Where to begin. The writer gestures at the average Hungarian salary, then proceeds to wield the purplish prose of just the literary "cafe culture" he's purportedly here to skewer. More bizarrely, the piece suggests something like, "Dreher is an affable chap, this isn't about him, but of course he's a fraud. Look!"
I don't agree with Dreher on everything, and don't live in Budapest. I'm just one of his readers. But here's the thing. He was maybe the only English-speaking writer who was there to push against the propaganda the whole of the Western press threw at Fidesz and Orban for years straight. At the very least, Dreher allowed those outside Hungary to see another angle.
Pace the NYT and the UK and pro-Brussels press, Orban was not a dictator, but was repeatedly *elected* by Hungarians. And now, rejecting him, they've elected another figure who agrees with "the dictator" on much. Fancy that.
I can't speak for the other Western conservatives who lived in Budapest, but as for Dreher, he wrote *a lot*. So he was paid for it. So what? How much media budget was spent by the usual suspects in the West in their years of shrill anti-Hungary hit pieces? Orban's government in Budapest surely got their money's worth having Dreher there. At least someone was not doing the Brussels copy-paste thing.
And he wasn't a shill either. For years, underlining the pluses of Orban's policies, he'd raise the problems. The cronyism that, likely, was the final thing that pissed off voters. Dreher never shied from these downsides.
The title of this paper "J'accuse" offers another odd paradox in this context. While writing about Hungary, Dreher has been doggedly tracing the rising tide of antisemitism in both the US and Europe. What would Zola say? Would Zola be carping against Orban and mocking the American journalist? I suppose Zola would be with islamogauchisme and railing against the JOOOS. Yeah?
Moi, j'accuse.
The prose really gets ahead of itself: "Normal autocrats flex their power through vast public works or monuments; Orbán built a glittering façade of think tanks, conferences, and podcasts on a brittle framework of prefab ideas and exorbitant contractors’ fees, only for it all to collapse in the blink of an eye."
"Autocrat"? No. Elected. Repeatedly. And he stepped down without protest when he finally lost.
"Only for it all to collapse in the blink of an eye.” The blink of an eye? Orban won FOUR consecutive elections and was in office 16 years.
As for selfies taken with oysters, yeah, I get it. Dreher likes oysters. And has a problem taking selfies when oysters are around. It's celebratory in an odd way, because me, as reader, I don't need it.
But this, mon ami, is a very small thing. And yes, I know, your piece is not about Rod Dreher, but my comment mostly is. Perhaps some of your depictions of the pro-Orban Budapest Western Right are more on target. I wasn't there to verify.
You don’t lose by that kind of landslide because foreign governments ànd their media defamed you, and Rod wasn’t any less a paid propagandist because he believed in what he wrote and admitted once or twice that Orban tolerated a bit of corruption because, well, everybody does it. And that was how he framed it…with the usual “but then…” that comes on the heels of every slight criticism he’s made of his “tribe” since about 2016. Moreover, most of the “antisemites” he’s taking the “high ground” over just happened to have taken the high ground over him with regard to Netanyahu’s war crimes in Gaza. Those of us old enough to remember the Israel of Yitzak Rabin know better than to equate detesting Netanyahu and his brand of Zionism with hating Jews.
Thus any writer supported by a government-linked think tank or institute or writing for a media venture that receives state support is a “paid propagandist”.
Fine by me, as long as you apply the term to all such cases. Everyone who’s ever worked for the BBC, for instance.
This metric can apply to a *huge* range of journalists/writers who aren’t regularly smeared as “paid propagandists”.
Cf. also “competitive authoritarian” elsewhere in this thread.
As for your comments on antisemitism and Israel, I simply don’t agree with you.
All Western media’s (or as Cathrine Austin Fitts calls is legacy media) raison d’être is to manufacture consent. You might want to read Chomsky’s book Manufacturing consent. Or watch the documentary.
The British Brainwashing Corporation’s Andrew Marr did an excellent interview with Chomsky, where Chomsky turned the table and put him a mirror.
Yes. I know Chomsky and Herman’s thesis, and it’s solid. Myself I don’t mind “government information”, it’s a perennial phenomenon. What I most mind is government-enforced speech codes and the antics of the West’s new Disinformation Industrial Complex. I mind a state that arrests or fines people for tweets. Not Orban’s Hungary.
