The Elementary Articles—#27 (March 2023)
An interview about conservatism's future, Spain's European moment and Vox's dead-on-arrival motion of no confidence.
Dear reader,
Welcome to another edition of The Elementary Articles, where I get to share with you my latest work laced with the odd nugget of personal news.
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[INTERVIEW] The conservative future
Editor's note—On Monday, March 13th, I spoke alongside my friend Boris Kálnoky, head of the Media School over at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), on a panel hosted by the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights. The panel was part of a half-day conference on freedom of the press, headlined by Minister Gergely Gulyás, and commemorating Hungary's 1848 revolt against Habsburg rule. At the event, Viktória Somorjai, of the conservative monthly Demokrata, interviewed me about my relationship to Hungary and the prospect of other European countries following in Hungary's path. The following is the translation of that interview:
“To conservatives living in other parts of Europe, I would also recommend the path that Viktor Orbán has largely followed by creating their own institutions, think tanks, educational centers, and media. This is how they can ensure that, no matter what happens, they do not lose their influence”, Spanish economist Jorge González-Gallarza, whose analysis has been published in such media as The Wall Street Journal and National Review, told our newspaper after the conference of the Center for Fundamental Rights. We talked about why Hungarians were not caught up in the woke craze, what American conservatives need to improve on, and what to expect in the Spanish elections.
VS—You have been returning to Budapest again and again for some time. What attracted you to Hungary?
JGG—In the summer of 2021, I participated in the Mathias Corvinus Collegium's (MCC) visiting researcher scholarship program, and I had a great time here. After finishing the program, I went home to Spain, but since then I have been returning to Hungary regularly. The Center for Fundamental Rights, where we are now, is a particularly special place for me, and I am already preparing for the next CPAC in Budapest.
VS—At the conference of the Center for Fundamental Rights, where we are talking and where you also spoke, the topics of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and family and child protection were discussed. What differences do you see between your country, Spain, and Hungary in these topics?
JGG—Let me start with freedom of speech. In conservative democracies such as Hungary, Poland or Israel, freedom of speech is not only quite strong, but has also strengthened against the all-encompassing cancel culture experienced in Western European states—Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain—that is, in response to a culture of erasure. Moreover, there is real freedom of speech in Hungary: no one is silenced for expressing their opinion. The press, television and radio are diverse. Your country did not submit to Western woke dictates. Another important difference is the perception of the family. In Western Europe, not only starting a family, but even relationships are frowned upon, they are considered destructive to the natural environment, and they are generally seen as giving up one's own rights. Hungarian culture is completely different from this: here it regards the family as valuable and the cornerstone of society. This is not only due to family-friendly government decisions; they of course play a major role, but Hungarians are an extremely family-oriented people from the outset.
VS—What do we have that many of our Western European peers do not?
JGG—I have also thought about this a lot, and I have come to the conclusion that Hungarians do not have the post-colonial sense of guilt that is so typical in Western Europe. Many people in Spain, France, and Great Britain feel that their country has committed serious crimes against other peoples in the past, and therefore they must repent, which then appears in woke-ism. Hungary, on the other hand, suffered from the oppression of other peoples. The Hungarian political leadership does not have to feel that they have to atone for the past, and this lays the foundation for the embeddedness of conservative politics. If we look a little further, to the United States, then we see that the mentality that divides everything according to skin color and origin, which is experienced there, has nothing to do with you; there, even very young children are taught that if they are white, they are oppressors, and if they are black, they are oppressed.
VS—Do you think that the United States has reached the point from which they will not be able to turn back from this point of view? From now on, the white American child will forever feel oppressed, and the little boy can be a little girl or a lampshade?
JGG—Resistance to the woke identity politics must be strengthened. There are already signs of this at the federal and state level. The best-known representative of this is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—but it will not be enough. In the meantime, American voters must be very careful to side with politicians for whom anti-Woke does not end at the level of rhetoric: they must take back their own culture in practice. I believe there is a way back—but I cannot predict how far they will be able to get there. Maybe the culture of the fifties is already lost forever. But in order for them to be able to move towards normality, it is essential that a conservative victory is born in 2024 first, and the newly established leadership must be anti-woke not only in terms of words, but also in terms of practical governance.
VS—In terms of practical implementation, DeSantis appears to be a more successful leader than Donald Trump.
JGG—I would refer to my friend Gladden Pappin, who drew attention to the fact that the Republican Party is undergoing a major change when it changed from the neoliberal policy it represented in the nineties and early 2000s, when they did not care that a significant part of the industry moved to China, that the the border was wide open and drugs were flowing freely through it—they are trying to open to something else. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, although I agree that he has delivered less on his promises than many of us expected, important social issues and a kind of working-class conservatism have already come to the fore.
VS—In Hungary, two school scandals have recently come to light, which provoked huge opposition, strengthening us in our belief that the overwhelming majority of Hungarian society still has a strong instinct to protect normality. In the age of the Internet and the free flow of information, do you think we will be able to maintain this? Can we remain old-fashioned in this extremely fast-changing new world?
JGG—I would also recommend to conservatives living in other parts of Europe the path that Viktor Orbán has largely followed by creating their own institutions, think tanks, educational centers, and media. This is how they can ensure that no matter what happens, they will not lose their influence. If Viktor Orbán had not won in 2022, his influence would still have remained through the institutions created over the years; this also shows what it's like when a politician thinks in the long term.
VS—During our conversation, we already traveled halfway around the world, but there was no mention of the elections in Spain due in December. What results do you expect?
JGG—At the moment, the most pressing question is whether the center-right—actually more center-left-neoliberal—Partido Popular (PP) will enter into a coalition with the socialists or the right-wing Vox. One would think that the Spanish conservatives would be more happy with the latter, but if we think in the long term, it might be better if the PP is clearly committed to the left, so that Vox remains the only alternative on the right, and after one or two cycles a real, strong conservative government in Spain.
