Orban no role model for Canadian conservatives

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/07/2023 (822 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“As @IDUalliance Chairman I was pleased to meet with Fidesz Party Leader @PM_ViktorOrban today in Budapest. We discussed… the importance of centre-right parties strengthening their collaboration.” — July 6 Tweet from Stephen Harper.

The former Canadian prime minister could not make the message any clearer.

As the leader of the International Democratic Union, an organization made up of conservative parties from around the world including the party he founded in Canada, Stephen Harper wants Canada’s Conservatives to collaborate more closely with the Hungarian right-wing government of Viktor Orban.

My allegiance to Canada is 100 per cent.

Canada rescued my parents and me from authoritarianism in the Hungary of the 1950s. There is no document in my possession more sacred than my Canadian passport. But I cannot deny that the birthplace published on my passport is not Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary or Vancouver.

While I have been a resident in these cities and many others in Canada and the United States, the Canadian government document states clearly that I was born in Budapest. My mother tongue is Hungarian. When I speak to my mother, it’s in Hungarian. My passport is Canadian. But I cannot deny that Hungarian culture has had a strong impact on who I am.

I take no pride in telling you that Hungarian culture was deeply infected by European Fascism in the 1940s. Many Hungarians were as mesmerized as others around the world by an ideology that was among other things deeply antisemitic. Jew hatred in Hungary ended up in the destruction of many members of my family.

I am not here to compare Viktor Orban’s ideology to the Hungarian paramilitary group known as the Arrow Cross, which executed Jewish men, women and children on the banks of the Danube.

I am not comparing Orban to the government of the day which turned over the “Jewish question” to Hitler’s SS, who were invited into Hungary by the government of the day and proceed to place thousands of Hungarian Jews on the trains to various concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

But I am saying that the person endorsed by Harper, and the one he wants Canadian Conservatives to collaborate with, is a person who proudly calls Hungary an illiberal democracy.

He has called Muslims wanting to immigrate to Hungary, poison.

He has called on Ukraine to make peace by surrendering to Putin. Although Hungary is part of NATO, nobody has fought harder than Orban to stop NATO from supporting Ukraine.

His government wrote and passed a new Hungarian constitution 11 years ago. It includes these words “Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman established by voluntary decision, and the family as the basis of the nation’s survival.” From Orban’s perspective, same-sex marriage puts a nation’s survival at risk.

Does Pierre Poilievre want to say anything about this?

This is one of many columns I am writing where I feel the churning of my stomach.

I don’t enjoy putting the government of the land of my birth in a poor light. But one’s personal conscience can undermine personal pleasure.

I cannot tell you why watching Stephen Harper lather up a far-right Hungarian politician, is painful for me without offering context.

Orban, much like other right-wing populists, tells Hungarians that his party is committed to the country’s Christian identity, which faces threats from liberal elites who want to destroy that identity.

His favourite bogeyman is George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish financier with an American passport.

Orban accuses him of wanting to defile Hungary by supporting Muslim immigration. Five years ago in a widely covered speech, often referenced by right-wing populists worldwide, Orban declared “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”

If Stephen Harper is serious about wanting Canadian Conservatives to embrace Viktor Orban, and if Pierre Poilievre is foolish enough to follow his mentor’s wishes, the Conservatives will be destroyed in the next Canadian election. But before that happens, my country, which is not Hungary, my beloved Canada will be severely damaged.

I hope, for the sake of all Canadians, Pierre Poilievre finds an opportunity to make a clear and bold statement, separating himself from his mentor, Stephen Harper’s vision for Canadian conservatism.

Viktor Orban’s path must never become Canada’s.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com