Thanks for the tip re: the interview and the link, Yulia.
“What I most mind is government-enforced speech codes and the antics of the West’s new Disinformation Industrial Complex. I mind a state that arrests or fines people for tweets. Not Orban’s Hungary.”
I’ve been a flack. I know what a flack is, and it’s not a journalist or somebody free to share all the good and bad they know about the person paying. And when that person paying you runs a country, you’re a propagandist. Facts are facts.
That “person”? The Hungarian government funded the Danube Institute, no? Orban didn’t write personal checks to Rod Dreher.
The only relevant question is whether or not the funding organization editorially interfered in the writing. If there’s no evidence of that, this is just an example of state support, just as elsewhere across the EU and in the Anglosphere.
Sigh. Never been to Hungary, have you. Antisemitism has been rampant there in the Orbán era. I don’t care what sweet little nothings your little toad blogger tapped out today. Or how actually, it turns out he was against monumental reactionary corruption all along (as MAGA will no doubt be a month after Trump leaves office for good). But hey, with masterpieces like “Another day, another Tranny Killer” I’m sure he was and is worth your attention.
Ah yes, rampant antisemitism in Hungary because of the right-wing Christian dictator. Meanwhile Jewish communities are safe in London, Paris, Madrid. We’ve all read this.
But that leads to a paradox! If you believe The Others Are Always And Only Projecting, might you be projecting… yourself? (See: the phenomenal subreddit, AITA?)
A shiver goes down my spine. It's impossible, though.
Have you ever heard of the term “competitive authoritarianism,” where a leader rigs the system so that it tips heavily on their favor, even when there are elections? Like, through extensive constitutional revisions to favor the party in power? Stacking the legal system? Controlling state media? Because that’s what happened in Hungary. There is *ample* writing on this.
The idea that Orban wasn’t an autocrat because he was elected is risible. Yes, he was voted out of office. By a rival who was effectively barred from the media for months on end, while Orban’s conspiracies of Ukrainian invasion hit the airwaves.
If you haven’t heard about any of this concept, then you have actually been paying no attention to what’s going on there at all.
Of course I have heard. What these claims ignore is that most of the strategies employed by “competitive authoritarians” are also employed by respected center and center-Left parties. Constantly. In short, the term you want is “competitive”. You just add the “authoritarian” when the party is not one you support.
When pro-Brussels parties pull such tricks, it’s “defending democracy”. When the Right does, it’s “fascism”.
Ok, then. Which center and center-left parties did what Orban did? And where? Please be specific, rather than “everyone does this.”
Here’s the thing—I doubt you can. Because what Orban did was different. The takeover of universities was different (including the abolition of gender and sexuality studies). What about the establishment of state media putting out propaganda and keeping his political opponents off the air? I don’t mean in terms of people saying the US media has a liberal bias. I mean actual state influence over the media.
Please give me an example of something a centrist party somewhere has done that is the same as what Orban did in terms of building an autocracy. “Everybody does it” is the refuge of the cynical.
Christopher Caldwell has also gathered plenty of receipts re: Western European state ideological control over universities and judiciaries blocking populist parties.
Hear anything about “canceled” elections in recent years or open German attempts to ban AfD?
C’mon. This stuff is all elementary, and the fact your team refuses to acknowledge it as illiberal and undemocratic while screaming about “authoritarianism” in Budapest tells the tale. And the tale is: *Glaring Double Standards*.
So: where in the link you provided did you show any evidence of anything happening in Europe like what happened in Hungary?
Literally nothing. The link is a Hungarian intellectual saying what’s happening in Hungary isn’t as bad as people say. I think it’s fair to say this is the least objective source you can have. It’s intellectually unserious to the extreme.
I didn’t ask what receipts Christopher Caldwell has. I asked *you* for evidence. Which elections were cancelled?
Besides: this sounds extremely different from your earlier point, which was that by Orban was autocratic at all because there were elections. Does any of this make him more democratic?
Thing is, I’m not here to write articles for you. I have work to do. And you likewise haven’t cited a single source for your loaded formulations of Orban’s supposed authoritarianism.
But one thing I predicted. That you would take this source as unreliable. He’s Hungarian and isn’t attacking Orban. Ergo: Unreliable. This is one reason I chose him. To watch you shoot the messenger.
