Eva Vlaardingerbroek also speaks at a controversial conference where Wilders is guest of honor | Politics

The group photo of the CPAC conference in Hungary shows a colorful collection of right-wing conservative politicians and commentators from the US and Europe. In sessions with slogans such as ‘save the West, protect the borders’, ‘sovereignty lives, globalization dies’, dozens of conservative politicians and activists encourage each other on Thursday and Friday in Budapest on the way to the European elections, where a new populist wave is expected.

PVV leader Wilders is one of the guests of honor. On Friday he will speak with former Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, among others, in the same theme session. On the first morning, Orbán himself, Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek (once affiliated with Forum for Democracy) and Mercedes Schlapp, former media advisor to Donald Trump, gave a speech.

They called for resistance against mass immigration, against ‘the communists’ and the ‘left-wing media’. “We have to fight to make sure our family stays together,” Schlapp said. “In America we call them mom and dad ‘bears’. We fight for our families. I also say: marry a good conservative who is from God hold on, stay strong, don’t retreat!”

Eva Vlaardingerbroek called on those present to ‘fight back’ against ‘the elite’. “The elite has declared war on us, we must put on the shield of God, fight back and win.” In her speech, Vlaardingerbroek listed the percentage of migrants from large cities, and called the controversial ‘repopulation theory’ embraced by the nationalist right ‘not a theory but a fact’. “The elite wants fewer white people, less of you (…) The totalitarians in Brussels want to control a sovereign country like Hungary.”

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CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference in full) is originally an influential conference of American conservatives, which in recent years has turned against ‘socialists’, ‘gender ideology’ and ‘globalists from Brussels and Washington’ with the war language of Trumpism. “Family, faith, country and the fight against ‘woke’ are central,” says professor of political pluralism Sarah de Lange (University of Amsterdam).

Journalists are not welcome, all Dutch media (as far as we know) were refused entry to the conference. The speeches can be followed live via a stream. In addition to Wilders and Orbán, speakers include the leader of Vlaams Belang Tom van Grieken and the chairman of the right-wing radical Vox from Spain. The American activist Jack Posobiec is also coming to Boedepast. He is also called the ‘king of fake news’ and says his aim is to ‘overthrow democracy’. And the former American presidential candidate for the Republicans Rick Santorum is there, as is Fabrice Leggeri, former director of the EU’s border guard Frontex and now a member of the French party National Assembly by Marine Le Pen. Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia, is also a guest.

The controversial former boss of the German domestic security service Hans Georg Maassen is also on the speakers list. He is labeled a right-wing extremist by the current German intelligence services because he called Africans ‘culturally backward’ and wrote an essay about ‘socialist and globalist forces’.

“He has been radicalized for some time,” says De Lange. “The list of speakers is varied, but what unites them all is conservatism. The defense of traditional family values, they are anti-woke. But the composition of speakers varies, and sometimes politicians may also strategically stay away. You might expect Marine Le Pen at CPAC, but she is currently positioning herself more in the political middle, to have a chance to become the new president of France. If she now starts giving extremely radical speeches abroad, that will not help.”

Wilders’ Dutch formation partners (VVD, NSC and BBB) will therefore pay close attention to what exactly he does and does not say on the stage of the conference center in Budapest. If he disregards core values ​​of the rule of law, this could lead to arguments at the negotiating table.

But beforehand, the parties did not want to spend too many words on it. Let’s first hear what Wilders has to say, said NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt. “You know how important I find the rule of law. But we are forming agreements here for the Netherlands.”

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