Recent writings
Irreverent Shofet (Review of Netflix thriller Fauda), The European Conservative [28.02.2023]
Empire by Way of Europe (Review of Megan Brown's The Seventh Member State), The Critic [10.03.2023]
Spain's European Moment, The European Conservative [16.03.2023]
Vox's Bridge to Nowhere, The European Conservative [20.03.2023]
Righteous Spaniard, The Critic [23.03.2023]
Where Have the Intellectuals Gone?, The European Conservative [26.03.2023]
UnDecencyPod, your favorite euro-realist podcast:
Here’s the usual line-up of Uncommon Decency’s recent episodes. Please remember you can contribute to the show by donating through our Patreon page. Any help will be much appreciated!
79. Ukraine—One Year On [BONUS]: “Exactly a year ago, I broadcast a message that contained the two things that remain most important now: that Russia had launched a full-scale war against us, and that we are strong. We are ready for anything. We will defeat anyone. Because we are Ukraine. We will never rest until the Russian murderers face the punishment they deserve. The punishment of the international tribunal. The judgement of God. Of our warriors. The verdict is clear. Nine years ago, the neighbor turned into our aggressor. A year ago, the aggressor turned executioner, looter and terrorist. We have no doubt that they will be held accountable. We have no doubt that we will win”. That was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week. To take stock of how profoundly this one-year war is changing our continent, we have decided, on this bonus episode, to reflect upon three unique angles of it: (1) the shifting tectonics of public opinion, (2) the enduring resilience of the transatlantic relationship and (3) the message the invasion sends to other authoritarian would-be aggressors like China. Enjoy the episode!
80. Qatargate: Sheikhs, Cheques and Balances, with Frank Furedi & Thomas Fazi: Since mid-December, a corruption scandal has been unfolding in Brussels that could soon begin rock the European Union's (EU) very foundations. Eva Kaili, a 44-year-old Member of the European Parliament (MEP), was detained by Belgian authorities along with three other suspects—including fellow MEP Marc Tarabella and Kaili’s partner, an assistant to another MEP—for allegedly accepting large bribes from foreign government officials in exchange for whitewashing the image of those governments in Brussels. Qatar was frontline in the scandal, but so was Morocco, and more recently, even Mauritania. As this episode goes to press, no less than 1.5 million EUR in cash have been seized, much of which was lying around the house of Kaili’s father, who is also ensnared. With the World Cup then about to take place in Qatar and amid widespread allegations of unsafe working conditions for migrant workers hired to build the facilities, Kaili and her fellow suspects had their work cut out for them. Now—the scandal’s implications cannot be overstated. While the EU has long labored under critiques of its democratic legitimacy, the moral legitimacy of its leaders has largely gone unquestioned. That all changes now. To discuss the repercussions of this scandal, we have with us Frank Furedi, executive director of Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Brussels and Thomas Fazi, a columnist at UnHerd and Compact.
81. The Democratic Recession, with Martin Wolf: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." That is the peroration from possibly the greatest speech ever written, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The final words have been a rallying call for the voices of liberty and democracy not just in the US but across the world. However, those voices have been met with a growing chorus pushing back on the ideals of democratic governance. The debate over whether we are in a democratic recession has become a mainstay of modern political discourse, and world leaders are increasingly casting the world in manichean terms of democracies vs. autocracies. That is the context in which our guest this week, Martin Wolf, wrote his latest book. The Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times and one of the preeminent thought leaders in the West on economics and politics, Wolf is the author of a number of books, with his latest one, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023), covering all the most pertinent issues shaping the globe today. What is ailing democracy? What reforms are needed? What is the relationship between capitalism and democracy? These were just some of the questions that we covered during this episode. There is also a policy discussion for our Patreons including the merits of Starship Trooper’s citizenship policy, and a discussion on changing voting laws away from one person one vote, not to ranked choice voting, but something far more interesting.
82. Empires on Trial, with Nigel Biggar & Felipe Fernández-Armesto: On episode five of this show, the late Gyórgy Schópflin, then retired and in the twilight of his life, made a lucid observation about what, at bottom, set his native Hungary apart from his adoptive Great Britain. “Hungary has no post-colonial guilt”, intoned the retired academic and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Schöpflin meant this as a partial explanation—if not a justification—of the nationalist politics practiced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the subject of our episode that day. Not having colonized other territories, Orbán's dealings with other world leaders were, in Schópflin’s view, a function of Hungary having fallen under the dominion of foreign powers throughout recent history, be it Austria or the Soviet Union. What did Schópflin mean about the UK, however? Simply put, that conversely things like the British public's toleration of high levels of immigration from former colonies or its support for high levels of development aid towards them are also, in their own way, a function of Britain’s past as the ruler of a vast empire. In his latest book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2022), Oxford University ethicist Nigel Biggar hopes to inform a reassessment of Britain’s colonial guilt, placing on a single moral ledger the calamities and abuses worthy of guilt and condemnation along with the achievements worthy of praise and celebration. The Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, Biggar is joined in this latest episode by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a historian of Spanish colonialism and the William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Together, our two guests challenge one another to comparatively assess the historical and moral record of the Spanish and British empires. Enjoy!
What I have been reading:
Shalom Lipner for First Things and Liel Leibovitz for Compact on the wave of anti-government protests sweeping Israel.
John Lichfield for UnHerd and Nicholas Vinocur for POLITICO on the wave of anti-government protests sweeping France.
Dalibor Rohac for Foreign Policy on the Polish-Lithuanian union.
The end
Thank you all for reading! See you at the next issue.