Two out of the five featured articles this week are behind a paywall or require a subscription. I really enjoy your content but get frustrated when the highlighted articles require a commitment of some kind. Can you please highlight content that doesn’t require a commitment, or get a pass for your readers?
Another great round of articles! However, Boghessian's piece was rather confusing. He seems to imply that we give Ibram X Kendi's (mis)management of significant resources a free pass, so that we can focus on debating his ideas...which Boghessian then states have already been roundly refuted by the scholars he names. Huh? Calling out Kendi as a fraud for his misuse of funds is absolutely key and relevant to dismantling (to use woke's favorite word...) his fallacious arguments and morally repugnant freak show. Antiracism was never anything but a front for black-directed racism and black supremacy driven by misanthropy, anomie, narcissism, and nihilism. His abuse of power is a legitimate and necessary point of dissention worthy of analysis and illumination. It's irrefutable proof of hypocrisy, greed, incompetence, and bad intent. Our society has already been seriously debating and analyzing his intellectually fraudulent ideas for long enough. Now it is time to put his and his compatriots' actions under a microscope.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Sometimes simply being the enemy of the enemy is enough to make a bedfellow an ally and friend. Sometimes the enemy of one's enemy is so problematic that their mere presence in an alliance would enough to deter other potential allies from joining the cause. That is the case with Peter Boghossian. His uncritical acceptance of Viktor Orbán's hospitality disqualifies him from holding a seat at the friends and allies' table.
It's not necessary to describe Mr. Boghossian's infatuation with the now-lliberal and anti-democratic Hungary here. The New Republic already did it in a piece titled "The University of Austin Goes to Hungary." The lede reads: "Some of the 'classical liberals' who founded an ersatz college for 'free speech' sure seem more at home in Viktor Orbán’s repressive regime." Unlike Mr. Bohgossian's article, this one is not behind a paywall. https://newrepublic.com/article/168080/university-austin-hungary-shapiro-boghossian
The following excerpt captures Mr. Boghossian's attitude toward the dissent-free society Orbán has created after hollowing out Hungary's constitutional democracy:
"As his conversation . . . progressed, it became clearer that Boghossian’s affection for Hungary had less to do with a high-minded commitment to 'the liberty of others' and more to do with, well, his own feelings. 'You know when you go to a place and you can just feel it? It feels comfortable, safe,' Boghossian tells [Ilya] Shapiro. (In May, the chair of MCC [the Mathias Corvinus Collegium], who is also Orbán’s political director, told The Guardian that American right-wingers 'see Hungary as a conservative safe space.') As Boghossian describes it: 'Hungary is a place where people go if they’ve had enough and they’re fucking sick of it, or they want a taste for where it’s like where they can say anything that they want without being accused of anything heinous. I’ve experienced nothing but freedom here.… This place is like paradise to me' . . ."
Mr. Boghossian's criticism of Ibram X. Kendi (who, in the opinion of many, is an intellectual and a race grifter) is welcome, of course, even if Boghossian is in a minority in characterizing the sex-obsessed red-baiterJames Linsday's output as "quality scholarship."
However, Mr. Boghossian has earned his case of guilt by association. This is how the highly acclaimed Jacob Heilbrunn* summarizes the situation in Hungary in an essay that explores the American right's fascination with Orbán:
"The right’s ardor for Orbán has prompted some performative confusion in Western media. An Economist headline asked, 'Why Is the American Right Obsessed With Viktor Orbán?' And an article in The Hill by Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociology professor at Princeton, was titled: 'Orbán Dazzles US Conservatives—What Do They See in Him?'
The most common answer is that Orbán has made Hungary a laboratory for the conversion of a liberal democracy into an authoritarian state. The thinking goes like this: For an American right fascinated (in an obviously self-interested manner) by the creation and maintenance of minority rule, the formula begins with a crackdown on the press. Snub international institutions (in Orbán’s case, the European Union) and depict the Holocaust survivor George Soros as a diabolical financier. Add in an assault on the rule of law. Finish off any lingering political opposition by gerrymandering it out of existence. . . " https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/viktor-orban-american-conservatism-admiration/671205/
Mr. Boghossian is certainly correct that "We can sit at the adult table and have honest, evidence-based discussions about the issues Kendi is trying to address." Let's hope those adults are staunch defenders of liberal, democratic values and systems whose bona fides have not been compromised the way Mr. Boghossian's have by association with the right-wing version of Mr. Kendi's leftist illiberalism.
