Anne Applebaum writes:

Orbán’s visitors serve the same end as Stalin’s. Soviet leaders wanted to prove to their compatriots that their system is better than Western democracy, and to provide an answer to foreign criticism. Orbán’s purpose is identical. When Carlson—or Rod Dreher, Christopher Caldwell, or any of the other American commentators who have made their pilgrimage to Budapest—sings the Hungarian leader’s praises, that helps bolster Orbán’s image at home. It also gives him ammunition against the growing chorus of outside criticism that has already gotten him kicked out of the European-wide Christian Democratic movement—he is now well to the right of what used to be Hungary’s “far right” party—and may eventually get him kicked out of the European Union too.

The irony, of course, is that under Orbán, it’s impossible for a Hungarian equivalent of Carlson—a loud television pundit, critical of the government, watched by millions of people—to exist. In Hungary, the ruling party doesn’t merely influence the press. It owns the bulk of the press, and not metaphorically. This is not some subtle form of influence: A few years ago, owners, even pro-government owners, were forced to “donate” their media properties to a holding company controlled directly by people close to Orbán. Many independent radio networks and newspapers have been forced off the air and out of business through overt and covert intervention in the advertising market. The token independent outlets, mostly websites, that have been allowed to remain are subject to stringent government surveillance. The Hungarian government has gone so far as to use Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group to track journalists, following their conversations, messages, and movements.

Carlson, whose father was the head of the agency that ran Voice of America during the Cold War, surely knows all of this. He understands he is following directly in the footsteps of the old communist fellow travelers, the men and women who made regular pilgrimages to the old Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or what used to be East Germany. I suspect that he, unlike some of the other right-wing fellow travelers, has not actually fallen for the Orbán con. But Carlson’s cynicism about America is so profound, and his nihilism is so overpowering, that he doesn’t care. If he can make people angry, he achieves his most important goal. [Continue reading…]