Meanwhile, unlike this Hungarian scholar, any sources you’d cite *wouldn’t* be thus biased. Because, lambasting Orban from Paris or Berlin, *paid* to lambast Orban by the organizations they work for, they’d be “objective”. By definition.
Did German mainstream politicians push for banning AfD or was it Fidesz that sought to ban a political party with wide support? Was the Romanian election result annulled because of pressure from Budapest or pressure from Brussels? Is it in Germany and the UK or in Hungary where police are regularly arresting people for tweets that offend state ideology?
Dreher was a handmaid for a dingy tinpot and his pals, no better than Duranty or any other starstruck press agent for tyrants. His disingenuous "investigative work" rather neatly ignored the red-hot antisemitism blaring out of the groupchats and apres-skis of Dreher's handsome young sources in the administrators, staffs, publicists and interns of his favorite authoritarians around the world. Now, we're all reaping the consequences.
Yeah, this was a weird essay. So Orban fell because he supported a few think tanks and conservative events? Give me a break.
I’ve visited Hungary, and the first thing I noticed was the massive braindrain from Soviet occupation that has eviscerated that country. They don’t have an intelligentsia or an informed population. This, they were easily swayed by Eurocrat bullshit about sex scandals. It also didn’t help that the EU kept withholding funds because Hungary wouldn’t take in more migrants and refugees from Ukraine. Dreher, necessarily an intellectual from outside, did what he could, but you just can’t cure stupid.
Hungary will go the way of its neighbors Poland and Romania, eagerly clinging to their second-class status in a crumbling union. It’s sad to see, but Orban was an exception to the decline already gripping the country, not a sign of things to come.
I’ve never visited. As for a brain drain during the Soviet period, one would think many of the next generation would move back, no?
I wish them well, and hope Magyar doesn’t abandon Orbanism to get the EU cash, but only fine tunes it. We shall see.
Dreher did what he could by pushing back on the Western press’ narrative (which no mere evidence was ever going to sway) and placing Hungary in relation to the rising tide of mayhem in other capitals.
> I don't agree with Dreher on everything, and don't live in Budapest. I'm just one of his readers. But here's the thing. He was maybe the only English-speaking writer who was there to push against the propaganda the whole of the Western press threw at Fidesz and Orban for years straight. At the very least, Dreher allowed those outside Hungary to see another angle.
…and if he did so as a curious intellectual eager to relay cultural understanding, kudos. But accepting six figure paycheck from the party makes his defense of the party less a public contribution and more a fee for service.
Dreher is not a 20-something eager to try the expat life. He’s a successful writer and widely known public intellectual nearing 60. He has a strong CV. Low three figures is not at all surprising and he could have done as well or better elsewhere.
NEWSFLASH: Journalism and writing are careers. A middle-aged writer with three widely reviewed books behind him is not a Lonely Planet backpacker.
His tenure at American Conservative was underwritten by one man, who cancelled his patronage when Dreher wrote about a black penis he was eager to see, calling it a "primitive root."
Dreher is the epitome of the post-modern intellectual, starting always with his conclusion, then doing "research" that proves he was more correct than he dared to imagine.
Ever notice that "The Benedict Option," allegedly based on his research about the Benedictine experience in the Middle Ages, confuses effects with causes and thus barely mentions God or Jesus or Christ, who was central to the Benedictine project?
So it’s not about Dreher yet you use his picture and single out his salary and instead of comparing it to industry peers you go populist. Orban failed because he tried to build Brideshead, but he also angered TradCaths? How about the simplest answer, it’s hard to hold out to power especially with a syncretic belief system, for 14 years in a democratic system when the entire Western world views you as public enemy number one. If your goal is to limit mass migration you must manage both domestic and international affairs and it proved too challenging
Where to begin. The writer gestures at the average Hungarian salary, then proceeds to wield the purplish prose of just the literary "cafe culture" he's purportedly here to skewer. More bizarrely, the piece suggests something like, "Dreher is an affable chap, this isn't about him, but of course he's a fraud. Look!"
I don't agree with Dreher on everything, and don't live in Budapest. I'm just one of his readers. But here's the thing. He was maybe the only English-speaking writer who was there to push against the propaganda the whole of the Western press threw at Fidesz and Orban for years straight. At the very least, Dreher allowed those outside Hungary to see another angle.
