Is Hungary a ‘Democratic Backslider?’ Shea Bradley-Farrell Explains

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Shea Bradley-Farrell is president of Counterpoint Institute and author of “Last Warning to the West.” In this episode, we dive into Hungary’s atypical policies when it comes to immigration, family, and social issues.

“I wanted to find out why Hungary had and how had it retained its unique identity and its love for its national sovereignty,” she says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell:
It’s an honor, Jan. Thank you so much for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Your book, “Last Warning to the West,” which looks at Hungary, has been out for a while now. You also made a recent trip to the southern border, and you’re creating border policy as part of your Vision 2025 at Counterpoint Institute. Why is the book titled, “Last Warning to the West?”

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Hopefully, it’s not the last warning. I think we’re very close to losing our freedom. Reagan, of course, said that we’re only a generation away from losing it. I didn’t understand that as acutely as I do now. The reason that I wrote the book for Americans and called it, “Last Warning to the West,” is because when I went to Hungary to do research for this book, I was not only just doing statistical data and historical data, I was also interviewing Hungarians. It was people in the government, but also just people out in the countryside, regular people like plumbers and painters.

Person after person said to me that the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminded them of their Soviet era. They were occupied by the Soviet Union for 46 years until 1991, so this is something very fresh in their memory—living under communism, living under Marxist oppression, and living without freedom. That is a gut punch for us. We are being told that our country, the land of the free, reminds them of their Soviet era.

Mr. Jekielek:
They were occupied by the Soviet Union, but these Soviet satellite countries participated in communism as well. Their emergence out of that was an interesting process for everybody. Why did Poland emerge the way it did? Why did other countries do it differently?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
The Soviets marched into Budapest in early 1945 and pushed the Nazis out, who had been occupying Hungary for a long time, and then the Soviets took over. There were Hungarian people who were sympathizers with the Soviets. But it was the Soviet Union that made the communists there stronger, because communism was actually once outlawed in Hungary. You were not allowed to be part of the communist party there.

But once the Soviets came in, all bets were off. They took over the previous Nazi headquarters called the House of Terror, where I have been many times. There was a dungeon underneath where political dissidents were tortured and killed by both the Nazis and the Soviets. Someone said to me, “The Nazis that were working in the House of Terror just changed their uniforms and went over to work for the Soviets.”

Mr. Jekielek:
The Poles always imagined themselves to be under Soviet occupation during that time. The Polish communists tried to be as opposed to the Nazis as they could under the circumstances. But they basically came to power as a result of the occupation by the Soviet Union.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
The Conference of Yalta happened in early 1945 with FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. At that time, Churchill and FDR basically handed over the European satellite countries to Stalin. The purpose of the conference was to make sure that these countries were nurtured in democracy. Stalin agreed to that, while not intending to do it. He also agreed to give fair elections in Hungary. He never meant to do it, and he didn’t do it.

But if you go back to the beginning of the war, Germany marches into Poland, and weeks later, Russia marches into Poland. But before that, there was an agreement between Hitler and Stalin. It was a secret pact that divided up this country between Hitler and Stalin. What happened at Yalta is that the United States and Britain essentially gave the Soviet Union exactly what they wanted, although they were aggressors in the war in the first place. This was very interesting and very ironic.

Mr. Jekielek:
The agreement between Hitler and Stalin was called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Yes, that’s just harder to say.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s come back to the topic at hand. What is the warning to the West?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
The warning is to recognize the Marxism that has crept into our Western civilization. You can look at the Bolshevik Revolution and the types of issues that were coming out of Marxism at that time. Abortion was being branded as health care. There was the purposeful diminishment of parental rights. We really have had to deal with that in our country lately, especially with the transgender activism. If you look at the things that were coming from Marxism back then, we are doing very similar things today.

