Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “Authoritarianism in Europe” with Péter Krekó

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“Authoritarianism in Europe” with Péter Krekó · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and let me tell you, there
• 0:06
  are a few dangerous ideas floating around Europe. At the moment, as we look towards this
• 0:12
  weekend's second round runoff elections in France, President Emmanuel Macron has rolled
• 0:18
  the dice, and everyone is waiting with baited breath to see whether or not, as much of the
• 0:23
  legacy media puts it, France will be governed by a far-right party for the first time since
• 0:29
  the Vichy regime during World War II. I'll get to more of that in a moment, but this
• 0:34
  episode is about the only example, really, of a true slide of a democracy into semi-authoritarianism
• 0:43
  in Europe, inside the European Union. Thanks to a strong man in Hungary, who's become
• 0:48
  something of a poster child for right wingers all over the world, from Tucker Carlson to
• 0:53
  Donald Trump. They seem to love Viktor Orban. Orban is in the news again this week because
• 0:59
  he is Europe's most pro-Russian leader, and Hungary, the country that he's been running
• 1:06
  for 14 years, has just taken over the rotating European Union presidency. This is something
• 1:13
  that each country gets for one year. It's now Hungary's turn, and the first thing that
• 1:17
  Orban has done is he's popped up in Kiev to hold talks with President Vladimir Zelensky
• 1:24
  about why Ukraine should stop fighting and should beg Russia for peace, basically. Viktor
• 1:31
  Orban's foreign minister in Hungary has made at least five trips to Russia since the start
• 1:36
  of the war. NATO has been pretty appalled that Hungary, which is a NATO alliance member,
• 1:43
  and a member of the European Union, would be cosying up to Vladimir Putin and refusing
• 1:48
  to help Ukraine. Hungary has really become a thorn in the side of the European Union,
• 1:53
  diplomats in Brussels, hate this situation they find themselves in, where basically if
• 1:58
  Hungary was as authoritarian as it is now, when it was admitted to the European Union,
• 2:03
  it would never have been admitted to the European Union, but what do you do now that they're
• 2:06
  in the club? Ditto NATO. This all comes against the backdrop, of course, of a lot of mini-me
• 2:13
  Orban style, right wing candidates sweeping the European Union elections from multiple
• 2:19
  countries across Europe. That's what prompted the French President, Emmanuel Macron,
• 2:24
  to roll the dice and call a snap parliamentary election in France. That second round takes
• 2:30
  place this Sunday, and yes, could lead to the first far-right government in France since
• 2:36
  World War II. Just to be clear, President Macron would not lose power in France. He's
• 2:42
  there until 2027. They have five year terms as President. It's worth saying, at the last
• 2:48
  presidential election in 2022, Macron only won 58% of the vote, even though he was up against
• 2:54
  the far-right presidential candidate, Marie Le Pen, rather than running against one of
• 2:59
  the major party candidates. Big tidal shifts in public opinion in Europe and France would
• 3:08
  be by far the biggest and most important country to be led by a, quote unquote, far-right government.
• 3:15
  So what does far-right mean? This episode is with someone who lives in Budapest, and is
• 3:21
  something of a dissident against Viktor Orban, and can get really into the weeds for those
• 3:25
  of us who are inclined to political wonkery about what has been happening in Hungary. Probably
• 3:32
  worth just giving you a bit of a backdrop about Hungary, a refresher course in case you're
• 3:38
  not an avid student of Hungarian history. You may remember, it was part of Austria-Hungary
• 3:45
  between the 1860s and the end of the First World War. They lost the First World War, so
• 3:51
  then they ended up on the wrong side of the Second World War as well, along with Italy
• 3:55
  and Germany. After that, became a vassal state of the Soviet Union, so they had to endure
• 4:01
  communism right through until the 50s. Then they had a revolution in 1956, which captured
• 4:08
  the world's attention and was this big beacon of will the students and the smaller liberals
• 4:14
  be able to wrestle power back from the communists, long story short, not exactly, maybe a little
• 4:20
  bit. At the end of the Cold War in the late 80s when the Soviet Union fell apart, Hungary
• 4:26
  was one of the most successful countries to come out of the Soviet era. I mean, it rapidly
• 4:31
  modernised, rapidly transformed. You could visit Hungary in the early 2000s, and it was
• 4:37
  this dynamic country. It joined the European Union. It joined NATO. It's decline in the
• 4:45
  past decade or so from being a fully fledged liberal democracy up and coming freedom
• 4:52
  country to being essentially undermined by an authoritarian is a really good case study
• 5:00
  in what can happen. When you sort of take for granted norms that we're all supposed
• 5:05
  to live by in free societies, what happens when the Federal Reserve is no longer independent
• 5:11
  as has happened in Hungary? What happens when the Supreme Court is no longer unbiased
• 5:17
  as has happened in Hungary and perhaps in a few other countries that we could point at?
• 5:23
  What happens when news outlets receive partisan pressure or nudging or influence from government
• 5:29
  officials and essentially become mouthpieces of the state? What happens when COVID emergency
• 5:36
  decrees centralised power and then the government doesn't take it away? What happens when governments
• 5:42
  install loyalist judges who will give them a pass on anything they want to do? What happens
• 5:48
  when governments try to constrain opposition parties or hunt down their opponents or make
• 5:52
  it difficult for opposition parties to raise money and to advertise? Today's guest, Peter
• 5:59
  Krekko knows all about this. He's lived through it. He's an academic. He studies it. As I said,
• 6:04
  this is definitely one for the wants in the sense that this is specifically about what's
• 6:08
  been going on in Hungary, but you don't have to step back very far to understand what could
• 6:14
  happen in France and what indeed could happen anywhere else. Just a note about the French elections
• 6:20
  and the far right in France, the National Rally, as they're now called, formally the National Front.
