The Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) were once fringe events. Since Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, they represent the mainstream of the right wing.
CPAC get-togethers started out as once-a-year events in Washington, D.C. In recent years, CPAC has become international, meeting in cities around the world. They unite far-right parties and groups to promote ethno-nationalism, patriarchy and anti-socialism. This coalition has been called “The Nationalist International.”
The 2024 meeting featured two flamboyant authoritarian leaders from Latin America, Presidents Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Javier Milei of Argentina. They both are proposing drastic solutions to real problems.
Bukele fought the horrendous violence of El Salvador’s gangs. He has detained more than 76,000 Salvadorans. Adrianna Gomez Licon of the Associated Press reports that Bukele has “broad support” and just won re-election. However, she notes that “Many of the arrests are conducted with little evidence or access to due process, and human rights groups have documented widespread abuses not experienced since the country’s 1980-92 civil war.”
She said Bukele received “a rock star welcome” at CPAC as he told them that the next U.S. president should do what he did and fight the “dark forces” which are “already taking over your country.”
Argentina’s self-described “anarcho-capitalist” president Milei promises an extreme “free market” makeover of his nation’s economy. He gave Trump a joyful hug at CPAC.
Another Latin American president, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, was also a big CPAC star. He faithfully modeled himself after Trump and received help from U.S. Trumpist advisers. When he failed to be re-elected, he refused to accept his defeat, and his followers attempted an insurrection eerily similar to the Jan. 6 riots.
In 2022, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, addressed CPAC in Dallas. “The globalists can all go to hell,” Orbán said to wild applause. “I have come to Texas.”
He denounced immigration and progressive views on the family and gender. He had been in the news for a speech he had recently made saying that Hungary should not become a “mixed-race” country, pointing to other European nations with big immigrant populations. A longtime aide, Zsuzsa Hegedus, resigned, saying the speech was “a pure Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels.”
The year before, Fox News’ most-watched host Tucker Carlson traveled to Budapest for a week-long broadcast promoting Hungary as a paradise that should be a model for the U.S.
Recently, Carlson had a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin on X (formerly Twitter). Masha Gessen had an analysis of it in The New Yorker. She is a Russian-American journalist who wrote a compelling biography of the Russian president, The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.
Gessen says “Putin used the interview to deliver a lengthy lecture on the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and its aftermath, meant to convince viewers that Ukraine never had a right to exist.” She stresses: “During the interview, Putin gave every indication that he thinks of former imperial possessions as still rightfully Russia’s. That would include not only former Soviet republics but also Finland and Poland.”
What Putin said about Poland in 1939 caught her attention. She quotes him (this is her translation): “Poland cooperated with Germany, but then it refused to comply with Hitler’s demands. … By not ceding the Danzig Corridor to Hitler, Poles forced him, they overplayed their hand and they forced Hitler to start the Second World War by attacking Poland.”
She notes, “The idea that the victim of the attack serves as its instigator by forcing the hand of the aggressor is central to all of Putin’s explanations for Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Gessen finds it significant that Putin is “positioning Poland as an heir to Nazism” (like he does to Ukraine). “He mentioned Poland more than thirty times in his conversation with Tucker. If I were Poland, I’d be scared.”
It seems Russia will once again be center stage in the presidential election.
This opinion does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.