RadixJournal - Lingua Franca

00:00:00.000 First off, I don't know if you know this, but Victor Orban put me into prison once.

00:00:07.100 Really? I didn't know.

00:00:10.160 I was the first victim of Victor Orban, you could say.

00:00:15.140 Now, it was only for a weekend, and I'm not complaining.

00:00:19.260 For what?

00:00:20.120 Well, for hosting a right-wing identitarian event in Hungary.

00:00:26.880 And I guess I should say I was in jail, technically, not prison, not that that matters, that I was not abused in prison or anything like that by the guards. They were all very nice. I actually have some funny stories to tell about this, but I'll just recount the story.

00:00:42.360 So it was back in 2014. And with Arctos Publishing, we decided to collaborate on an event in Budapest. And it was in many ways inspired by Orban.

00:00:58.960 There was also a party, a bit of a dubious party, if I'm being honest, called Jobbik that was sort of, at the time, Victor Orban's right-wing opposition, although, as I said, they were a bit dubious.

00:01:15.100 But anyway, we were there. Guests included myself, Jared Taylor and Alexander Dugan. And it was it got on the front page of the paper and it was very it made a splash. And I remember.

00:01:34.520 Did you play Heil Hitler by Kanye West?

00:01:36.380 it had not been released yet um oh and and remember this was pre-trump so the a lot of

00:01:46.460 everything was in a nascent fledgling stage at that point um but it the the idea was that

00:01:56.180 these crazy there were multiple ideas it was like crazy russians because dugan was involved 0.94

00:02:02.940 crazy racist americans and they're all working together to destroy hungary or something like 0.91

00:02:10.120 this and victor orban ordered the nixing of the conference but he did this like a day or two days 0.97

00:02:19.600 before so we just went anyway and we were being surveilled and we all met up on a friday before

00:02:27.240 the event so the event location got canceled and all that kind of stuff we met up at a bar

00:02:32.180 pub sort of place um before the event and we were obviously being surveilled because

00:02:39.020 i'm not even i'm not exaggerating there were like 60 year old men with shaved heads and black

00:02:48.020 leather trench coats like just hollywood casting for like communist or or or kremlin enforcer or

00:02:59.140 something were outside of the pub and they locked us in the pub and they were questioning everyone 0.52

00:03:05.760 asking for papers and uh i said you know i'm the organizer and to the credit of the hungarians they

00:03:14.960 decided to decapitate the event and uh and just arrest me and so i never i don't i guess i was

00:03:24.100 never put on trial i was declared a national security threat so it was sort of done by

00:03:29.080 diktat um i it was a hard thing to some degree i i didn't sleep for about a day and a half and

00:03:37.820 uh i was thrown into you know rooms and wasn't i wasn't interrogated they never ask any questions

00:03:45.340 uh but the police were sort of funny because i was being shuttled around different prisons and

00:03:52.160 or jails i don't even know what was happening you never learn anything it is a bit Kafka-esque

00:03:57.660 if i'm being honest like not knowing what they're doing with you they never asked me

00:04:01.760 any questions um it was pretty pretty funny but uh at one point the police officers learned who i

00:04:11.280 was so i saw one of them on on his phone and then he started passing his phone around and i think

00:04:18.640 they thought that i was someone else and then they're like oh you know he is right-wing extremist

00:04:23.940 like this and so while they were driving me to the prison there was a gypsy family on the side

00:04:30.140 of the road. The police were like, we run her over for you. We run her over. I was like, wow, 1.00

00:04:40.800 this is, this is something. Um, but they didn't, it was a joke of course, but, um, I w I was put

00:04:50.100 in prison for the weekend and people who were coming to the event, they sort of met up and,

00:04:54.700 you know had lunch and toured hungry so no one was really disappointed it was it was pretty wild

00:05:01.680 and um the prison was filled it was sort of like the last week of being in prison for people so

00:05:10.000 uh everyone there they they were like drug runners or something i i don't know they all

00:05:16.180 claimed innocence which i had never been to prison before it is funny everyone claims like oh i'm

00:05:21.280 totally innocent you know i don't know what they're talking about um but they were bringing

00:05:25.800 drugs in and they got caught at the border or whatever but everyone was ready to be released

00:05:30.700 so there was no like fights i didn't have to join a prison gang or anything like that i basically

00:05:36.580 just hung out for a little while but i i did get a little maybe ethno state in the hungarian prison

00:05:42.980 it's true there are a lot of activists will get arrested um and then again they they came and got

00:05:51.700 me and they're like all right you're you're going and i was like all right um and uh they

00:05:58.040 took me to the airport and they put they they gave me the i guess it's called a perp march

00:06:04.640 so i was there in a suit that i had been wearing in prisons so it was like dirty you know

00:06:12.800 i i had i probably showered or something but i anyway i i was no doubt rough around the edges

00:06:20.860 you know unkempt and i was i had handcuffs and they marched me through the airport and 1.00

00:06:28.300 that was something and i just want to say um every single woman was just hot and bothered

00:06:38.720 I mean, every woman was like, who is this, like, international drug dealer? 0.71

00:06:45.440 You know, I got a lot of eye, you know, like, it was interesting.

00:06:53.660 That's impressive.

00:06:55.180 But they put me on a plane and then they just sent me to Paris, which is also kind of funny.

00:07:01.040 So they just I was in Charles de Gaulle Airport in a few hours.

00:07:05.160 And, you know, it's just a funny story. Now, to bring it back again, amusing anecdote, but to try to bring some meaning here to this, I have a sort of theory that Victor Orban's the lesson that he learned from that hilarious episode was if you can't beat them, join them or something like that.

00:07:30.000 In the sense that there are all of these institutes that he has been founding in Hungary that are conservative institutes and actually have a strong whiff of Americanism.

00:07:45.520 And this includes apparently funding CPAC events in Budapest.

00:07:50.360 CPAC is a longtime American political action.

00:07:54.120 I know.

00:07:55.040 Yeah.

00:07:56.240 They go back to Reagan.

00:07:58.080 oh gotta mute you there okay they go back to reagan and all that kind of stuff and so the

00:08:03.960 the sort of irony of this episode is that victor orban did what i was attempting to do

00:08:13.200 and did it far better and far more intensely and i don't know that that is that's my

00:08:22.520 that's my personal experience to do we attempted to host a pan-european conference now i was in a

00:08:30.840 different ideological plane at that point and you know the the inviting alexander dugan there is is

00:08:37.960 an expression of that um i don't think i would do that nor do i think alexander dugan would return

00:08:44.400 my phone calls if i tried to do that but um uh it was a it was i i was in a different state

00:08:52.800 um back uh 12 years ago than i am now um but it was an attempt to say that

00:09:01.580 hungary is the center of a european revival and it feels like victor orban has done that and done

00:09:11.580 it a hundred times better or or at least more politically effective he's done it differently

00:09:16.880 than i would do it no question about it but he's done it a hundred times more effectively

00:09:21.360 um than i was doing it because hungry became for tucker carlson for cpac for jd vance um for all

00:09:30.080 of these characters like rod dreher um the what is it is it the uh the it's not the rine um there

00:09:38.400 there's another, um, what is, what is that Institute?

00:09:42.220 It's named after the Don Danube Institute, Donau Institute.

00:09:47.380 There's a number of institutions that he built that were basically about

00:09:52.080 fostering, um, pan-European or transatlantic relations,

00:09:58.940 but of a certain kind of a populist right-wing bent and,

00:10:03.260 and obviously of a pro-Russia, Russia-friendly bent.

RadixJournal - April 15, 2026

Lingua Franca

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