• 6:28
  I have been frustrated, disappointed, by so much of the coverage in the Western media,
• 6:36
  which is saying things like this would be the first far right government since Vichy. I
• 6:41
  wrote this on my substack notes. You should follow me on substack notes. Should you care to do so,
• 6:46
  because it provides an opportunity to chat about things in ways that I don't really want to
• 6:51
  on Twitter and the character count prevents me from doing in long form on Twitter. I think there's
• 6:58
  really something to be said for still being able to communicate with you and hear from you in writing
• 7:03
  rather than just in sound bites on Instagram reels and TikTok and so on. So I wrote on in my first
• 7:09
  ever substack note the following. Is anyone else finding it hard to understand the true stakes of
• 7:15
  the French election? The New York Times says, quote, for the first time since the Vichy regime,
• 7:21
  France would be in the hands of the far right. National public radio in the United States writes
• 7:27
  that the election could put quote, the far right in French government for the first time since the
• 7:32
  Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. I wrote, guys, guys, guys, the Vichy
• 7:41
  government was an authoritarian dictatorship that in turned Jews, Romani and Gays in concentration
• 7:47
  camps. The comparison with the National Rally, that's the French far right party, which did so
• 7:53
  well in the first round elections recently and it may sweep to power on Sunday. The comparison
• 8:00
  with the National Rally may have been valid at a stretch 52 years ago when the National Front
• 8:04
  was founded as a fascistic anti-Semitic movement, but its founder was expelled from the party a decade
• 8:10
  ago and it now presents itself as a populist party of national conservatives. What does this party
• 8:18
  in 2024 have in common with Vichy's 1940 Nazi collaborators except that sensationalist journalists
• 8:26
  get a heart on when they write the words far right? It's an honest question, I wrote. Is the risk
• 8:32
  that the Rally poses to France akin to a French Vladimir Putin that is an existential threat to
• 8:38
  democracy or a French victor Orbán that is catastrophic but not existential or a French Georgian
• 8:46
  Maloney, the Italian Prime Minister, that is nasty but manageable. Legacy media outlets, I wrote on
• 8:54
  my sub-stagnot, seem more committed to arm-waving catastrophisation than to describing what specific
• 9:00
  policies are attracting non-crazy French voters to the Rally's platform. I will have more to say
• 9:08
  and more insights to bring about the French far right. Suffice it to say, I don't believe,
• 9:15
  you know, do not trust any outlet that is making comparisons between the National Rally today and
• 9:21
  the Vichy regime of Nazi collaborators. It's a lot more complicated than that. The strains of
• 9:28
  right-wing reactionary politics and anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe are much more complicated
• 9:33
  than simply drawing analogies at a stretch with World War II. I hope you enjoy this episode. We
• 9:41
  recorded this back in February, so we're not talking specifically about this. I was sort of waiting
• 9:45
  for a moment when Victor Orbán would come up in the news because I thought this is a moment when
• 9:49
  you're going to want a real deep dive into one particular country's plight. Professor Peter
• 9:55
  Cracko lives and works in Budapest. He's an economist and political scientist. He's a researcher
• 9:59
  at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, and I hope you enjoy this glimpse into how a democratic
• 10:05
  country can be dismantled into a semi-authoritarian state. Enjoy the one and only Professor Peter Cracko.
• 10:13
  I'm not surprised. Hungary's experience is fascinating to me, Peter, because although my name is
• 10:22
  Hungarian for some reason that I don't know, although I have been to Budapest and loved it,
• 10:30
  I have no affiliation with the country except that whenever I'm speaking with friends of mine who
• 10:36
  are in the European milieu of EU elites, they express grave concern about the fact that there's a
• 10:45
  European Union member that is becoming a semi-authoritarian regime of a kind that would not have
• 10:54
  been accepted into the EU had it had the political complexion that it does now. And then on the
• 11:01
  other hand, when I speak to American conservative friends of mine, they speak about the Hungarian
• 11:05
  government as this bastion that we should be looking towards of a robust vision of cultural
• 11:13
  conservatism and common sense in a sea of work, social justice, crazies in the Anglo world.
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  What am I to make of those two different perceptions? Yeah, good question. I mean, I have to tell,
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  I'm a liberal guy, but liberal more, I think, in the European sense, a bit less in the
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  Anglo-Saxon sense, where it's more the synonym of being a lefty. So I'm not a lefty. I'm more,
• 11:51
  let's say, centrist liberal, but as that, I rather share many of the concerns that the European
• 12:02
  have to say, pro-democratic forces, including the center, I don't forget it, European people's
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  party share, because of the demolition and destruction of the independent institutions in Hungary,
• 12:16
  and it's, you know, 100 in a small country of only 10 million. So with a very strong government
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  centralization and with taking over some of the institutions, the exercise of power in a small
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  country like that can be way, way more effective than in a big country. And of course, in a more,
• 12:40
  I have to say, where regionalism matters more like in the United States, but also in Germany,
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  and elsewhere. So I think that there are really some unhealthy developments, and I honestly do
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  not share the values of the government, especially when it comes to issues like anti-AGBT policies
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  and rhetoric, which sometimes gets pretty nasty, and it's not about, I mean, what you have to
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  know is that there is no such a thing as a woke ideology in Hungary, and I'm really not a big fan
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  of what I did. Whoever fights with wokeism here in Budapest these days, you are just, you know,
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  fighting with the ghosts, because they are not really there. And also, it's a part of conservative
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  government. On the other hand, I have some good relationship with some of the friends of the
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  government from the end of sex group, like Madsville, her. Sorry to interrupt, but to people who
• 13:47
  haven't been following, you know, the history of Hungary over the past decade, when you just
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  mentioned the demolition and destruction of independent institutions, what is that? What does that
• 13:59
  look like? What has happened? I mean, to tell you a few examples, I mean, the Hungary
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  traditionally more followed the German constitutional model, that is built on very strong
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  checks and balances. Of course, built on the historical experience that if you do not have
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  this checks and balances, the things can go pretty bad as it happened in Germany in the 20th
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  century and in the 30s practically. But for example, the constitutional court had been one of the
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  most important institutions counter-balancing governmental and mostly I'm in parliamentary decisions.
• 14:51
  The constitutional court, sorry, is what? Is that the equivalent of a supreme court or a high court?
• 14:55
  Yes, exactly. Exactly. And what has happened with the constitutional court, for example, Van
• 15:01
  Orban came to power back to 2010, is that the right and the right of the constitutional court
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  has been narrowed. Some of the rights, the constitutional court were stripped off and it was
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  watered up with loyalists close to the government. Of course, I mean, the political game is
• 15:22
  something similar. I think that in the United States, and yes, there are many similarities.
• 15:26
  There's between the poetics of the United States and Hungary, even if I'm in the...
• 15:32
  Sorry, how are justices of the supreme court, high court, constitutional court appointed?
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  Is that by the Prime Minister or is it by Parliament?
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  No, it's by the Parliament, but given that the Hungarian government has a two-thirds backing.
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  In the Parliament, it has no problem with selecting practically whoever they want to. Same happened
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  previously with the central bank that has been more independent from the government beforehand.
