BUDAPEST — A rustic restaurant in Budapest has been reserved for this meeting, where some 70 mostly male guests sit at long tables. “I’m a little concerned that I might get arrested,” says author and former diplomat Tomislav Sunic, a Croat with an American passport and one of the leading dogmatists of the New Right. He’s about to give a speech warning of the dangers of too many immigrants and multicultural societies.
Others who were scheduled to speak here are instead in police custody, were kicked out of the country, or weren’t admitted in the first place. The original plan was to hold a high-profile congress on Europe’s future and the dangers of mixing races. The reality is a semi-secret private event.
The night before, those attending received a short text message that came across as a little conspirational. It said that participants would meet “at the toy store near Budapest south station and walk to the venue from there.” Although it went deliberately unmentioned in the message, everyone apparently knew where the venue was.
The genesis of the event was an announcement by the National Policy Institute in Washington, which sees itself as a right-wing think tank. It is so far right that nobody in the political mainstream wants to be associated with it. The announcement concerned an international conference in Budapest, to be held at the beginning of October, and stated that the “promising Hungarian Jobbik Party” would take part. Cost: $150 per person, pre-paid.
Scheduled speakers were Jobbik politician Márton Gyöngyösi and Russian Eurasia advocate Alexander Dugin, who is said to exercise quite a bit of influence over Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aggressive Ukraine policy. From the U.S., main organizer Richard Spencer and “racial realist” Jared Taylor were also on the program. Expected from Austria was Markus Willinger, the man behind “Generation Identity.”
[rebelmouse-image 27088251 alt=”” original_size=”320×255″ expand=1]Dugin is thought to have Vladimir Putin’s ear. Photo: Ahbot
These are not names that will be familiar to everyone. But on the right-wing scene, these men are superstars. Anybody to the right of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union today would no longer say “I don’t like black people.” Instead they would say they were “interested in the theories of Richard Spencer and Markus Willinger.”
Trying to shut it down
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban quickly recognized what the most important outcome of such a meeting was likely to be: an international outcry against him and his government. Although the organizers were American, opposition on the left had already begun to present his government as latent racists because they tolerated such a conference. So Orban summarily banned it, although that too was controversial. Liberal human rights advocates complained then about “restrictions on freedom of opinion.”
Richard Spencer wasn’t about to see the conference banned. “They will not win,” he said of Orbán’s government, going on to launch some sharply critical video attacks against the prime minister. Then on Oct. 1 came the news from Budapest that the congress was going ahead.
Two evenings later, Spencer was in police custody. He was meeting with some of the other participants at a bar when 50 policemen showed up for an identity check. Spencer was detained. The whole episode was filmed, and it has been viewed on YouTube more than 16,000 times.
Another comrade-in-arms had already been taken into custody upon arrival in Hungary, and Alexander Dugin never showed up at all. “Hungarian authorities told him he wasn’t welcome,” Jared Taylor told disappointed participants.
Of all the scheduled speakers, only Taylor and Tomislav Sunic turned up. Jobbik, the Hungarian radical right party, was not represented at all. They are trying to build a “smoother” party image, and Márton Gyöngyösi apparently bent to party pressure and bowed out as speaker.
There were hardly any Hungarians in the small groups that met at the toy store near the train station. The press was prominently represented, including The Wall Street Journal and Euronews, which had somehow gotten wind of the event. But in the end, only three journalists who had been “cleared” beforehand were admitted — a BBC reporter, a Canadian journalist and this Welt correspondent.
Inside the event
So here they all are having dinner. Among those who shelled out quite a bit to get here are venerable finger-waggers prophesying the West’s downfall, young students on an identity search, middle-aged men with good jobs. They hail from Latvia, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, and the United States. There is also a Francophile from Germany who describes himself as “racially conservative” and who complains that children these days as young as kindergarten age are being vaccinated with anti-racism. This is nothing short of brainwashing, he claims. He has come to the conference mainly to hear Jared Taylor.
Three Flemish students from the Nationalist Student Association express regret about Dugin’s absence. It is essential to break free of American paternalism, and Dugin had the right sort of ideas on that, they say. They would also have liked to hear Markus Willinger because they embrace his identity-based views. It all boils down to everybody being able to live their identity, but that requires non-European foreigners to go back to their countries of origin. “We want them to be able to live their identities — in their own countries,” says Jens Derycke, a 25-year-old criminology student. When he graduates, he wants to get a job with the police or justice departments.
Immigration, says his colleague Friedrich van de Lanoote, a 28-year-old engineer, means loss of identity for everyone. Immigrants in Belgium lose their original value systems, he says. They all agree that Islamization is the major problem. Robert Schaap, 44, from the Netherlands has a decal he hands out that reads “Stop Islamization” in Dutch.
On this evening in the Budapest restaurant, many opposing views are heard. The Flemish want to separate from Belgium and join up with the Netherlands (Dutchman Schaap favors that as well), and they hold Dugin in very high esteem. But then Tomislav Sunić, the first to give a speech, speaks out against small-time nationalism. Europeans have to hold together to save their culture, he says. In private conversation earlier, he politely said that Dugin’s ideas for Eurasia are “too romantic” and that he likes America, unlike the Belgians present.
Down with capitalism and the Catholic Church
Sunić makes the Catholic Church out to be a particularly perfidious opponent because it supports unlimited acceptance of refugees. But the main culprit in Europe’s downfall is capitalism. Its greed for profits makes companies seek cheap labor and therefore draw tides of immigrants.
The whole point is that people should not love one’s neighbor as oneself. One should love one’s equals and perhaps respect non-European foreigners or members of other races. That is Jared Taylor’s message. A polished speaker, he uses well-chosen words to explain to his audience that “we Europeans” — among whom he includes white Americans — “didn’t build up our wonderful civilization by chance,” but because “we brought genetic preconditions with us that put us in a position to be able to do it.”
Race is a reality, and it is harmful to shut one’s eyes to that reality, he says. That might sound pessimistic, as the American and western European governments strive to water down these “genetic foundations of civilization” through immigration. This is self-destructive. He is apparently placing his last hopes on a white genetic and cultural Europe. And on countries such as Hungary, which until now have seen virtually no immigrants. He becomes emotional as he calls for a “brotherhood of Europeans.” He is rewarded for his efforts by a thunderous standing ovation.
People here claim not to be attracted by political parties, which they say are too “mainstream.” The Dutch and Flemish present even reject Dutch Islam critic Geert Wilders. “Too liberal, too pro-American,” Schaap says. Still the Alternative for Germany party is a welcome addition, Sunić believes. They are “much better than the CDU and other German mainstream parties.”
The police still haven’t turned up. Participants make plans to spend the following day seeing a little bit of the city.