* "Jacob Heilbrunn is a journalist based in Washington, DC, who serves as both senior editor and contributor to the National Interest. Formerly a member of the editorial board for the Los Angeles Times, and a senior editor for the New Republic, he is currently a regular contributor to the New York Times and Washington Monthly in addition to his efforts for the National Interest. Also, Heilbrunn is the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, which was published by Doubleday in 2008." https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/heilbrunn-jacob
I’m not a big fan of Orban or the American right’s fascination with him, but this comment is very uncritical in its acceptance of the New Republic and Atlantic/Heilbrunn’s* account of both Orban’s Hungary and of the conservatives who appreciate it.
*Heilbrunn’s credentials don’t impress me much. They certainly don’t serve as support for his claims.
I stand by the characterization of Orbán's Hungary based not only on pieces in The Atlantic and The New Republic but the scholar of authoritarian regimes Ruth Ben-Ghiat and the journalist and historian of Central and Eastern Europe Anne Applebaum. Ms. Applebaum is the author of Twilight of Democracy, which examines right-wing populist politics in Poland, the UK and the US. The book also includes a discussion of Hungary. All those sources arrive at the same general conclusions about Hungary's anti-democratic and illiberal political system that serves the will of Viktor Orbán.
If you have a different take on Hungary, you're welcome to present it and give your sources.
I don't know Ben-Ghiat. I've appreciated the occasional piece by Applebaum when she's writing about history, but I've found her to be tendentious and lacking sound judgment on current affairs, including right-wing populist politics. Your original comment argued that Boghossian's acceptance of Orban's hospitality is utterly discrediting of him. I'm not a fan of that type of argument, but if we follow that kind of standard, where does it leave Applebaum, given her vocal support of the Iraq War? Should we all have stopped listening to her 20 years ago?
I don't have a piece to share at the moment on Hungary. But regarding Applebaum, a review of her Twilight book by Ivan Krastev in Foreign Policy is insightful (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/15/the-tragic-romance-of-the-middle-aged-western-liberal/). He writes of her that "1989 was the point of departure of everything that Applebaum did in the following three decades.[...] She tends to see the post-Cold War world as an epic struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, between freedom and oppression.
"[...] In her worldview, the marriage between democracy and capitalism was made in heaven, and most of the conflicts in the world were not about a clash of interests but about a clash of values. It was this mindset that made many ’89ers first to detect the danger coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia but also the last to condemn George W. Bush’s ugly war in Iraq."
[...]
"When political participants become fans, their primary goal is to make sure their opponents will never come to power. Populists encourage this mindset—and in their most romantic vein, the liberal ’89ers manage to replicate it.
"In trying to make sense of the current “illiberal moment,” Applebaum frames the choices intellectuals face today as similar to the ones faced by the men of letters in France during the Dreyfus Affair—nationalists versus cosmopolitans, democrats versus authoritarians. You can sense in this framing an ’89er’s nostalgia for the illusionary moral clarity of the Cold War. But while this frame has mobilizing power and gives us a sense of purpose, it blurs the major challenge Western liberalism is facing today—how to uphold Western universalism while Western power is in decline. Will the West remain devoted to free markets if non-Western economies become more competitive? Will the West remain devoted to free elections if they bring to power anti-Western regimes? Is the democratic majoritarianism of leaders like Orban anti-democratic—or does it represent the dark side of democracy we are uncomfortable talking about?"
Sorry, I'm just an old retired lawyer, so I can't answer those rhetorical questions and I don't care to get up to speed on concepts such as "democratic majoritarianism."
Orbán's regime seems antithetical to just about everything the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism stands for.
If there's an interpretation of Boghossian's presence in Hungary and his comments about its government that portrays him as something other than an apologist, please lay it out.