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  Right now, in an ironic manner, because there are some conflicts between economic policy
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  decision makers on who made the mistakes in the last few years, the central bank is becoming
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  again a bit more independent. But the independence has been reduced. The prosecutor's office in
• 16:26
  Hungary is playing very actively in burying all the corruption cases that were allegedly some
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  members of the government or people close to the government are involved. Because of the fact
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  that the prosecutor's office can block the judicial procedure and can hamper the process to go
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  into the judicial phase, this is a very highly efficient shield for the government. The media
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  authority has also turned to be much more loyal to the government and why the media
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  authority allows pro-governmental media merges. What is the media authority? That is a department
• 17:14
  that controls who can own media licenses and who can run radio stations and television stations?
• 17:21
  That's exactly so. They, on the one hand, are responsible for giving licenses. For example,
• 17:31
  when it comes to the radio stations, but also they can release fines if they think that someone
• 17:39
  hurts the relevant lows on what can be shown on media and what not. But also what is pretty
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  important is that the media authority together with the competition authority are responsible
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  for saying yes or no to media merges. In Hungary we could see the biggest, I think the biggest
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  media merge not necessarily in terms of absolute net value, but in terms of the size, I mean,
• 18:11
  compared it to the size of the country, the most important media concentration. So it's like
• 18:18
  Silvio Berlusconi, I think, could have never dreamed of such a media empire. I mean, of course,
• 18:24
  compare it to the size of the country. What is this media empire? What is this media empire?
• 18:30
  This media empire is partially state-owned media that have really become pretty propagandistic.
• 18:38
  If you take a look at the media landscape in Hungary, this is, I mean, if you switch on
• 18:45
  public television or radio, it is really similar than, let's say, Russia today or something like that,
• 18:52
  or I would say, you know, the other is state television, but with zero criticism towards the
• 19:00
  government, but it's not the only part of the story because previously private media also put
• 19:12
  in a huge gigaconglomerate called Kashmah, the Central European Media Foundation, and it's a huge
• 19:23
  foundation, and it owns more than 500 media outlets, and it's just beyond the state-owned
• 19:33
  media empire, which is also pretty big. So about more than 80% of the Hungarian media in terms of
• 19:39
  ownership and revenues belongs to the government directly or indirectly.
• 19:47
  Right. But the relevant thing here is about the editorial control of the media, right? Because
• 19:53
  some countries have very large government ownership of media outlets like the United Kingdom,
• 20:00
  for example, where the BBC is a behemoth, but the BBC is independent, supposedly, from government
• 20:06
  interference. What has changed in Hungary? And was it ever the case that in Hungary there was a robust
• 20:14
  independent state-owned media like the BBC that was fearless in its criticism of government,
• 20:22
  and if so, what happened to it? Yeah, good question. Because, of course, the situation was never,
• 20:29
  you know, white. And I think the public media is rarely back or white in the sense that, of
• 20:40
  course, all the government beforehand, to different extent, but use the public media to put
• 20:49
  their sum of the loyal faces, and, of course, some editorial control have worked, which, and it
• 20:58
  was never totally independent from politics, and you know, the situation is easy. BBC receives
• 21:05
  most of its revenues from the subscription fees, practically. We can say more or less directly.
• 21:13
  Yes, but that's a mandatory subscription, so it's like a tax.
• 21:16
  Yes, it's exactly, but it does not need a political decision. In the case of Hungary,
• 21:24
  it needs a political decision, because the parliament have to approve the budget in which you have
• 21:30
  the line for the state media as well. What we can, what we could see, though, between let's say
• 21:38
  2002 and 2010, where it was a socially broad government in Hungary, that yeah, you could feel,
• 21:43
  I mean, if someone would just come to Hungary, not knowing who is the government there, switch on
• 21:52
  the TV. Let's imagine that Jörgis speaks perfect Hungarian, and then I think, and know something about
• 22:00
  politics in another country, I think after an hour or two hours, Jörgis would have figured it out,
• 22:06
  that it's okay. It must be a lefty government in place, but it was still way more subtle. It was
• 22:13
  way less direct than what we can see now, where the state media have really become a propaganda
• 22:22
  machine that does not, you know, comply to the basic journalistic standards and ethical rules.
• 22:30
  Then you had, for example, interviews in which the box popular was the camera man sitting on the
• 22:37
  other side of the camera, for example, or when you could see fake stories, for example, on
• 22:49
  Swedish people that are escaping from Sweden and coming to Hungary because they thought that
• 22:56
  Sweden is a nightmare and so on. So it's really not a, we cannot just say that it's biased,
• 23:05
  but we can also say that it is lacking the minimal ethical and journalistic standards in many
• 23:13
  cases. And unfortunately, this is something that is quite typical in the pro-governmental media.
• 23:18
  So it's not only polarized, it's like the minimum media ethos that you have to be to a certain
• 23:27
  extent, you know, or to a large extent, credibly in the sense that you do not go against effects.
• 23:34
  So it's not re-happening. And of course, we can say that, again, it's not something as a hunger
• 23:40
  and invention. The whole concept of post truth comes from the Anglo-Saxon word. And in many
• 23:46
  sense, what the government does in the media and in the public communication and in the public
• 23:52
  campaigns is an Anglo-Saxon import. But also, when it comes to the institution background of the
• 23:58
  media, I think it shows more similarity to the Russian situation. I mean, what the way how
• 24:06
  letting a Putin centralize the media after the cursed submarine catastrophe in the early days of
• 24:12
  his presidency, when he could feel that if there is an independent media, then it can hurt my
• 24:18
  popularity and bring me down. I think something similar happened here. First, the government friendly
• 24:28
  oligarchs both up the media and then turn them into mouthpieces that are
• 24:35
  parroting the governmental messages. And if you ask about editorial control, there are regular
• 24:42
  political guidances for the editors and we know it from leaked audio tapes. And we also know it from
• 24:51
  people who were working in the public media or the governmental media and left it and become
• 24:58
  some kind of, let's say, whistleblowers. That's extraordinary. Because I mean, when you say that
• 25:04
  in the previous central left government, you could probably have picked that the state run media,
• 25:10
  that the state media was left with bias towards the left. I do think there's a difference between
• 25:19
  a sort of ideological bias that sometimes stems from the fact that journalists that tend to be left
• 25:26
  wing versus a procedural being procedurally captive to the government that's in power.
