Late to this long, in-depth tour de force by Elisabeth Zerofsky into why Tucker Carlson (and other US conservative radicals) favour Hungary's Viktor Orban in NYT Magazine. I do, however, think the piece is far too soft on both Carlson and his Magyar hero 1/
https://twitter.com/zerofskaya/status/1452273970133274636
The piece does note that Carlson “evinced little familiarity with the internal affairs of Hungary” - which is true. But the thing is, he made no attempt to find out 2/
Although he certainly talked about seemingly random meetings with Orban sympathisers during his week-long stay in Orbanistan, he strangely failed to find any opponents, and this despite Budapest being the largest centre of anti-Orban, liberal-left supporters in the country 3/
Perhaps an even bigger betrayal of traditional centre-right democrats, Carlson totally ignored those conservatives who have seen through Orban's misuse of acceptable patriotism and deliberate exaggeration of national grievances to keep his supporters frothing with anger so.. 4/
..he can step by step trash democratic norms and enrich his small coterie of family and oligarchs. Such disaffected conservatives may be a small slice of Hungary's electorate, but they certainly exist and the Hungarian capital is also their centre of gravity 5/
In similar vein, the piece points to the contradiction of US conservative writer Rod Dreher and others claiming that in Hungary “there is true freedom; no online vigilante mob is waiting to deprive people of their livelihood for uttering a wrong word”, while noting.. 6/
“This freedom does not extend to the journalists who’ve had their phones surveilled by the Hungarian government or been taken in for questioning by the Hungarian police.” But this is just the ugliest tip of the Orban press-control iceberg in Hungary 7/
Non-Fidesz journalists are frequently ignored by the Govt and ministries, while their publishers find that not only do they never receive the generous state company advertising which litters their subservient competitors, but even independent, non-state players are afraid.. 8/
to place an ad for fear of losing a state subsidy or suffer a tax inspection 9/
The piece certainly points readers to a good number of ugly scabs on the body of Orban's illiberal-conservatism - all of which Carlson so willfully ignored - but there remain plenty more of such for anyone prepared to look
ENDS
ENDS
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