Beyond Backsliding: The Development of a Right-wing Organizational Ties in the U.S. and Hungary

This paper is a chapter from my dissertation: In May 2022, the American Conservative Union held its inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Europe: CPAC Hungary. As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a self-described illiberal democratic leader, delivered his opening remarks, the event was decried as the convergence of the American and Hungarian right's antidemocratic objectives. That event is now headed for its third iteration in 2024, and it is but a node, an annual touchstone amidst myriad newly established collaborations, partnerships, and organizational forms across by this 'new right.' Over the last fifteen years global right-wing politics has shifted drastically—under descriptors ranging from democratic backsliding to erosion, illiberalism to authoritarianism, today's asymmetric shift rightward is classified as a dangerously pervasive new wave of far-right politics that threatens the very foundations of the liberal democratic order. This rightward shift is marked, global, and undeniable given the scholarly evidence, but this paper argues that classifying such developments as evidenced in Hungary and the U.S. as harbingers of democratic backsliding overlooks three key elements of right-wing politics: first, these 'new' elements now situated at the helm of right-wing politics were always part of conservative politics writ large but were neither normalized in mainstream politics by partisan organizational gatekeepers nor in positions of power endowed with institutional prestige. Second, today's brand of far-right conservatism where executive aggrandizement, populist hyperbole fueled by rhetoric rich with resentment, insecurities, and conspiracies is neither new to politics nor is it representative of a distinctly right-wing brand of politics as the history of the left readily shows. Third, and finally, the existential threat of the right for the liberal democratic order deserves a closer look—while scholars agree that the right tends to be 'reactionary,' shaping its values and objectives around extant and oppositional forces, the role of the liberal order status quo ante can and should be treated as a data source to be excavated as much as the phenomena of the right to make sense of contemporary populism. The left is not simply under threat by the what and how of the right, its institutions, policies, and ideas play an important role in the current form of the right. This paper undertakes a direct examination of the organizations that animate this new era of transnational right-wing politics and contends that classifying these politics as democratic backsliding does not account for the distinct relationships and organizations that have recently developed. The initial cases for this study and focus of this paper are the U.S. and Hungary.