• 25:35
  I think you find that the news in many places is left wing because of the types of people who
• 25:41
  choose to work in that industry. But it's a different story when you're literally
• 25:48
  burying stories or receiving talking points or giving politicians a pass specifically because
• 25:55
  you're beholden in a partisan way to a particular government. And you mentioned earlier that there
• 26:01
  were sort of talking points or things that the media either is encouraged to say or is punished
• 26:10
  for saying, is that true? How does that work? Let me give you an example. That's a very important
• 26:17
  point what you raised. Because of course, I'm not a journalist, but my conviction that there is
• 26:28
  no such a thing as totally objective media. And honestly, it would be pretty boring. So no one
• 26:32
  would be interested. Because I mean, if you just purely present the facts, how do you select them?
• 26:39
  What kind of, what kind of, I mean, you know, where you set you put them into. So it's like
• 26:46
  and it shouldn't even be the expectation. But here, I think often the false logic is that there is
• 26:51
  no such a thing as objective media, which means that you can go totally partisan and should not even
• 26:57
  try the facts because there are no facts. And the two things are totally different. And let me tell
• 27:04
  you two examples about what's often can be seen in the pro-governmental media. And even in
• 27:12
  so-called public media, which I rather call state media. So we used to call it government
• 27:18
  controlled media. So if you, for example, as an editor, talk about the government and the right
• 27:32
  in Hungary saying always that we are doing this, we are doing that. And so I mean, then it means that
• 27:40
  you do not even take the minimum effort to try to pretend that you distance yourself to a certain
• 27:48
  extent from what's happening in the, on the government to say that not necessarily a news,
• 27:54
  but in, you know, in, in, in, even in opinion shows you, you always have this kind of characters
• 28:02
  that are just talking about themselves as part of the, part of the government or the government
• 28:09
  or side. Second example, when there was a migration crisis in Hungary in 2014, 2015, Hungary was
• 28:21
  never- Just to remind people, this is during the Arab Spring. A lot of people coming from Syria
• 28:26
  and elsewhere in the Middle East into European countries. And Hungary is one of the first countries
• 28:32
  that you would reach if you were trying to get into the European Union. Yeah, it was the
• 28:36
  consequence of the Arab Spring a bit later. And it's like mostly the Syrian civil war was the,
• 28:44
  was the most important reason why many people were fleeing. But of course, the situation was a
• 28:49
  bit more complex. Russia played quite hard to exacerbate the migration crisis with military
• 28:56
  intervention and also human smuggling and so on. And it was also successful to certain extent.
• 29:02
  What happened is that most of the refugees who wanted to go to Germany or Austria, they have to
• 29:08
  go through Hungary. And, and the Hungarian government have pretty early started a very
• 29:18
  aggressive anti-immigrant, anti-refugee campaign. And of, again, it's not something as a
• 29:26
  Hungarian. When we have these voices in the US, we have these voices in other parts of Europe as
• 29:33
  well. But there was a circular that sent, that were sent to the editors at the public television.
• 29:40
  And it said that you can never show women and especially children when you show the
• 29:48
  footages of the, of the refugees. They call them, and you, you can never call them refugees,
• 29:55
  you can only call them migrants. So the, you, you, you have to kill out the empathy from other people
• 30:02
  towards, towards, towards the migrants. And, and that's, that's just one example of the many,
• 30:11
  or there was another circular that said that you cannot label the published right parties in
• 30:18
  Europe, far right parties. Because it's like, it's more and more the, how to say, the, the
• 30:24
  alliance that fed us fits into so be careful about how you. And who is sending these women?
• 30:30
  The member of the media. Is it the department of media or the, is it the prime minister's office?
• 30:35
  Who's sending these memos to the media? Usually it comes from the media. But as, as I said,
• 30:40
  what we know from the operation of the media is that the orders are usually, and the phone calls
• 30:47
  and so on are coming from above, from the political level. In many sense. So the Hungarian,
• 30:54
  I mean, I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to just trying to think of how this would play out in
• 31:00
  a, a liberal democracy that was more robust. I mean, if you, if that happened,
• 31:06
  and if that happened in any of the newsrooms that I work in, that, I mean, it would be regarded
• 31:13
  as so taboo by the editors and the producers at the newsroom that it would almost just encourage
• 31:22
  them to go in the opposite direction. So were there people who did that? And what would happen
• 31:27
  to them? How would those people suffer consequences? Because in Australia, there would be no
• 31:33
  consequence. I mean, you'd probably get promoted for defying the government order.
• 31:41
  Yeah, it's, it's a perfect question. I think because it's not always obvious. I mean,
• 31:50
  there are some stories where journalists have been fired from pro-governmental or state-owned
• 32:00
  media because, because they were not following the line. And then, then as I said, or some of them
• 32:08
  have become whistleblowers or at least give some interviews in the public and told about how
• 32:15
  strongly the media was controlled and how obvious orders you receive for your editorial work.
• 32:25
  And, but also we have to tell that the reason why these institutions can work so efficiently.
• 32:32
  And the reason why the political occupation of these institutions can work so efficiently
• 32:39
  is that people are willing to follow the line and figure out what the line could be. So it's not
• 32:48
  always just the circulars, but it's also, in many cases, people who comply to the circulars,
• 32:54
  but also people who try to figure out what can be in the head of decision makers. So what, and this
• 33:00
  is what what Timot is neither cause. And I think it's a brilliant term that describes well the,
• 33:08
  how to say, the subjective side of the increasingly autocratic red shims, the anticipatory obedience.
• 33:17
  So when you try to figure it out, what could be the rule that you have to follow if you want to
• 33:23
  be a Guss Comrade. And that's clearly part of the picture. And it's everywhere. So, and at
• 33:30
  and at that point, of course, we can also tell that if the society works a bit differently,
• 33:37
  we have to put it into historical context in the 20th century of Hungary, you know,
• 33:43
  totalitarian laughing and right wing regimes, you're both in place, but it's like in hungry,
• 33:53
  the democracy has very real genome in democracy has just a very short history. So there are these
• 34:01
  reflexes in the societies that, okay, you just have to follow the rules and you have to follow the
• 34:07
  and and I think it clearly could play out differently in the United States quite interestingly. And
• 34:15
  let me also raise a point that I found as a research of conspiracy theories and this information.