I put the 11 points of communist, psychological warfare in the book. They were actually written by a national security expert and published by our Department of Defense. It was put forth as a lesson in 1959 to help people counteract communism and Marxism. But if you look at these points, every one of them applies to the United States and what we are doing today.

I will give you two examples. One is that the government will create a propaganda body that puts forth its message. If you look at the current legal case, Murthy v. Missouri, the Biden administration is being accused of doing that. They have been blamed for suppressing American citizens’ thoughts on social media. This correlates with this point of communist psychological warfare. Another example is using a crisis to gain control. We saw governments all over the world using Covid as an excuse to put people in camps in some countries, like in Australia, and to force vaccine mandates upon people.

My point in writing the book and giving the warning is to tell people to wake up. As the Hungarians said to me, Americans don’t remember what it’s like to not be free. The Hungarians do and they just regained their freedom in 1991. There are still many people living that remember what it was like to live under Soviet oppression. I actually interviewed some older gentlemen in their late 80s and 90s that really gave me the ins and outs of living a life in fear, and living without freedom.

Mr. Jekielek:
I didn’t know about this need to instill hatred until I read your book.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
That’s right. It’s a need to provoke people towards hatred and to divide them. The communists at that time were dividing people along class lines.
Today, we see more division of people along racial lines and gender lines. We are certainly dealing with the victim against the victimizer. A lot of this whole pro-Palestinian thing is about casting Israel as a victimizer and the Palestinians, even though Hamas is a terrorist organization, as the victim. That is a whole strategy.

Another strategy is to twist all the courage and strength and will to live out of your opponents, and to beat them down until they really can’t stand up and fight for themselves. Today, they are even scaring people by calling conservatives or people that voted for Trump, domestic terrorists. They are indicting people that do not deserve to be indicted. This is part of this lawfare, to really beat down people’s will to survive.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re the president of CounterPoint Institute, where you focus on foreign policy.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
At CounterPoint Institute, we focus on foreign policy and national security. What makes us unique is that we don’t just sit around writing great policy papers. We do that, but we also go to the place where the issues are happening. About a week ago, I just got back from the U.S. southern border, after talking to residents, local law enforcement, Border Patrol agents, and business owners to find out what’s really happening at the border. I have been writing op-eds and doing media about it.

But the public really doesn’t know what is happening down there and the border residents are disheartened by that. The politicians are coming down there and the residents tell them their stories over and over again. Then the politicians go back to D.C. and nothing ever changes.

I probably spent three or four months in Central Europe last year covering stories there. I went to the Ukrainian refugee center in Hungary to find out what was really going on. We try to go to where the issues are happening. Our first objective is to educate Americans about what is going on, like you and I are doing right now. Then we go to Capitol Hill and talk to legislators and the administration to shape policy and shape legislation.

Mr. Jekielek:
You partnered with an organization in Hungary as well.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Yes, it’s called the Center for Fundamental Rights, a conservative think tank in Budapest, Hungary. They invited me over and I was a senior fellow for them for about a year-and-a-half. They published my book. I was allowed to do interviews with senior government officials, students in Budapest, and some focus groups out in the country. It was a really great experience and I got to know Hungary very well. I’ve been to Hungary maybe five or six times at this point and it’s become somewhat of a second home.

Mr. Jekielek:
We are hearing about some very interesting family policies in Hungary.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Yes, they are promoting the family in society and promoting increased childbirth.

Mr. Jekielek:
We also heard that the opposition could be a bit heavy-handed.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Yes, the Leftist media overall is very antagonistic towards Hungary. Our own U.S. ambassador is very antagonistic towards Hungary. Hungary has dug their heels in against the woke agenda. They came through 46 years of communism, and are still a Christian nation and a freedom-loving nation. They spent a thousand years occupied by the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, the Habsburg empire, the Nazis, and then the Soviets, all the while maintaining their Christianity, their love for family, and their love for their country.