Pace the NYT and the UK and pro-Brussels press, Orban was not a dictator, but was repeatedly *elected* by Hungarians. And now, rejecting him, they've elected another figure who agrees with "the dictator" on much. Fancy that.
I can't speak for the other Western conservatives who lived in Budapest, but as for Dreher, he wrote *a lot*. So he was paid for it. So what? How much media budget was spent by the usual suspects in the West in their years of shrill anti-Hungary hit pieces? Orban's government in Budapest surely got their money's worth having Dreher there. At least someone was not doing the Brussels copy-paste thing.
And he wasn't a shill either. For years, underlining the pluses of Orban's policies, he'd raise the problems. The cronyism that, likely, was the final thing that pissed off voters. Dreher never shied from these downsides.
The title of this paper "J'accuse" offers another odd paradox in this context. While writing about Hungary, Dreher has been doggedly tracing the rising tide of antisemitism in both the US and Europe. What would Zola say? Would Zola be carping against Orban and mocking the American journalist? I suppose Zola would be with islamogauchisme and railing against the JOOOS. Yeah?
Moi, j'accuse.
The prose really gets ahead of itself: "Normal autocrats flex their power through vast public works or monuments; Orbán built a glittering façade of think tanks, conferences, and podcasts on a brittle framework of prefab ideas and exorbitant contractors’ fees, only for it all to collapse in the blink of an eye."
"Autocrat"? No. Elected. Repeatedly. And he stepped down without protest when he finally lost.
"Only for it all to collapse in the blink of an eye.” The blink of an eye? Orban won FOUR consecutive elections and was in office 16 years.
As for selfies taken with oysters, yeah, I get it. Dreher likes oysters. And has a problem taking selfies when oysters are around. It's celebratory in an odd way, because me, as reader, I don't need it.
But this, mon ami, is a very small thing. And yes, I know, your piece is not about Rod Dreher, but my comment mostly is. Perhaps some of your depictions of the pro-Orban Budapest Western Right are more on target. I wasn't there to verify.
You don’t lose by that kind of landslide because foreign governments ànd their media defamed you, and Rod wasn’t any less a paid propagandist because he believed in what he wrote and admitted once or twice that Orban tolerated a bit of corruption because, well, everybody does it. And that was how he framed it…with the usual “but then…” that comes on the heels of every slight criticism he’s made of his “tribe” since about 2016. Moreover, most of the “antisemites” he’s taking the “high ground” over just happened to have taken the high ground over him with regard to Netanyahu’s war crimes in Gaza. Those of us old enough to remember the Israel of Yitzak Rabin know better than to equate detesting Netanyahu and his brand of Zionism with hating Jews.
Thus any writer supported by a government-linked think tank or institute or writing for a media venture that receives state support is a “paid propagandist”.
Fine by me, as long as you apply the term to all such cases. Everyone who’s ever worked for the BBC, for instance.
This metric can apply to a *huge* range of journalists/writers who aren’t regularly smeared as “paid propagandists”.
Cf. also “competitive authoritarian” elsewhere in this thread.
As for your comments on antisemitism and Israel, I simply don’t agree with you.
All Western media’s (or as Cathrine Austin Fitts calls is legacy media) raison d’être is to manufacture consent. You might want to read Chomsky’s book Manufacturing consent. Or watch the documentary.
The British Brainwashing Corporation’s Andrew Marr did an excellent interview with Chomsky, where Chomsky turned the table and put him a mirror.
This may also be of interest.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/01/10/eu-plotted-orban-resistance/
Yes. I know Chomsky and Herman’s thesis, and it’s solid. Myself I don’t mind “government information”, it’s a perennial phenomenon. What I most mind is government-enforced speech codes and the antics of the West’s new Disinformation Industrial Complex. I mind a state that arrests or fines people for tweets. Not Orban’s Hungary.
Thanks for the tip re: the interview and the link, Yulia.
“What I most mind is government-enforced speech codes and the antics of the West’s new Disinformation Industrial Complex. I mind a state that arrests or fines people for tweets. Not Orban’s Hungary.”
I couldn’t agree more!
