Viktor Orban Wows Them in Dallas.

Hungary's Orban gets a standing ovation in Dallas Source: NYT

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, Retired

GED/HEO

8-5-22

 

Hungary's neo-fascist Prime Minister, Viktor Orban received a hero’s welcome in the US. Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas Texas on Thursday (8-4-22), Orban called on his political comrades, mostly in the Republican Party to, “…..take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another.”

 

Let’s recall another time when Orban’s political ancestors took back institutions. After the Nazis seized power in January 1933, they held an election two months later on 5 March. This election was accompanied by violence by Nazi stormtroopers as Communists Party, SDP members (Social Democratic Party) trade unionists and liberals were beaten up and arrested. This was the last multi-party election until 1990.

Orban and the other fella

 

Receiving an ovation that trumped Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbot, Orban launched attacks on immigrants, gays, the LGBTQ community in general and abortion rights. He has condemned inter racial mixing and has said of nations today, like in Western Europe, “These countries are no longer nations: They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples,”

 

Orban and his like are smart enough not to include trade unions at this point as it would not be popular, but the workers’ organizations are high on the list

 

U.S. President “Worker Joe” Biden, the most pro-union president in our history, according many top labor officials in the US and who had no problem welcoming the neo-fascist Benyamin Netanyahu to Washington, had, “no plans to speak with Mr. Orban” the Wall Street Journal reports. Biden, the former Senator from DuPont, has stated publicly that he an ardent Zionist.

 

Politics makes strange bedfellows as the saying goes, but not really. A brief glimpse of the role of the U.S ruling class and its liberal wing reveals the most arrogant, crude and ruthless ruling class in modern history that, like them all, will ally with any forces that maintain the status quo.

 

The. Right wing elements, Christian right wingers, Patriot Prayers, Oathkeepers, Christian Zionists of all types, white supremacists and other neo-fascist elements have been building their political power over decades and they are strengthening their international links. They have taken over the Republican Party some might say and many state and local governments. Like the Nazis before them, electoral politics and their defense of free speech are merely a strategy to eliminate both. And it’s prudent to point out, contrary what many workers believe, that free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment doesn’t apply to the workplace.

 

We have to vigilant and take these elements and the dangers of the right wing, seriously. The capitalist mass media does not help any more than the liberal petit bourgeois that are obsessed with identity politics and who attack those who stress the importance of class as “class reductionist”. No one with any brains at all negates the importance of added social oppression that marginalized sections of our class face. We cannot change society without addressing these issues but how we approach this question is crucial.

 

In the U.S. there is a movement among the unorganized working class and low waged to build collective power and unionization. We have witnessed over the past 10 years massive protests against police brutality that were multi-ethnic. The federal government in the US has just arrested four Louisville cops for their role in the murder of Breona Taylor in March 2020. They have been charged with, “…….civil rights offenses, unconstitutional use of force, obstruction and conspiracy…”. This is the result of the courage, persistence and determination of those Black organizations, individuals and their allies that have waged a battle for justice to be served for the past two years.

 

The US working class will be forced to fight back in the face of the capitalist offensive, and it is inevitable that this process will likely strengthen us as there is a strong tendency to overcome social division and seek class unity when we go on the offensive. We see this in a smaller way as our consciousness changes on the picket line. There's no doubt that when no alternative arises, autocrats, the "strongman"  and military dictatorships can flourish

 

There is no guarantee the right-wing forces that exist in the US today will fade away. But we should not underestimate the immense power of the working class in motion or the class conscious that is always present to one degree or another and the rapid pace at which consciousness changes at times.