Two out of the five featured articles this week are behind a paywall or require a subscription. I really enjoy your content but get frustrated when the highlighted articles require a commitment of some kind. Can you please highlight content that doesn’t require a commitment, or get a pass for your readers?
Archive.com then put the address in. Hope this helps
Another great round of articles! However, Boghessian's piece was rather confusing. He seems to imply that we give Ibram X Kendi's (mis)management of significant resources a free pass, so that we can focus on debating his ideas...which Boghessian then states have already been roundly refuted by the scholars he names. Huh? Calling out Kendi as a fraud for his misuse of funds is absolutely key and relevant to dismantling (to use woke's favorite word...) his fallacious arguments and morally repugnant freak show. Antiracism was never anything but a front for black-directed racism and black supremacy driven by misanthropy, anomie, narcissism, and nihilism. His abuse of power is a legitimate and necessary point of dissention worthy of analysis and illumination. It's irrefutable proof of hypocrisy, greed, incompetence, and bad intent. Our society has already been seriously debating and analyzing his intellectually fraudulent ideas for long enough. Now it is time to put his and his compatriots' actions under a microscope.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Sometimes simply being the enemy of the enemy is enough to make a bedfellow an ally and friend. Sometimes the enemy of one's enemy is so problematic that their mere presence in an alliance would enough to deter other potential allies from joining the cause. That is the case with Peter Boghossian. His uncritical acceptance of Viktor Orbán's hospitality disqualifies him from holding a seat at the friends and allies' table.
It's not necessary to describe Mr. Boghossian's infatuation with the now-lliberal and anti-democratic Hungary here. The New Republic already did it in a piece titled "The University of Austin Goes to Hungary." The lede reads: "Some of the 'classical liberals' who founded an ersatz college for 'free speech' sure seem more at home in Viktor Orbán’s repressive regime." Unlike Mr. Bohgossian's article, this one is not behind a paywall. https://newrepublic.com/article/168080/university-austin-hungary-shapiro-boghossian
The following excerpt captures Mr. Boghossian's attitude toward the dissent-free society Orbán has created after hollowing out Hungary's constitutional democracy:
"As his conversation . . . progressed, it became clearer that Boghossian’s affection for Hungary had less to do with a high-minded commitment to 'the liberty of others' and more to do with, well, his own feelings. 'You know when you go to a place and you can just feel it? It feels comfortable, safe,' Boghossian tells [Ilya] Shapiro. (In May, the chair of MCC [the Mathias Corvinus Collegium], who is also Orbán’s political director, told The Guardian that American right-wingers 'see Hungary as a conservative safe space.') As Boghossian describes it: 'Hungary is a place where people go if they’ve had enough and they’re fucking sick of it, or they want a taste for where it’s like where they can say anything that they want without being accused of anything heinous. I’ve experienced nothing but freedom here.… This place is like paradise to me' . . ."
Mr. Boghossian's criticism of Ibram X. Kendi (who, in the opinion of many, is an intellectual and a race grifter) is welcome, of course, even if Boghossian is in a minority in characterizing the sex-obsessed red-baiterJames Linsday's output as "quality scholarship."
However, Mr. Boghossian has earned his case of guilt by association. This is how the highly acclaimed Jacob Heilbrunn* summarizes the situation in Hungary in an essay that explores the American right's fascination with Orbán:
"The right’s ardor for Orbán has prompted some performative confusion in Western media. An Economist headline asked, 'Why Is the American Right Obsessed With Viktor Orbán?' And an article in The Hill by Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociology professor at Princeton, was titled: 'Orbán Dazzles US Conservatives—What Do They See in Him?'
The most common answer is that Orbán has made Hungary a laboratory for the conversion of a liberal democracy into an authoritarian state. The thinking goes like this: For an American right fascinated (in an obviously self-interested manner) by the creation and maintenance of minority rule, the formula begins with a crackdown on the press. Snub international institutions (in Orbán’s case, the European Union) and depict the Holocaust survivor George Soros as a diabolical financier. Add in an assault on the rule of law. Finish off any lingering political opposition by gerrymandering it out of existence. . . " https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/viktor-orban-american-conservatism-admiration/671205/
Mr. Boghossian is certainly correct that "We can sit at the adult table and have honest, evidence-based discussions about the issues Kendi is trying to address." Let's hope those adults are staunch defenders of liberal, democratic values and systems whose bona fides have not been compromised the way Mr. Boghossian's have by association with the right-wing version of Mr. Kendi's leftist illiberalism.
