How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

In Orbán’s speech, we have all the elements of the victimology of fascist politics. Orbán whips up irrational fear of immigrants, using Hungary’s mythic past as the supposed defender of European Christianity to present himself as the warrior-leader who is brave enough to defend Christian Europe, which has been imperiled by the liberal elites (“Europe’s intellectual and political leaders”) who would let “the most persecuted religion in the world” be undermined from within by letting in a wave of immigrants. The refugees from brutal foreign wars are, in his eyes, a powerful invading force who seek to establish a “fifth column” inside Christian Europe’s walls. Orbán asks his audience to repudiate “human rights” (ignoring their own home in Christianity) and other outdated concepts. As victims of persecution, he urges his audience to stand behind him as he returns Hungary to its glorious past as the mythic defender of Christian Europe against the barbarian, lawless hordes.