Then the European Union raises its head, and they will not tolerate the top-down decision-making going on at the European Union right now. Do you know the great conservative writer, Sir Roger Scruton? He is well-loved in Hungary. He actually was part of the underground during the Soviet time, bringing books and knowledge and networking to people during the Soviet occupation.

He made a statement that I put in the book that basically said that even though the wall has come down, even though the Soviets have retreated, in its place has come this top-down decision-making body, the European Union, that is still trying to tell people’ how to think and take away their sovereignty. Hungary is determined not to lose their sovereignty again, even if it’s to a body that seems more civilized, like the European Union or the Biden administration.

There are three main issues that the Biden administration and the EU are angry with Hungary about. It has to do with the radical gender theory.
The EU has tried to push transgender ideology into classrooms and curriculum there. A referendum done with the citizens overwhelmingly said, “No.”

The Biden administration is also very angry about that and has tried to push back. Our ambassador goes on social media quite regularly calling Hungary a LGBT-hater because of this. But the Hungarian position is that it’s up to the parents to teach their children. It’s up to the parents to deal with the idea of transitioning.

The second issue is that they are maligned for not going along with the massive illegal immigration in their country in 2015 during the Arab uprising when the EU wanted them to do it. They had to declare a national emergency because of all the people going through this small landlocked country of 10 million people.

The third issue is that since the beginning they have been calling for peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. They could not handle the sanctions against Russia because the vast majority of their energy was coming from Russia. Even their infrastructure is Soviet-era. Those are the three reasons why you hear that Hungary is a democratic backslider aligned with Russia. There is lots of bad stuff in the press, but it all boils down to these three points.

Mr. Jekielek:
A month ago, they established an “All-Weather Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for the New Era,” with China. This is surprising to people. Any quick thoughts on this?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
I have a lot of thoughts on that. In fact, I have a whole chapter in the book on this. I’ve been very open and honest with the government officials and the friends that I’ve talked to in Hungary. They know how I feel about this and they disagree with me. But let me go back and try to explain what their mindset is, whether I agree with it or not.

For a thousand years, they have been in this landlocked area with all kinds of different peoples coming in and conquering them. If you talk with them, you understand that paramount in their policy and way of thinking is survival. The chapter in my book is called, Balancing Between the East and West. That’s what they’ve been doing for a very long time.

They became a Christian Western kingdom over a thousand years ago. But they are people that came from the East somewhere in the Ural Mountains. The actual origin of the Hungarians is very murky. But they came from that area and moved west until eventually they became a kingdom. Survival is paramount in their mind. They have been getting economic investment from the Chinese and it’s helping their economy. I’m sharing what was told to me by some of the government officials there.

Mr. Jekielek:
They are a significant part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
That’s exactly right. As this money is coming in, you have to understand that the European Union has sanctioned them millions, perhaps actually billions of dollars because of the three issues that I just mentioned. The administration here in the U.S. is actually supportive of that. I’m not saying we’re sanctioning this, but we’re antagonizing them. They’re our allies. Both we and the E.U. and are making it harder for them to work with us.

At the same time, they’re getting economic investment from the Chinese. Judith Varga was the Minister of Justice at the time, and I interviewed her for the book. She said to me, “This is very hypocritical. When the Germans get investment from the Chinese, you don’t hear about it. When the Chinese hold the second-largest foreign debt for the United States, you don’t hear about that.” They look at this as very hypocritical.

My stance is that both countries are both playing with fire. It was said to me by many different Hungarians, “It is in the interest of the Chinese to infiltrate the United States, spy on you, and try to take over your institutions. But they’re not interested in doing that with us. They don’t try to change our morals.” I did say to them, “That’s a bit naive. Perhaps they’re not doing it now, but I believe they will in the future.” The Chinese took a long-term. For us, 50 years is long-term. With the Chinese, it’s 100 or more years.

