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There’s no leader whose political shadow dwarfs his actual geopolitical form as much as that of Viktor Orban. The illiberal Hungarian prime minister is the bete noire of the European Union, a beloved hero to a major segment of the U.S. right and most vocal statesman among nationalists in the West. That he represents an economically insignificant country with a population smaller than that of New Jersey is inconsequential: To his American admirers, Orban offers a template for right-wing victory and the smashing of the despised liberal establishment.
This week, Orban took the unusual step of visiting the United States without an invitation from the White House, where he’s not particularly welcome. Instead, he called on the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in Washington, and was scheduled to meet former president Donald Trump in Florida on Friday.
Trump and Orban’s bromance is well-documented. But, argues Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest and author of a new book, “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators,” it’s only the tip of the iceberg in a long history of U.S. right-wing admiration for demagogues and despots elsewhere. Starting at the turn of the previous century, Heilbrunn showcases the myriad ways in which influential conservatives, including many prominent Republicans, fawned over strongmen like the German kaiser and various Cold War-era juntas.
Heilbrunn chatted with me about this history and its implications in an election year where many contend democracy itself is on the ballot. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity
Today’s WorldView: Trump and Orban are rather unique figures in the politics of their countries. What about their alliance speaks to the deeper tradition you delve into in your book?
Jacob Heilbrunn: Each reflects an older ethno-nationalist tradition that can be traced back to the 1920s in the American case, when fears of a “rising tide of color” were pervasive. Today it is the Great Replacement warned about by Trump’s followers. Orban himself has condemned the idea of a “mixed race” society in Hungary.
What’s the central thesis of the book?
Like the left, which saw a workers’ paradise in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Castro’s Cuba, the right has sought its own paradise abroad in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany or Pinochet’s Chile. It admired the return to hierarchy and family values in contrast to the flabby and decadent democracies of the West, which were run by liberal, often Jewish, subversives — at least in the eyes of the Right.
I was struck by the section on famed turn-of-the-century newspaperman H.L. Mencken’s devotion to the German kaiser. How widespread was such sentiment at the onset of World War I and what impact did it have on U.S. politics?
There were millions of recently emigrated German Americans who harbored warm feelings for their former fatherland and large demonstrations in St. Louis and elsewhere in 1914 upon the outbreak of the war. Mencken’s newspaper columns drew vociferous, often amusing, responses from readers, but it was the well-known publicist George Sylvester Viereck who engaged in outright espionage and who intrigued during the 1916 presidential election and claimed credit in the New York Times for helping elect Warren Harding in 1920.
Of course, the next global war saw a similar strain of sympathy for the ruling dispensation in Germany. How much should we understand the “isolationism” of a segment of U.S. society at the time as actually a kind of respect and yearning for dictatorial politics elsewhere?
Isolationism can often be a misnomer because the opponents of entry into World War II were not always neutral but often pro-Hitler, including the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and the popular anti-Semitic agitator Elizabeth Dilling, who was known as the Female Fuhrer in Germany. They saw the Soviet Union as the true enemy and believed that Nazism was a force for good. Roosevelt administration officials such as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and Attorney General Robert Jackson forthrightly called them out as dangerous fascists at the time and warned that America faced an internal threat to its democracy and rule of law.
And do you see some parallels now with GOP attitudes toward Ukraine?
There are a variety of parallels, ranging from complaints that British elites were conspiring with the American liberal establishment to drag Washington’s unnecessary war to claims that [British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill and co. were doomed to defeat against the Third Reich. Today we are told ad nauseam that Ukraine is a lost cause and should simply surrender and that globalist elites are miring us in a fresh, senseless conflict.
You mention leftist sympathy for Stalin, but that was arguably always a fringe position, and there’s very little that’s Marxist-Leninist about the current Democrats under President Biden. In the case of Trump and the broader U.S. right, we see the capture of almost an entire wing of the U.S. political system by the anti-democratic sentiments that you outline in the book.
The number of Democrats who worshiped at the Stalinist altar was never more than a sliver of the party. By contrast, the conversion of the GOP en masse into Putin fanboys is definitely an unprecedented development in American political history, and Trump deserves much but not all of the credit. The pro-authoritarian flame was kept flickering alive by figures such as Patrick J. Buchanan who hailed Putin early on as a kind of paleoconservative who knew how to crush the internal liberal enemy and stand up against LGBTQ rights.
How do you square the tradition we are discussing here with the neoconservative strain of right-wing politics in more recent decades that went from Cold War crusading to visions of spreading democracy in the Middle East. Is there a tension between the two?
The neocons and the MAGA faction are dire enemies, with each viewing the other as a traducer of noble Republican traditions. A number of neocons such as William Kristol or Liz Cheney have now become the most vigorous and effective opponents of Trump and his America First credo. It’s a case of trading places. MAGA is the new GOP establishment and the neocons represent a small but noisy insurgency.
You describe your book as a guide into America’s “illiberal imagination.” At a time of rising illiberalism, well, everywhere, how important is it for us to understand this history?
It’s imperative. At a moment when Trump is rebranding odious doctrines from the past as something new and shiny and attractive, I hope that my book makes it clear that we’ve been here before and successfully overcome the authoritarian temptation. Forewarned is forearmed.