• 34:23
  What I see is that, you know, in highly polarized environments like the United States, the
• 34:30
  the result when it comes to the public opinion can be quite similar. Then in an increasingly
• 34:37
  authoritarian centralized environment like in in Hungary, the belief in conspiracy,
• 34:42
  weird conspiracy theories in Hungary is just on an on an extremely high level, you know, about
• 34:50
  more than half of the Fidesz voters thing, for example, that there are US biolabs in Ukraine,
• 34:56
  therefore, you know, Russia has some kind of justified action of of quoting WhatsApp defense when
• 35:06
  it attacks Ukraine or that Ukraine develop nuclear weapons and things like that and why is it
• 35:12
  these thoughts are popular because they are spread by the public media. But then when we can see that
• 35:20
  that in the US, you know, there are the quantum conspiracy theory, quantum conspiracy theories,
• 35:27
  the satanic panic, conspiracy theories that my friend Jooshinsky from the University of Miami have
• 35:36
  did good research about, but also that conspiracy theories are all over the place and in Hungary as
• 35:42
  well, you know, I mean, conspiracy theories on that urban is just a puppet of Putin or that he
• 35:51
  goes regularly to say hi a trick treatment because, you know, he's a madman, he's just like doctors
• 35:57
  have to keep him in his place and it's and to keep him in bay when it comes to psychological
• 36:06
  conditions. So all over this hyperbolic narratives are all over the place and I think it's increasing
• 36:12
  the case in the United States and in a totally different environment in Hungary as well. It's also
• 36:18
  the case and I just want to say that even if I think the editorial practices are can be totally
• 36:28
  different in the US and I think you might be right that it's like if editors are told what you
• 36:34
  have to write about and what not, maybe in the US it works more as a counter indicator, but because
• 36:40
  of the increasing polarization that people are involved emotionally in the emotional war,
• 36:48
  the end result when it comes to the mindset of the voters can be a bit bitter. Yeah, and certainly
• 36:55
  it depends on the on the ethos in the organization in the journalistic organization. You can look at
• 37:01
  the behavior of Fox News during the Trump administration and see it functioning almost as a state
• 37:07
  a state-run media organization. So let's move from the media to other institutions. You mentioned
• 37:14
  the judiciary. I think it's it's easier for people in the Anglo-Saxon world to see how you could
• 37:22
  stack or rig the justice system because we see the Supreme Court over the United States full of
• 37:28
  political appointees and it's obvious that the types of cases that get prosecuted are dependent
• 37:35
  on who is doing the prosecuting. So if Donald Trump wins re-election and he controls the Department
• 37:41
  of Justice, they will be going after a whole bunch of different people and not going after a whole
• 37:46
  bunch of people like him that the current Justice Department is. Is there any particular way that
• 37:54
  you can explain how that has derailed in Hungary to a greater extent that is worse than what we see
• 38:02
  elsewhere? Yes, very important question. I will be rather brief and have to draw the limits of
• 38:12
  my expertise. I'm not a legal scholar so I I can talk about the big picture when it comes to
• 38:18
  the little nuances is better to talk to a constitutional lawyer in Hungary but not it's not just
• 38:27
  by mistake that the most important points of debate right now between the European
• 38:34
  Commission and the Hungarian government. The European Commission is the government of the European
• 38:41
  Union, the executive branch of the European Union even if we cannot directly translate national
• 38:48
  politicalist, democratic institutions to the EU level but it's something similar and the
• 38:53
  and Hungary this debate has a huge stake. How much money Hungary gets from the European Union?
• 39:00
  About two thirds of the funds that have been frozen because Hungary does not comply with some of
• 39:10
  the democratic practices that the EU would like it to comply to. Two thirds of them are still
• 39:18
  frozen so it's and we are talking about huge amounts of money that are very relevant on the
• 39:27
  on the budgetary level and on the macro level of of Hungary. So in the center of the debate is
• 39:35
  how much the judiciary is independent in Hungary and because it was noticed and I think for good
• 39:43
  reasons in the European Union as well. Let's say for example the early retirement of judges
• 39:50
  and you know a new influx of younger easier to control sometimes more
• 40:00
  lawyers that are more loyal to the government so there it can make a substantial change in the
• 40:09
  in in how what decisions are made by the judiciary. Also we can tell that there has been some
• 40:16
  important judiciary forms that practically separated two branches of the of the of the judicial
• 40:24
  system and there has been quite a lot of controversy between the two sides. So the politicization
• 40:31
  have begun. What was that reform? Can you explain that? The reform you were just talking about that
• 40:37
  split the judicial system into two pieces? That's where I think it's better if you talk about it.
• 40:44
  Where I think the judicial lawyer really I do what I do. It might be but I don't want to say
• 40:51
  any stupid things so I mean let I what what I mean what we can tell for sure is that
• 41:00
  and it's it's also based on my experiences for example I mean I was I was I was subjects of
• 41:09
  of some disinformation campaigns in Hungary where there were some really
• 41:14
  ridiculous statements made on me and in some cases you know we we asked for some correction
• 41:21
  some other cases we we also it was a legal case and and you know in like libel sorry it's like
• 41:32
  you know eight ten years ago you could pretty you could be rather sure that they were claiming
• 41:40
  if someone was claimed in the media that is factually highly incorrect and it's easy to prove
• 41:46
  that it's incorrect then the judiciary asks the editorial office of the given media
• 41:57
  institution that okay you have to you have to correct that in in the last cases we had and it
• 42:05
  they were totally really obvious cases it's like when it cadents to the highest court of the
• 42:11
  judicial decision making and this is the courier that was also set up by this new system so a
• 42:20
  third rule of appeal practically where usually the most how to say and where the
• 42:29
  politically most sensitive cases go and what we can often see is that if this case is pretty
• 42:38
  important then it it it curia body or a board receives it that that is usually rather governmental
• 42:50
  leaning and its personal composition you can find just you know relatives of governmental members
• 42:57
  that are on board and surprisingly they usually make a decision that for example if someone is
• 43:03
  very close to the governmental side an important person then any press correction requests are just
• 43:12
  turned down so also there was there was this part of reform to set up a third level of of of
• 43:20
  appeal and and and and I mean as a result the Hungarian judiciary have clearly lost parts of
• 43:29
  independence I would say that it's still rather independent in many sense and it's it's important
• 43:36
  not to see things as black and white and it's I think the illegal regimes like Hungary the nature
• 43:41
  of these illegal regimes is that there are 50 shades of gray you rarely see black and white there
• 43:47
  are there are shades of gray but but what is also a very important point and this is something that
• 43:55
  I mentioned that that the prosecutors office can block the investigations from going into the
• 44:05
  judicial phase and it means that that if the chief prosecutor in Hungary is loyal to the
• 44:14
  government that is very loyal to the government then practically no corruption cases can hurt
• 44:21
  the governmental side because they were not even appear on the on the table of the court sorry for it