Mr. Jekielek:
That all makes sense to me. My concern is for the Hungarians.
This isn’t an ideological position. There’s a lot of historical precedent of what happens when you allow the Chinese to do too much investment in your country. That’s not hard to figure out. It’s problematic.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
I agree. The other thing that’s concerning to me is they are strengthening cultural ties with China. There is now a one-way flight from Budapest to Beijing. They have a magazine that promotes cultural ties. They’re being naive about it, but the United States is also being naive about the way we handle China in general.

One thing I do know is that Orban has been open about this. He believes that the United States is not going to be the great power that it has been, and we’re going to be in more of a multipolar world. They see this as hedging their bets. I also had a defense official say that the greater threat to Hungary was the jihadist Islam that has infiltrated Europe.

If you look at it, Poland and Hungary have not had a terrorist attack, and they are the countries that have stood up against this mass influx of people from all over the world that are not vetted. But we’ve seen terrorism in England and France and Germany, along with other issues.

Mr. Jekielek:
We’re seeing countries go back on their immigration policies and head in the direction of Hungary and Poland. That is something we couldn’t have said even a year ago.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
It is too little, too late, quite honestly. I always believe we can change things for the better, but they’ve got some serious problems.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about family policy, because this has been successful in Hungary. This is interesting, because this hasn’t really been done elsewhere. What are they doing, actually?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
In a nutshell, the more children you have, the more tax cuts you get. They also have subsidies and loans for housing or bigger cars, the more children that you have. This has been very supportive of the Hungarian people and they have reversed the population decline. The fertility rate was like 1.2 when they started 10 years ago, and now it’s like 1.6. It’s not at the point of replacement yet, but it is headed in a good direction. A year ago, they had the highest marriage rate in the European Union. They’ve cut abortion in half. As time goes on, you will see more and more benefits from these policies.

Mr. Jekielek:
That policy alone is responsible for cutting abortion in half. That’s obviously very significant.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
There are other benefits from the family policy. People can get subsidies, loans for a bigger home, and loans for a bigger car at good interest rates. It’s a mixture, really. It has supported people so they feel like they can get married and have children. What I found interesting is that there are more working mothers now. Women that have children are also working, whereas before they didn’t have the support to have the children that they wanted to have.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us a bit about Hungary. You said that it has a thousand years of being a Christian nation.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
In 1920, after the Treaty of Versailles, came the Treaty of Trianon. Hungary actually lost two-thirds of its territory and lost about three million of its people. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time and technically aligned with Germany, so it was penalized under the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson’s right to self-determination did not extend to Hungary.

He said that they were going to redraw lines in favor of the population, but that didn’t happen with Hungary. They lost two-thirds of their territory and three million people which really weakened Hungary and led to the Nazis being able to occupy Hungary. Then they were in that vice grip between Germany and between the Soviet Union.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is the population of Hungary?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
The population is now ten million. But Orban has extended citizenship to the people that were lost during that territory reduction. I don’t know the ins and outs of how they get it. They may have to prove that they’re part of that line. The citizenship is actually greater now, but that’s been a source of contention.

People have said that Orban did that in order to bolster his election polls. Obviously, the Treaty of Trianon is a huge sore spot, even today. It’s a big deal. It’s a huge loss of territory and of people. To them, Hungary is not just inside the current border. It is those Hungarians that they lost in 1920, and that is about a hundred years ago now.

Mr. Jekielek:
Ten million people is not a huge population for a distinctive group trying to keep its identity.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
I can tell you something very interesting about that. Throughout all this time when they were moving from the east to the west, and throughout all this occupation, they kept their unique Hungarian identity and their language. Who else in the world speaks Hungarian? Nobody.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s probably the only language in the world that’s more difficult than Polish. There’s a debate going on about that. Is that right?

Mr. Jekielek:
About a year-and-a-half ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Siarto, the foreign minister for Hungary. He said that they considered the Hungarian language to be a code, because whenever they were speaking it, nobody else could understand it. That’s an advantage for them. When I went to do research for the book, I didn’t have a goal in mind. That’s the kind of research I do.

