Tucker Carlson joins the right-wing pilgrimage to Budapest


Tucker Carlson has become the latest and highest-profile figure on the American right to make a pilgrimage to Hungary.
Fans of Carlson's top-rated prime time show on Fox News learned Monday that he would be broadcasting all week from Budapest, where he would also be delivering a speech next weekend at MCC Feszt — a conference sponsored by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a think tank recently granted $1.7 billion (about 1 percent of Hungary's GDP) by Prime Minister Viktor Orban in order to help foster the kind of nationalistic conservatism favored by his government. That includes kicking Central European University out of the country, banning the academic study of gender from colleges, allowing the ruling Fidesz Party to gobble up 90 percent of media in the country, and demonizing George Soros for cultural trends the prime minister's supporters dislike.
Carlson is unlikely to be the last conservative to pay hommage to Orban. John O'Sullivan, a one-time Thatcherite conservative who served as an editor of National Review through most of the 1990s, has been president of the Danube Institute in Budapest since 2017, bringing in a long list of American conservatives for conferences on right-wing populism and the threat of cancel culture.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In addition to a speech by Carlson, the MCC Feszt will include remarks by such prominent figures on the American right as Dennis Prager and Rod Dreher, the latter of whom has been living in Hungary and blogging effusively for The American Conservative about the Orban government for months. Dreher was joined a few months ago by Notre Dame's Patrick Deneen, author of surprise bestseller Why Liberalism Failed, for a lengthy discussion at MCC of the transnational conservative future.
All of which means that Hungary looks to be for populist conservatives in the 2020s what the Soviet Union was for the international left a century ago: a foreign model of a morally and politically edifying future. That doesn't mean or imply a moral equivalence between Orban's nationalism and Soviet communism. But it does point to a similarly transactional relationship. In return for providing earnest intellectuals with hope, a government often treated as an international pariah gets to enjoy a flood of fawning coverage when those ideologically engaged writers and talkers start sharing their carefully curated experiences with the world.
Time will tell if today's pilgrims turn out to be genuine prophets of the political future or just the latest band of useful idiots for a discredited and unsavory regime.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.
-
Democrats are on the hunt for their own Joe Rogan
IN THE SPOTLIGHT Party leaders and mega-donors want to counter MAGA's online momentum by recreating a digital right-wing ecosystem for the left
-
Atlanta dining: The best lemon pepper wings
Feature Marinated turkey wings, a Korean barbecue sauce combo and an off-menu staple
-
Film reviews: Friendship and Fight or Flight
Feature An awkward dad unravels after he's unfriended and Josh Hartnett attempts a John Wick sidestep
-
Israel-US 'rift': is Trump losing patience with Netanyahu?
Today's Big Question US president called for an end to Gaza war and negotiated directly with Hamas to return American hostage, amid rumours of strained relations
-
What happens if tensions between India and Pakistan boil over?
TODAY'S BIG QUESTION As the two nuclear-armed neighbors rattle their sabers in the wake of a terrorist attack on the contested Kashmir region, experts worry that the worst might be yet to come
-
Why Russia removed the Taliban's terrorist designation
The Explainer Russia had designated the Taliban as a terrorist group over 20 years ago
-
Inside the Israel-Turkey geopolitical dance across Syria
THE EXPLAINER As Syria struggles in the wake of the Assad regime's collapse, its neighbors are carefully coordinating to avoid potential military confrontations
-
'Like a sound from hell': Serbia and sonic weapons
The Explainer Half a million people sign petition alleging Serbian police used an illegal 'sound cannon' to disrupt anti-government protests
-
The arrest of the Philippines' former president leaves the country's drug war in disarray
In the Spotlight Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the ICC earlier this month
-
Ukrainian election: who could replace Zelenskyy?
The Explainer Donald Trump's 'dictator' jibe raises pressure on Ukraine to the polls while the country is under martial law
-
Why Serbian protesters set off smoke bombs in parliament
THE EXPLAINER Ongoing anti-corruption protests erupted into full view this week as Serbian protesters threw the country's legislature into chaos