Regarding the upcoming elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the year 2024 “is the year of practice, not theory”: there will be elections worldwide that must be won.
Speaking at the CPAC Hungary conference, PM Orbán said the elections coincided with great changes in world politics and geopolitical trends. The world order is changing, and “we must take our cause to victory amid those changes,” he said. Progressive liberals were feeling the threat that the change of eras meant they would also be demoted, and the end of a progressive zeitgeist, he said. “They are ready for anything … and they are still in power, so they are dangerous opponents without moral scruples.” PM Orbán said progressive liberals would not hesitate to use the tools at their disposal, including state institutions. Similarly to the communists of old, now progressives had used five steps to turn state institutions into tools of oppression, he said. First, “they re-define what’s normal to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means: war is peace, and migration is a resource.” Then that “inside-out normality” is enforced through state institutions. Then, those with “dangerous views” are identified as a security threat, and the liberal press and activists are “sent after them”, he said. The process is concluded with state institutions getting involved, he said. Hungary had fared that way in Brussels, and liberal European capitals and the US, “where they are trying to remove Donald Trump from the ballot through court orders”, had treated conservatives similarly, he said.