have become big on the internet are forging an alliance together. They exchange numbers, share their knowledge. Outside the stage, visitors walk around sweating from the crowds. “A kind of fair, with stalls,” is how FVD member Freek Jansen summarizes his impressions on Thursday afternoon. “But still too American for me. Transmitting too much.”
‘No woke zone’
All this remains invisible to journalists. Various media that signed up, including NRCreceived an email in the run-up to the conference: “As organizers, we must adhere to one of the iron rules of our conference: ‘CPAC is a no woke zone‘. We look forward to welcoming you in the future, should your organization become significantly less woke.”
There is no discussion about this refusal at the conference site, a stone’s throw from the centuries-old Buda Castle. “It’s full,” says the head of communications when asked at the entrance. A CNN cameraman who captures visitors as they enter is turned away by an angry security guard. “This is a private meeting!” Journalists rely on a live stream.
Inside, the conference continues undisturbed, with discussions about freedom of expression. Anyone watching the livestream will see how the cross-pollination takes shape: one group of speakers shares their experience from within with power, the other group further incites the audience to wage a life-and-death struggle against the progressive establishment.
Is that playing with fire? “Sometimes I worry that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” says Elizabeth Haney on the terrace. “There is always the chance that a more autocratic person will come to power, who will then abuse that power. A kind of Caesar: he also became more and more of a dictator, while he said he stood up for the people.”
But then she thinks again about her home city of San Francisco, where, in her opinion, the left-wing city council is making a mess on all fronts. “You are losing and losing and losing, as Trump once put it,” she says. She pokes the black pudding again. “And I see more and more people who think: we can no longer win this battle fairly.”
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