• 44:28
  it was a bit a bit unclear and again no that makes sense it's like I'm lacking a bit also the
• 44:34
  legal terminology because I'm not a legal scholar and maybe I can understand who gets rather right
• 44:40
  somewhat sensitive and and is Hungary is not a federation so you don't have state level you know
• 44:48
  canton or a province level prosecutors yeah hungry is a country of 10 million so it's like
• 45:00
  yeah I so the one prosecutor calls all the shots and if they're loyal to the
• 45:05
  prosecutor calls all the shots and it's it's it's a country that that that is really small
• 45:11
  and traditionally rather centralized we have to tell it as well but it had after the
• 45:20
  transition so hungry was transformed from a state socialist or communist country a soft
• 45:27
  communist country to a democratic country back to 1990 in the big wave of democratization and
• 45:34
  then a big wave was decentralization came as well when schools municipalities counties cities
• 45:45
  student organizations have received way more power than they had before and it was substantial
• 45:51
  power but then the recognition in many countries was that oh wait be over decentralized then
• 45:59
  it practically kills the decision ability of the governmental decision-making and there was
• 46:06
  again a recent realization trend but in it not everywhere it went go far as far as in hungry
• 46:15
  in hungry for an example I mean to tell you a few examples the schools and elementary schools
• 46:23
  and the hospitals belong to the municipalities to the cities and they run them and they
• 46:30
  did rather efficiently right now the government runs the show there as well the mosquitos were killed
• 46:38
  by the by the cities and municipalities before it's also done by the government right and I can
• 46:44
  tell you living in a neighborhood where there are quite a lot of mosquitos that they are not always
• 46:51
  and is that an urban reform those centralizations some of them are urban reforms some of them
• 46:59
  were particular reforms that were coming during the covid era so the covid have led to even
• 47:08
  more centralization and do you think that was being used as a pretext or was there a rational
• 47:14
  justification for that during covid in some key I mean for you know for temporary decisions I think
• 47:22
  this kind of centralization was to a certain extent inevitable and but for some other reasons they
• 47:29
  just used it as a pretext I mean give you one example they pass over a load that allows
• 47:38
  big Chinese investments in Hungary this so-called Budapest Baggage Railway line and it was also
• 47:45
  made totally confidential so we just it is built by state money by the end of the day with
• 47:51
  partially Chinese constructors but while Chinese loans Serbia and Hungary are practically I have
• 47:57
  bought up by China by this big project but it does not seem self evident that it's so valuable
• 48:08
  for the Hungarian voters and it was made confidential and and and you know they made many
• 48:14
  government decisions that had suspicion of corruption confidential just referring to the
• 48:22
  you know interest of the state in the pandemic period so in Hungary there is practically
• 48:28
  permanently there is that some special legal status or that that sorry I just forgot this word
• 48:44
  then you have when it's easier for the government to make decisions and the
• 48:49
  rights of the parliament are partially suspended so it's and there was these special legal
• 48:58
  statuses because of the migration situation even when it appeared then because of the pandemic
• 49:04
  and it ran pretty high and right now because of the war and and there seems to be a very strong
• 49:12
  willingness on the Hungarian government to keep of these special legal periods because it just
• 49:22
  helps the government to do whatever they want with with very minimal parliamentary control and
• 49:30
  with minimal public control as well so I think that it was used as a pretext and it's like I
• 49:35
  mean there are some similarities between Hungary and the US if we take a look at the political
• 49:41
  landscape but I think there's a vast huge difference on the right in Hungary there is no
• 49:48
  how to say anti federally sentiment at all just the very opposite so the Hungarian
• 49:55
  Hungarian right is more ethicist it's more statist and in that respect I think the Hungarian
• 50:01
  tradition and and it's particularly become so is becoming more like the French one with a very
• 50:09
  strong central government and with with with a philosophy that a strong state is pretty much
• 50:17
  needed to push over the will of the people if we want to be yes I'm glad you mentioned France I was
• 50:24
  thinking of France because I don't think that you that this is about Hungary's population of 10
• 50:29
  million people you can have big centralized countries like the United Kingdom is quite centralized
• 50:34
  and friends are quite centralized and you can have small decentralized decentralized countries
• 50:39
  like Switzerland where you know there is considerable local power so I don't want us to think that
• 50:45
  we can escape Hungary's fate just because we're in larger country countries necessarily so in
• 50:52
  January I saw reports that the European Union was debating whether to sanction Hungary further
• 50:58
  because of reforms that Obern brought in last year were those the judicial reforms or what was
• 51:04
  the what happened in the middle of last year that got the European Union upset it was partially
• 51:12
  about the judiciary forms it was also about about some other measures of the government like
• 51:22
  like this rearrangement of the university sector that according to critics of the government have
• 51:29
  just posed I mean increase the chance of the interference into the governmental affairs sorry
• 51:40
  into the university affairs and and what we can see at the moment I mean to take a look at the
• 51:46
  big picture is that I mean this kind of conflicts legal and political conflicts between the European
• 51:50
  Union and institutions mostly the commission and the parliament but also increasingly the council
• 51:57
  are just getting more and more intense and in some sectors and I don't want to paint the devil
• 52:03
  on the wall that Hungary will lead the European Union but in some sectors the leaving the European
• 52:09
  Union have practically started I mean if you take a look at the education sector the
• 52:15
  this model changing universities that went through an institutional reform that because of which
• 52:27
  some active party politicians can also have their words or or ex ministers can have an important
• 52:35
  influence that the boards of the universities they refer to the American example that it's if
• 52:41
  it's normal in America why it cannot be normal in in in Hungary as well I do think that in in the
• 52:48
  United States the the the universities in your much more freedom than in Hungary but because of
• 52:56
  this debate the European Union have suspended the so-called horizon grants which are upon European
• 53:04
  grants that are can that universities and economic institutions can apply to and it's quite a lot
• 53:13
  of money so this model changing universities were excluded from that and the students were excluded
• 53:21
  from the Erasmus programs which means that they can practically travel freely around the European
• 53:31
  Union and have some educational experience Hungarian students in Portugal or in Spain or in Malta
• 53:39
  or anywhere else and you know it was one of the most important and most obvious advantages of
• 53:46
  the membership for the youth as a result of this decision I don't think it was definitely a wise
• 53:53
  decision and I think the government I mean the European Union could have made some other decision
• 53:58
  could circumvent the university still allow students to go to other European countries but because
• 54:04
  of that the popularity of the European Union fought quite significantly among the youngsters as well
• 54:13