I wanted to find out why Hungary had retained its unique identity and its love for its national sovereignty. Prime Minister Orban was one of the fighters that helped push the Soviet Union out of Hungary. The Hungarians have really maintained that love of family and freedom, even during the occupation when they had to take the Christian symbols off their walls and put the pictures of the communists up there.

I was told by these older gentlemen that their families would go home and still practice their religion. The family would be taught love of country and the Hungarian ways. When they went to school they would pretend to go along with the Soviet ideal. But it was curious to me how this country managed to retain all of this.

Now, it’s this little country that’s been catapulted to the world stage because it’s pushing back against the European Union. It is sanctioned by the European Union, maligned in the press, and hated by the Biden administration. I just thought that was fascinating. Like you said, it’s only 10 million people, but a lot of people know about Hungary today.

Mr. Jekielek:
You made a recent trip to our southern border to look at the immigration issue. Hungary put up a fence that effectively stops people moving across their border. They have been very serious about that and unequivocal in their approach. Presumably, you think there’s some lessons to be learned from Hungary here. But ours is a completely different border situation.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
They have a fence and we need a wall, but I think the fundamental lessons are the same. They use physical barriers and they use policy to keep people out until they are vetted to see if they are able to claim asylum. That’s what a sovereign nation does. It’s so simple.

You go home at night and lock your doors because you don’t want unknown people to come in. Now, if you get to know somebody and become friends with them, you might invite them into your home. Right now, if the Texas DPS [Dept.of Public Safety] catches someone, they are eventually released into the interior.

Rodney Scott, the former chief of border patrol, was on a panel that I held recently. He said that the hour-and-a-half that the border patrol usually had to interview someone coming in for asylum has gone down to under five minutes. The county attorney in Kinney County, Texas, that I talked to said that most people had dropped their IDs before they got here. We don’t know who these people are that are coming in. It took just 19 people to kill thousands of Americans during 9/11.

We are so naive right now. We need to close our borders and we need to build the wall. We need policy. I believe in immigration, but it should be done legally. Biden has said that his immigration is humane, orderly, and safe. It is not. Illegal immigration is very detrimental to the immigrants coming across.

The last time that I was there, I talked to emergency medical professionals who were telling me about the teenage women that have been raped and beaten by the cartels. Because in order to get across illegally, you have to collaborate with the cartels and you will be killed if you don’t.

These women come across with ID bands on their wrists that have barcodes on them so the cartel can monitor their location and how much money they owe. If they can’t pay financially, they pay with sex or indentured servitude. These medical professionals working in the border patrol processing centers told me horrific stories.

If the Biden administration and the Democrats want more people in this country, they should find a way to do it legally. Because not only is it desperately hurting our communities along the border, it is totally detrimental to the immigrants coming across.

Mr. Jekielek:
People who are generally positive towards humanitarian needs would say. “If these people are ready to brave the cartels with the knowledge that they might be hurt along the way, doesn’t that signal that they really are in need and deserve asylum?” Have you heard this argument before?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Yes. But according to the people that I talk to, many times these people don’t know what they are going to have to go through. They don’t know the physical endurance that they are going to have to go through to get here. The majority of the people coming over are men, but there are a few women in different groups, as I’ve seen and I’ve heard.

I talked to a border patrol wife who has seen horrific things and has had to protect her own children against illegal aliens trying to break into her house. She didn’t think a lot of these women coming across know what they are going to have to endure. They are probably sold a bill of goods and would do anything to come.

If you broadcast to the world that there are risks and consequences for coming, then less people will come. If you broadcast that the borders are open and everything is wonderful and you are going to be given a debit card and a place to stay, people are going to come. But I don’t think a lot of these young women know what they are going to go through.

