From Magyar Hírlap via Remix News
By Dénes Albert
The left proposes a multinational, post-national existence, say Douglas Murray and John O'Sullivan
Trumpism is alive and well even if the American election did not turn out as many expected, and it remains unclear how the coronavirus epidemic will transform world politics were the conclusions of a dual interview of two leading conservative intellectuals John O’Sullivan and Douglas Murray with Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet.
O’Sullivan serves as the chairman of the Danube Institute and once worked as the former adviser to Margaret Thatcher while Murray is a British publicist and writer who recently arrived in Budapest for a month as a visiting researcher at the Danube Institute. The two of them tackled a series of topics including intellectual freedom, President Donald Trump, and the future of the European right.
- How do you find intellectual life in Hungary and how is it different from that in the West?
John O’Sullivan: In many ways, there is not much difference, but there is an important advantage for Hungary and Central Europe. The debate here is freer, there are no things that should not be said, because whoever does it loses the opportunity to speak. In Western universities, in intellectual life, the woke, the so-called enlightened left, makes much of that impossible.
Douglas Murray: There’s a really wide-ranging public debate, and conservative voices are also gaining ground in it. This is not the case further West, especially in the United States. Recently, a café was named after Roger Scruton, it’s a really touching commitment. If, say, it had opened in the United States, the first visitors would certainly not have been too friendly.
- Has the election of US President Donald Trump somewhat reduced the power of political correctness?
Douglas Murray: Much of what Trump said differs only in tone from that of his predecessors. He undoubtedly broke the left-wing consensus on language on what to say and what not. This is very important.
John O'Sullivan: Hungarians often tell me that they speak in the United States, as they did last time in socialism. In the West, however, especially young people, they are hearing that kind of language for the first time.
- In the run-up to the US presidential election, the Western liberal press has enthusiastically explained in recent weeks that Trump's result is bad news for the European right. But looking at the sequence of events, the European right has already strengthened before the 2016 Trump election.
Douglas Murray: There is such a view that the world is uniformly turning to the right or left. If a right-wing force loses, the left-wing press still writes that "the right is on the march". I also reflect that view, the right is always just "marching", never actually going or just "walking". In the left-wing press, such theories are set up simply because they rely on a domino effect.
John O'Sullivan: The US presidential election did not bring the results that many expected. Trump has shown, however, that so-called Trumpism is alive and well, and this will be even more so in the next two years. As far as European right-wing parties are concerned, they advanced in the 2014 European elections and then only strengthened more modestly in 2019. We have also seen the Socialists disappear even more and the Greens getting stronger. Such is the policy. Overall, we see in European politics that the pendulum is swinging towards the various center-left parties. As a result, they are increasingly demanding greater integration of the union, and a reduction in the sovereignty of nation-states. In this way, they can also achieve that sooner or later the right gains ground again.
- The Western liberal consensus always speaks with suspicion about strong leaders and favors strong institutions. Which is the right way?
Douglas Murray: Judging this usually also depends on the policy of the particular leader. If the press doesn't like what he says, he is called a strongman, while if the press likes what he says, he is called a determined leader.
John O'Sullivan: In the left-wing press, there is a tendency to divide Europe into democratic and so-called populist countries, and at the beginning of the epidemic, it even emerged that the countries they recognized as democratic would better deal with the crisis. In comparison, I think the UK has performed poorly, as have France, Italy, Spain. Central Europe, on the other hand, performed better than much of the continent. Attacks on individual leaders are absurd. European center-left governments do not have strong leaders — Angela Merkel can be seen as that, but she is not portrayed as such. They are all defenders of orthodoxy, which transcends national existence, as well as multiculturalism and, for a long time, an open immigration policy.
The left proposes a multinational, post-national existence, say Douglas Murray and John O'Sullivan
Trumpism is alive and well even if the American election did not turn out as many expected, and it remains unclear how the coronavirus epidemic will transform world politics were the conclusions of a dual interview of two leading conservative intellectuals John O’Sullivan and Douglas Murray with Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet.
O’Sullivan serves as the chairman of the Danube Institute and once worked as the former adviser to Margaret Thatcher while Murray is a British publicist and writer who recently arrived in Budapest for a month as a visiting researcher at the Danube Institute. The two of them tackled a series of topics including intellectual freedom, President Donald Trump, and the future of the European right.
- How do you find intellectual life in Hungary and how is it different from that in the West?
John O’Sullivan: In many ways, there is not much difference, but there is an important advantage for Hungary and Central Europe. The debate here is freer, there are no things that should not be said, because whoever does it loses the opportunity to speak. In Western universities, in intellectual life, the woke, the so-called enlightened left, makes much of that impossible.
Douglas Murray: There’s a really wide-ranging public debate, and conservative voices are also gaining ground in it. This is not the case further West, especially in the United States. Recently, a café was named after Roger Scruton, it’s a really touching commitment. If, say, it had opened in the United States, the first visitors would certainly not have been too friendly.
- Has the election of US President Donald Trump somewhat reduced the power of political correctness?
Douglas Murray: Much of what Trump said differs only in tone from that of his predecessors. He undoubtedly broke the left-wing consensus on language on what to say and what not. This is very important.
John O'Sullivan: Hungarians often tell me that they speak in the United States, as they did last time in socialism. In the West, however, especially young people, they are hearing that kind of language for the first time.
- In the run-up to the US presidential election, the Western liberal press has enthusiastically explained in recent weeks that Trump's result is bad news for the European right. But looking at the sequence of events, the European right has already strengthened before the 2016 Trump election.
Douglas Murray: There is such a view that the world is uniformly turning to the right or left. If a right-wing force loses, the left-wing press still writes that "the right is on the march". I also reflect that view, the right is always just "marching", never actually going or just "walking". In the left-wing press, such theories are set up simply because they rely on a domino effect.
John O'Sullivan: The US presidential election did not bring the results that many expected. Trump has shown, however, that so-called Trumpism is alive and well, and this will be even more so in the next two years. As far as European right-wing parties are concerned, they advanced in the 2014 European elections and then only strengthened more modestly in 2019. We have also seen the Socialists disappear even more and the Greens getting stronger. Such is the policy. Overall, we see in European politics that the pendulum is swinging towards the various center-left parties. As a result, they are increasingly demanding greater integration of the union, and a reduction in the sovereignty of nation-states. In this way, they can also achieve that sooner or later the right gains ground again.
- The Western liberal consensus always speaks with suspicion about strong leaders and favors strong institutions. Which is the right way?
Douglas Murray: Judging this usually also depends on the policy of the particular leader. If the press doesn't like what he says, he is called a strongman, while if the press likes what he says, he is called a determined leader.
John O'Sullivan: In the left-wing press, there is a tendency to divide Europe into democratic and so-called populist countries, and at the beginning of the epidemic, it even emerged that the countries they recognized as democratic would better deal with the crisis. In comparison, I think the UK has performed poorly, as have France, Italy, Spain. Central Europe, on the other hand, performed better than much of the continent. Attacks on individual leaders are absurd. European center-left governments do not have strong leaders — Angela Merkel can be seen as that, but she is not portrayed as such. They are all defenders of orthodoxy, which transcends national existence, as well as multiculturalism and, for a long time, an open immigration policy.
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