  so I think as a as a result of this unorthodox government of policies or heterodox government
• 54:20
  of policies and also as a result of the European election the European reactions the
• 54:27
  Hungarian society that has been traditionally rather pro-European also pro-American to a certain
• 54:34
  extent is developing stronger and stronger anti-Western attitudes and this is what I find
• 54:43
  rather dangerous and rather striking again it's not something that you can only see in Hungary
• 54:49
  if you go to Slovakia for example that our neighbor to the north you in the public opinion
• 54:56
  pose you can measure even stronger anti-Western sentiments but this is a slavic country where you know
• 55:01
  this idea of slaving brotherhood with Russia is this eurasian ideology is is rather strong
• 55:10
  not and pan-slavism not at all in Hungary so there is something new going on and again maybe
• 55:17
  it will be a very stress parallel with the United States but what we could see in the last years
• 55:24
  for example is that on the fides camp in the pro-governmental camp Russia have become way more popular
• 55:31
  than it was before United States have become much less popular European Union have become
• 55:36
  much less popular and I could see some polls especially about 2016 that showed that the
• 55:41
  republican voter base in the U.S. have also become a bit more pro-Russian maybe as a reaction
• 55:48
  to that if Trump is attacked that he's pro-Russian that Russia must be something good and possible
• 55:55
  I mean yeah and so so what what explains the Hungarian government's affinity for Russia then
• 56:03
  is it that the is it that people are responding to the government or is the government responding
• 56:08
  to the people because Hungary has been holding up funding for Ukraine or ban
• 56:14
  admires Putin in a way that is unseemly to a lot of other European and central European countries
• 56:22
  what explains that thank you and and you just you just pointed to the most important part of the
• 56:29
  question I do think that that the people respond to governmental messaging and reactions and
• 56:40
  because because the voter base of Fides the government of party was the most critical
• 56:50
  towers Russia until about 2010 you can see it in the post they were highly critical in the
• 56:56
  Hungarian right especially after you know communism and 1956 the anti-Soviet anti-Russian sentiments
• 57:08
  were central in the identity so it was and and 1956 when there was a revolution against the
• 57:22
  Soviet rule which was brutally cracked down by the Soviet Union it was regarded to be one of the
• 57:30
  most important element of of and points of reference in in a Hungarian history that that proves
• 57:40
  that you know you have to be cautious with the Soviet Union with communism but also you have to
• 57:45
  be cautious with Russia you know Russia also broke down another freedom fight of of Hungary and
• 57:52
  it was Tsarist Russia that joined the hubs boards in in 1849 to break down another revolution
• 58:04
  for national identity and you know Hungarians regard themselves and especially on the right as
• 58:09
  freedom fighters you know fighting against oppressive forces and it in a very bizarre manner
• 58:17
  after Orbari turned to power in 2010 he gradually become more and more in favor of Putin while he
• 58:25
  he was very critical of Putin when he was in opposition before 2010 but and it I think there was
• 58:34
  a big leap when then Orbán undersigned the nuclear deal with Rosatom to build another nuclear
• 58:46
  reactors in Hungary that was without any tendering procedure and so on and so on in 2014 but
• 58:53
  from 2010 especially 2014 we can see that in the pro-governmental media the depiction of Russia
• 59:01
  have become you know very positive there are the Putin appears you know more as this kind of
• 59:10
  sensible and and rational worst player by everyone in the West goes mad and everyone is war
• 59:18
  longer in in Europe also the history has overwritten in many sense right now the dominant narrative
• 59:25
  in the right is that it was not the Soviet Union that cracked down the 1956 revolution but it was
• 59:31
  it was Ukraine as if Ukraine was enjoyed any kind of independence that is crazy yes that's such
• 59:39
  it's so disrespectful to the heroes of that era when Hungary was you know a light on the hill
• 59:45
  and the whole world was behind Hungary and was admiring Hungarian resistance exactly exactly
• 59:53
  you're absolutely right and you know when I mean we are after a point that when the Prime Minister
• 59:58
  I think it was last year or a year ago posted something on Twitter about the revolutions like
• 1:00:05
  he said that someone break down the the revolution and he did not mention the Soviets I mean
• 1:00:12
  anti-Mester sentiments had went so far in Hungary that it is also becoming a dominant narrative
• 1:00:18
  that communism you know it was just a western ideology because it was Marx and Engels the German
• 1:00:25
  guys who invented them and then Lenin as the spy of Germany and the agent of Germany brought it to
• 1:00:34
  Russia and Russia have become communism I mean become a victim of this deadly dangerous western
• 1:00:40
  ideology and it's overriding these awful it's always our fault even when the Soviet communism is still
• 1:00:48
  awful well so you did not defend us in in 1956 you did not interfere about that we didn't want World
• 1:00:55
  War 3 but yes I think that's the point that's the point but it's it's also fueling the negative
• 1:01:01
  sentiments towards the west so what I want to say is that that Orban had developed this very
• 1:01:07
  strong anti-western and in many sense you know pro-Russian pro-Chinese pro-Azeri so pro-Eastern
• 1:01:14
  mindset and he is very clear about that and he could change the attitudes of the voters in
• 1:01:20
  Hungary especially on the on the right but even more generally at the beginning of the Russian
• 1:01:28
  invasion against Ukraine majorate of the fittest voters blamed Russia for pretty good reasons
• 1:01:33
  given that they are the aggressors when the 2022 election campaign approach or when the election
• 1:01:42
  the approach the government was pushing the very strong pro-peace narrative quote-unquote and
• 1:01:49
  the message was that you know it's partially united states fought especially the Ukraine for
• 1:01:55
  fought of Ukraine as a result of this rhetoric the right now majorate of the fittest voters blame
• 1:02:01
  united states or Ukraine because of the war and Russia is only third in the list of
• 1:02:08
  the responsible experts and it's actually offensive to Vladimir Putin to strip him of that much
• 1:02:16
  autonomy it's like it's insulting to the Russians to say that they're not in control of that war
• 1:02:24
  yeah you're right you're right but I think Putin does not seem to be offended so this
• 1:02:30
  you'll take it. Orbán was the only only leader who met him in in in Beijing he was not the only one
• 1:02:37
  who met Putin since the beginning of the image but he was the only one who went to Beijing
• 1:02:43
  last year and had a very friendly discussion what not only but sea-chimping but also with with with
• 1:02:51
  Putin and I think there is a good reason why Ukraine and most of the western world are concerned by
• 1:02:57
  this pro-Russian shift and don't forget that Hungary is the last country like now that is blocking
• 1:03:02
  the accession of a new member into NATO that would be in the interest of all the NATO member states
• 1:03:08
  and this is Sweden and they are doing it for very bizarre reasons but it's hard not to see
• 1:03:16
  here as well that there is some kind of loyalty that that Orbán more how to say more exercises
• 1:03:24
  towards Russia than so towards the western alliance is such as the UN NATO. So Peter if Orbán is
• 1:03:32
  this semi-strong man who has shaken up the media and and given it pro-government orders and has
• 1:03:43
  stacked the judiciary and has allowed corruption to go unchallenged and has undermined independent
• 1:03:53
  institutions why do you think he's so popular among a certain cohort of western conservatives?