I’ve been a flack. I know what a flack is, and it’s not a journalist or somebody free to share all the good and bad they know about the person paying. And when that person paying you runs a country, you’re a propagandist. Facts are facts.
That “person”? The Hungarian government funded the Danube Institute, no? Orban didn’t write personal checks to Rod Dreher.
The only relevant question is whether or not the funding organization editorially interfered in the writing. If there’s no evidence of that, this is just an example of state support, just as elsewhere across the EU and in the Anglosphere.
Sigh. Never been to Hungary, have you. Antisemitism has been rampant there in the Orbán era. I don’t care what sweet little nothings your little toad blogger tapped out today. Or how actually, it turns out he was against monumental reactionary corruption all along (as MAGA will no doubt be a month after Trump leaves office for good). But hey, with masterpieces like “Another day, another Tranny Killer” I’m sure he was and is worth your attention.
Ah yes, rampant antisemitism in Hungary because of the right-wing Christian dictator. Meanwhile Jewish communities are safe in London, Paris, Madrid. We’ve all read this.
But perhaps we should ask the Jews.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892930
Oh.
The data backs up this assessment. Another thing the data backs up:
Leftists. Always. And only. Project.
But that leads to a paradox! If you believe The Others Are Always And Only Projecting, might you be projecting… yourself? (See: the phenomenal subreddit, AITA?)
A shiver goes down my spine. It's impossible, though.
Have you ever heard of the term “competitive authoritarianism,” where a leader rigs the system so that it tips heavily on their favor, even when there are elections? Like, through extensive constitutional revisions to favor the party in power? Stacking the legal system? Controlling state media? Because that’s what happened in Hungary. There is *ample* writing on this.
The idea that Orban wasn’t an autocrat because he was elected is risible. Yes, he was voted out of office. By a rival who was effectively barred from the media for months on end, while Orban’s conspiracies of Ukrainian invasion hit the airwaves.
If you haven’t heard about any of this concept, then you have actually been paying no attention to what’s going on there at all.
Of course I have heard. What these claims ignore is that most of the strategies employed by “competitive authoritarians” are also employed by respected center and center-Left parties. Constantly. In short, the term you want is “competitive”. You just add the “authoritarian” when the party is not one you support.
When pro-Brussels parties pull such tricks, it’s “defending democracy”. When the Right does, it’s “fascism”.
Risible, yes. Risibly transparent double standards.
Ok, then. Which center and center-left parties did what Orban did? And where? Please be specific, rather than “everyone does this.”
Here’s the thing—I doubt you can. Because what Orban did was different. The takeover of universities was different (including the abolition of gender and sexuality studies). What about the establishment of state media putting out propaganda and keeping his political opponents off the air? I don’t mean in terms of people saying the US media has a liberal bias. I mean actual state influence over the media.
Please give me an example of something a centrist party somewhere has done that is the same as what Orban did in terms of building an autocracy. “Everybody does it” is the refuge of the cynical.
Free speech has been more under state threat in Western Europe than it was in Hungary during the recent decade. And it only gets worse by the year:
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/12/frank-furedi-the-new-face-of-right-wing-free-speech/
Christopher Caldwell has also gathered plenty of receipts re: Western European state ideological control over universities and judiciaries blocking populist parties.
Hear anything about “canceled” elections in recent years or open German attempts to ban AfD?
C’mon. This stuff is all elementary, and the fact your team refuses to acknowledge it as illiberal and undemocratic while screaming about “authoritarianism” in Budapest tells the tale. And the tale is: *Glaring Double Standards*.
So: where in the link you provided did you show any evidence of anything happening in Europe like what happened in Hungary?
Literally nothing. The link is a Hungarian intellectual saying what’s happening in Hungary isn’t as bad as people say. I think it’s fair to say this is the least objective source you can have. It’s intellectually unserious to the extreme.
I didn’t ask what receipts Christopher Caldwell has. I asked *you* for evidence. Which elections were cancelled?
Besides: this sounds extremely different from your earlier point, which was that by Orban was autocratic at all because there were elections. Does any of this make him more democratic?
Thing is, I’m not here to write articles for you. I have work to do. And you likewise haven’t cited a single source for your loaded formulations of Orban’s supposed authoritarianism.