Allison Anderson is the wife of a border patrol agent. She is the one that was chased by an illegal alien on her property that was trying to rape her. On multiple occasions, she has had to defend her young girls from the illegal aliens that were coming in. I am not saying everybody is bad, but there are criminals coming in as well. We have forgotten the fact that there is legal immigration.

Mr. Jekielek:
In the documentary we recently released, “Weapons of Mass Migration,” Joshua Phillip went down to the border a few times. There are organizations funded by UN agencies that are actually facilitating this. Are these your findings as well?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Absolutely. There are organizations that the UN is funding. If you walk that back, that means you and I are funding it. They give instructions to people on how to come over, and then give them help once they are here. They facilitate the whole thing. Yes, we are paying for that. There are charity groups that are doing that on their own as well.

Again, I don’t understand the sense of it, because there are really bad things happening. Another border patrol agent told me about these drop houses where people are trafficked and bad things happen. Our border patrol agents have come to the end of their rope. Domestic violence, alcoholism, and suicide rates are up because of the things that they are seeing.

If these organizations believe that facilitating more immigration is the right thing to do, then they should find a legal way to do it. Because they cannot care about the people coming across and then facilitate illegal immigration at the same time. That was my point.

Mr. Jekielek:
You believe that Hungary has something to teach, and you talk about that very deliberately in your book. What can we learn here?

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
The overall lesson from Hungary is really ideological, in that freedom is not free and we are only a generation away from losing our freedom. We can learn to have an awareness of the Marxism that is creeping into our country and to stand against it. Hungary’s family policy, where it borders on social welfare, is for America.

But I do think income tax cuts for bigger families is a really good thing. The social ideology of America is being held hostage by mainstream media. I don’t believe that the majority of Americans think that pushing radical gender theory on children is a good thing. In terms of policy toward that, maybe we can learn something from them.

I have spent several years working in Congress trying to explain the dangers of the equality act and current legislation, because what it essentially erases the lines between men and women. The Biden administration has added that gender identity part to Title IX, which means that biological men can use the same entitlements that women have had in scholarships or on sports teams. You can take that wider. During the Obama administration, biological men were using domestic violence shelters that were publicly funded by the government.

The other thing is there needs to be a pushback against the international organizations. Trump did this. Trump defunded the UN agency that Biden then refunded. Trump had already defunded it because we already knew that it was connected to Hamas and was anti-Semitic.

Trump did a lot of things like that, like pulling us off the UN human rights council that allows China to sit on the council. Secretary Pompeo described China as the greatest human rights abuser of our time. There are currently over a million Uyghurs in these re-education camps in China. Hungary has also taken a stance against the European Union and other international organizations, and we can take a lesson from that.

Mr. Jekielek:
They have an emphasis on civics and national identity, because they have a thousand year history. America doesn’t have a thousand year history, but it has a very powerful unifying vision that is realized in the Constitution.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Here’s what is very interesting. One of the five steps of Sovietization is to kill all the civic associations, which they did in Hungary. They closed down 5,000 civic associations in order to break the unity between people and to control them. They have pride in their country and their national identity. To Hungarians, nationalism is not a dirty word. The word nationalism has been perverted, especially by the Nazis. But if you just take it for its meaning, it means pride in your country.

Going back to Roger Scruton, he explained that nationalism was really what made democracy work, because you come together and you agree on how the economy is going to work. You agree on how the law is going to work. You agree on how society is going to work. That’s the sense of collaboration within a nation that is called nationalism.

We can learn from Hungary on that. That’s a lot of where their power comes from. We need to remember that America was built on principles that have worked for us for a long time now. Have we had problems? Yes, we’ve had problems. Certainly slavery was a huge problem. I believe that we were given the founding documents and these principles to work through these problems. That’s what we must continue to do as new challenges come up.

Mr. Jekielek:
Shea Bradley-Farrell, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr. Bradley-Farrell:
Thank you, Jan. It was an honor to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.