• 1:04:03
  Yes there are many reasons for that let me pick up three and it's first I think we have to give
• 1:04:14
  credit to Orbán in the sense that he is highly efficient and highly successful
• 1:04:23
  political leader he really is in power for 14 years and it has a price
• 1:04:34
  hunger and democratic institutions have become really drastically and you can see it in
• 1:04:39
  all the democracy indicators all over the world produced in you know even it's by it's the
• 1:04:47
  economist intelligence unit or the world bank whoever does this this this democracy in diocese
• 1:04:55
  we can see that there is a clear democratic decline and it's not because there is a conspressed
• 1:04:59
  against Hungary but because it's pretty obvious and visible but if you know if you have some kind
• 1:05:06
  of illiberal mindset and you want to be on government for a long time and politicians usually
• 1:05:12
  want to be on power for a long time then you can take a look at this model and for example in these
• 1:05:19
  days neighboring Austria has a party the Austrian Freedom Party which is a populist right party
• 1:05:27
  they very openly talk about Orbán is being their role model and they want to implement
• 1:05:33
  something what Orbán did even in the media sector this was Hans Christian Strach had told before
• 1:05:39
  as well in a in a lead video tape but it's I think it's the mindset there in France in Italy in
• 1:05:48
  you know Slovakia Czech Republic there are politicians in United States who think that that
• 1:05:54
  Hungary has this important more than I think partially it's because of the success for a second
• 1:06:00
  it's also because Orbán is very conscious in spreading his soft power and it's very such a
• 1:06:06
  thing as Hungarians of power and I have to tell it's quite remarkable because Orbán can really
• 1:06:15
  have become I would say he became this kind of shaman of the of the populist right in in all over
• 1:06:22
  the world which means that he cannot really substantially influence decision making when it comes
• 1:06:29
  to the EU when it comes to the NATO also when it comes to alliances with like mandate leaders like
• 1:06:36
  Georgia Maloney as well the prime minister of Italy who is leading a post fascist party practically
• 1:06:45
  but she's remarkably moderate when it comes to economic policy and foreign policy they have there
• 1:06:52
  is no friendship between them but I think Orbán is definitely a point of reference when it comes to
• 1:07:00
  you know who are the people who are describing and characterizing this new side guys and this
• 1:07:08
  by the fact that Orbán's predictions I think in the last few years were rather bad I have to tell
• 1:07:16
  it's like you know Orbán and he's not the only one I mean German, French and so on this is
• 1:07:22
  a makers also that Russia will never admit Ukraine it did then they told that you you know the war
• 1:07:30
  will be over in eight years in eight days sorry maybe it will be eight years but I think I
• 1:07:35
  think it was also yeah but it did not really really he said that NATO will weaken and it's just
• 1:07:43
  the opposite have happened he works hard on weakening NATO but still it's pretty strong alliance
• 1:07:48
  and the least comes on but he he is regarded to be you know this big visionary who knows what is
• 1:07:55
  going to unfold in in in the world and I and and there is some ideological verb behind that we have
• 1:08:03
  to be clear about that I I think to many extend the theoretical verb that I think is mostly lacking
• 1:08:12
  these days on the liberal and left-wing side I think they are doing quite a lot of intellectual
• 1:08:18
  work to improve you know their arguments but also to to treat this meta theories and meta-political
• 1:08:26
  frameworks that can help to you know you change the mindset of the of the attitude and for that I
• 1:08:34
  think hunger and soft power is pretty successful and then especially in the US but not only there how
• 1:08:41
  much it can be translated to bilateral relations I'm a bit unclear about that even in a possible
• 1:08:47
  uncommik Trump presidency but but let us discuss it later or or another discussion and I think
• 1:08:54
  the third important reason why Orbán could become so successful is that he very consciously following
• 1:09:05
  this kind of I think it's it's also a Trumpian media strategy that you have to be you know even if
• 1:09:14
  you are depicted as the buggy man even if you are depicted as the negative hero everyone talks
• 1:09:21
  about you and everyone is talking about Orbán this is so do we and you know when leaders in the US
• 1:09:29
  managers in Germany when leaders in France are just mind-reading Orbán I just meet with many
• 1:09:35
  diplomats these days you know who just want to figure out what's in Orbán's mind what's his
• 1:09:41
  strategy what's his personality and think like that you know Orbán is in the focus of attention
• 1:09:46
  and he did it with quite conscious provocative foreign policy strategy and even if it did not
• 1:09:54
  really help to find more allies for him in the Western alliance it clearly helped him to give
• 1:10:02
  to gain worldwide recognition in America and the UK and Australia there's a cohort of
• 1:10:10
  conservatives of social and cultural conservatives who feel that the progressive gains of the past 20
• 1:10:17
  years have been ruthless and have left them behind that there is a new orthodoxy being imposed
• 1:10:24
  by Hollywood and media institutions that is forcing everyone to accept a new left-wing progressive
• 1:10:35
  identitarian social justice worldview and there is no space for religious conservatives
• 1:10:44
  anymore and that the solution to this is to construct I don't know what they envision but some kind
• 1:10:52
  of more authoritarian strand to hear the rest of this conversation go to uncomfortable conversations
• 1:10:58
  dot substack dot com slash listen and you will get your own personal premium podcast feed with at
• 1:11:06
  least three extra episodes of the podcast every month and heaps of extra stuff including the
• 1:11:11
  remainder right now of the fabulous conversation you've just been hearing if it was worth listening
• 1:11:16
  to this much of don't rob yourself of the rest pull out your phone like now and search for uncomfortable
• 1:11:22
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