But one thing I predicted. That you would take this source as unreliable. He’s Hungarian and isn’t attacking Orban. Ergo: Unreliable. This is one reason I chose him. To watch you shoot the messenger.
Meanwhile, unlike this Hungarian scholar, any sources you’d cite *wouldn’t* be thus biased. Because, lambasting Orban from Paris or Berlin, *paid* to lambast Orban by the organizations they work for, they’d be “objective”. By definition.
Did German mainstream politicians push for banning AfD or was it Fidesz that sought to ban a political party with wide support? Was the Romanian election result annulled because of pressure from Budapest or pressure from Brussels? Is it in Germany and the UK or in Hungary where police are regularly arresting people for tweets that offend state ideology?
Polish your mirror, then look in it.
Dreher was a handmaid for a dingy tinpot and his pals, no better than Duranty or any other starstruck press agent for tyrants. His disingenuous "investigative work" rather neatly ignored the red-hot antisemitism blaring out of the groupchats and apres-skis of Dreher's handsome young sources in the administrators, staffs, publicists and interns of his favorite authoritarians around the world. Now, we're all reaping the consequences.
You’ve got the Franz Pokorny style. You should be writing for J’Accuse.
Yeah, this was a weird essay. So Orban fell because he supported a few think tanks and conservative events? Give me a break.
I’ve visited Hungary, and the first thing I noticed was the massive braindrain from Soviet occupation that has eviscerated that country. They don’t have an intelligentsia or an informed population. This, they were easily swayed by Eurocrat bullshit about sex scandals. It also didn’t help that the EU kept withholding funds because Hungary wouldn’t take in more migrants and refugees from Ukraine. Dreher, necessarily an intellectual from outside, did what he could, but you just can’t cure stupid.
Hungary will go the way of its neighbors Poland and Romania, eagerly clinging to their second-class status in a crumbling union. It’s sad to see, but Orban was an exception to the decline already gripping the country, not a sign of things to come.
I’ve never visited. As for a brain drain during the Soviet period, one would think many of the next generation would move back, no?
I wish them well, and hope Magyar doesn’t abandon Orbanism to get the EU cash, but only fine tunes it. We shall see.
Dreher did what he could by pushing back on the Western press’ narrative (which no mere evidence was ever going to sway) and placing Hungary in relation to the rising tide of mayhem in other capitals.
> I don't agree with Dreher on everything, and don't live in Budapest. I'm just one of his readers. But here's the thing. He was maybe the only English-speaking writer who was there to push against the propaganda the whole of the Western press threw at Fidesz and Orban for years straight. At the very least, Dreher allowed those outside Hungary to see another angle.
…and if he did so as a curious intellectual eager to relay cultural understanding, kudos. But accepting six figure paycheck from the party makes his defense of the party less a public contribution and more a fee for service.
Dreher is not a 20-something eager to try the expat life. He’s a successful writer and widely known public intellectual nearing 60. He has a strong CV. Low three figures is not at all surprising and he could have done as well or better elsewhere.
NEWSFLASH: Journalism and writing are careers. A middle-aged writer with three widely reviewed books behind him is not a Lonely Planet backpacker.
His tenure at American Conservative was underwritten by one man, who cancelled his patronage when Dreher wrote about a black penis he was eager to see, calling it a "primitive root."
Dreher is the epitome of the post-modern intellectual, starting always with his conclusion, then doing "research" that proves he was more correct than he dared to imagine.
Ever notice that "The Benedict Option," allegedly based on his research about the Benedictine experience in the Middle Ages, confuses effects with causes and thus barely mentions God or Jesus or Christ, who was central to the Benedictine project?
Not dead
So it’s not about Dreher yet you use his picture and single out his salary and instead of comparing it to industry peers you go populist. Orban failed because he tried to build Brideshead, but he also angered TradCaths? How about the simplest answer, it’s hard to hold out to power especially with a syncretic belief system, for 14 years in a democratic system when the entire Western world views you as public enemy number one. If your goal is to limit mass migration you must manage both domestic and international affairs and it proved too challenging
It’s still a lot cheaper than funding all those sand niggers that Germany let in back in 2015 tho
Perfect companion piece to the most recent episode of Chapo where they talk about Dreher.
I kept an eye on this scene, and it was clear by 2022 that their output is utterly inconsequential.