* "Jacob Heilbrunn is a journalist based in Washington, DC, who serves as both senior editor and contributor to the National Interest. Formerly a member of the editorial board for the Los Angeles Times, and a senior editor for the New Republic, he is currently a regular contributor to the New York Times and Washington Monthly in addition to his efforts for the National Interest. Also, Heilbrunn is the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, which was published by Doubleday in 2008." https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/heilbrunn-jacob
I’m not a big fan of Orban or the American right’s fascination with him, but this comment is very uncritical in its acceptance of the New Republic and Atlantic/Heilbrunn’s* account of both Orban’s Hungary and of the conservatives who appreciate it.
*Heilbrunn’s credentials don’t impress me much. They certainly don’t serve as support for his claims.
I stand by the characterization of Orbán's Hungary based not only on pieces in The Atlantic and The New Republic but the scholar of authoritarian regimes Ruth Ben-Ghiat and the journalist and historian of Central and Eastern Europe Anne Applebaum. Ms. Applebaum is the author of Twilight of Democracy, which examines right-wing populist politics in Poland, the UK and the US. The book also includes a discussion of Hungary. All those sources arrive at the same general conclusions about Hungary's anti-democratic and illiberal political system that serves the will of Viktor Orbán.
If you have a different take on Hungary, you're welcome to present it and give your sources.
I don't know Ben-Ghiat. I've appreciated the occasional piece by Applebaum when she's writing about history, but I've found her to be tendentious and lacking sound judgment on current affairs, including right-wing populist politics. Your original comment argued that Boghossian's acceptance of Orban's hospitality is utterly discrediting of him. I'm not a fan of that type of argument, but if we follow that kind of standard, where does it leave Applebaum, given her vocal support of the Iraq War? Should we all have stopped listening to her 20 years ago?
I don't have a piece to share at the moment on Hungary. But regarding Applebaum, a review of her Twilight book by Ivan Krastev in Foreign Policy is insightful (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/15/the-tragic-romance-of-the-middle-aged-western-liberal/). He writes of her that "1989 was the point of departure of everything that Applebaum did in the following three decades.[...] She tends to see the post-Cold War world as an epic struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, between freedom and oppression.
"[...] In her worldview, the marriage between democracy and capitalism was made in heaven, and most of the conflicts in the world were not about a clash of interests but about a clash of values. It was this mindset that made many ’89ers first to detect the danger coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia but also the last to condemn George W. Bush’s ugly war in Iraq."
[...]
"When political participants become fans, their primary goal is to make sure their opponents will never come to power. Populists encourage this mindset—and in their most romantic vein, the liberal ’89ers manage to replicate it.
"In trying to make sense of the current “illiberal moment,” Applebaum frames the choices intellectuals face today as similar to the ones faced by the men of letters in France during the Dreyfus Affair—nationalists versus cosmopolitans, democrats versus authoritarians. You can sense in this framing an ’89er’s nostalgia for the illusionary moral clarity of the Cold War. But while this frame has mobilizing power and gives us a sense of purpose, it blurs the major challenge Western liberalism is facing today—how to uphold Western universalism while Western power is in decline. Will the West remain devoted to free markets if non-Western economies become more competitive? Will the West remain devoted to free elections if they bring to power anti-Western regimes? Is the democratic majoritarianism of leaders like Orban anti-democratic—or does it represent the dark side of democracy we are uncomfortable talking about?"
Sorry, I'm just an old retired lawyer, so I can't answer those rhetorical questions and I don't care to get up to speed on concepts such as "democratic majoritarianism."
Orbán's regime seems antithetical to just about everything the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism stands for.
If there's an interpretation of Boghossian's presence in Hungary and his comments about its government that portrays him as something other than an apologist, please lay it out.