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As the Director of the think-tank MCC Brussels, one of my responsibilities has been to oversee our research project investigating the role of the use of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) by the European Union. After painstaking investigations, we have published reports outlining the laundering of billions of euros to institutions charged with promoting the Commission’s propaganda throughout Europe. Though this misuse of taxpayer’s money is an outrage what is of greater concern is how this corruption of civil society undermines democratic decision making in the EU’s members state. In particular, the EU-NGO propaganda complex has sought to use pliant NGOs to promote regime change in Hungary and Poland

The EU has channelled significant funds to NGOs in countries like Poland (€38 million) and Hungary (€41 million) through the CERV program, aimed at promoting EU values and, in some cases, undermining the government.

The Ökotárs Foundation in Hungary, which received a €3.3 million grant from the EU, has been involved in disputes with the Orbán government, accused of being a “local distribution centre” of foreign influence.

To provide context for the evolution of the EU-NGO propaganda complex it is important to understand its historical roots. This propaganda network came into being in the 1980s during the years leading up to the liberation of the nations of the Soviet Bloc from the domination of their masters in Moscow. The initial goal of this network was to insert supposedly neutral, politically non-aligned NGOs into the sphere of East European politics. Their objective was to ensure that the new post-communist regimes would fall under the spell of the globalist post-liberal values favoured by the Western political elites.

In the1980s and 1990s, Western NGOs and international institutions collaborated with East European liberal intellectuals and politicians to educate post-communist societies about the pitfalls of nationalism and the virtues of an anti-sovereigntist, civic values-based society. These initiatives were inspired by the concern that former members of the Warsaw Pact were historically disposed towards the embrace of patriotism and national identity. Curing East Europe from its proclivity to adopt strongly-held national sentiments was one of the main themes at a three-day conference of the Soros-MTA Foundation in Krakow in September 1991. This subject was the focus of Hungarian émigré Péter Kende’s keynote speech, ‘Return to Tradition . . . What Tradition?’. He stated;

‘One has to relativize the so-called national traditions which originate more in rhetoric and pious wishes than the real state of collective conscience. Nothing is more uncertain, fleeting and ill than this conscience. One has to invest, now that the moment of healing has come, not in the exploration of the past, . . .but in the reconstitution of the national collective on the basis of civic virtues

inherent to a democracy: the defense of rights, the toleration of difference and active solidarity (liberté – égalité – fraternité).

For Kende, the ‘moment of healing’ required a determination to avoid an exploration of the past. His speech articulated a lack of empathy and sensitivity towards the meaning that national tradition and sentiment could have for large sections of society. That is why national traditions were prefaced by the de-legitimizing term ‘so-called’. His call to ‘relativize’ national tradition in effect represented the aspiration to deprive it of meaning. Breaking the nations of East Europe from the traditions of the past was his goal.

Kende intuitively feared the durability and power of ‘resurgent nationalism’. Yet he could not face up to this challenge, which is why he unwittingly contradicted himself by claiming that this national conscience was ‘uncertain’ and ‘fleeting’. For Kende and his colleagues in Kracow, national sentiment was a disease that required a political cure. Since that point in time imposing a cordon sanitaire around sovereigntist ideals and politics has been one of the main goals of the kind of people in attendance at the Krakow Conference

At least one person who attended the conference in Kracow understood that in East Europe, national conscience was far from fleeting. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, editor of Die Zeit, wrote after the conference:

‘There in Cracow, I realized that nationalism, which we Westerners regard with a lot of skepticism, had been indispensable for the survival of the East Europeans. That was the only way they had been able to fight for their identity and finally achieve freedom’.

Dönhoff recognized that the possession of a robust national identity was essential for the achievement of freedom in East Europe. Nevertheless, in line with the mainstream ethos of West European political culture, she concluded that now, ‘everything depends on them . . . [East Europeans] . . . returning to a form of normal liberalism’.

To ensure that the former members of the Soviet bloc returned to a form of ‘normal liberalism’ the EU and a global network NGOs mobilized their resources to re-educate sovereigntist inclined East Europeans. Since the early 1990s this network has played a central role in promoting American woke values in Central Europe. This network’s main target was the national sensibility that possessed deep roots with societies that had recently gained freedom from Soviet domination. From the standpoint of the EU oligarchy and their cosmopolitan collaborators in America, people’s aspiration to secure national independence needed to be challenged and the value of sovereignty discredited.

In the decades to follow, a silent war against the national traditions of Central European societies was promoted by NGO activists through influencing educational and cultural institutions to embrace the values of American identity politics. The EU took a lead in organizing what was in effect a culture war against sovereigntist values. The EU took it upon itself to promote diversity and minority rights as a counterpoint to the authority of the nation. In effect it claimed that minority rights were de facto logically prior and morally superior to the principle of sovereignty.

The affirmation of identity politics, paralleled by their devaluation of national sentiment, constituted the pivotal point in an undeclared Culture War. In effect minority rights served as a medium through which nationalist claims could be restrained and put in its place. As the leftist Hungarian social commentator Agnes Gagyi argued, as against the upholding of ‘the symbolic value of the nation’ by conservatives, their opponents offered a version of solidarity that was directed at the defense of groups ‘typically referred to as minorities (Roma, Jews, Women, LGBTQ)’. Although Gagy was not a friend of the conservative bloc, she recognized that the purpose of the importation of EU style identity politics into Hungary was to de-legitimate the appeal of sovereignty.

During the past 15 years Hungary has become the principal target of the EU bureaucracy and the anti-sovereigntist network of globalist NGOs. One of the objectives of this network was to cultivate the emergence of local partners who could articulate their politics through the medium of a local dialect. In this way the hostility towards the sense of nationhood that characterized the outlook of the EU oligarchy came to be refracted through Hungarian domestic politics. In the aftermath of the overthrow of the Communist regime, those in leftist and liberal political circles sought to consolidate their authority by developing a close special relationship with the West. They used their informal alliance with Western institutions and their representatives to promote the claim that they were best placed to promote the interest of Hungary in a globalized world.

Paradoxically this orientation towards external political actors further distanced this layer of Hungarian society from national realities. The reliance of the Hungarian liberal left on its connections with Western transnational institutions, NGOs, and the EU oligarchy had the cumulative effect of weakening its capacity to engage with the problems facing the people of Hungary.

The lack of success of the Hungarian liberal left and their NGO allies became all to evident in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States in 2016. Writing in The Washington Post, Miklos Haraszti, the former Hungarian dissident and opponent of the Fidesz government, warned his American readers, ‘I watched a populist leader rise in my country’ and added that, ‘that’s why I’m genuinely worried about America’. Describing Hungary as a ‘populist autocracy’, Haraszti warned that the election of Donald Trump threatened to drag America down the same illiberal democratic path.

Typically, populism is portrayed as authoritarian, anti-democratic, and even racist. ‘How can we resist illiberal democracy and populism?’ was the title at a conference for NGO activists devoted to discussing ‘the growing trend toward illiberal democracy, autocracy, and populism’ held in November 2016 at the Human Rights House in Belgrade. What they really meant was how can we discredit the spirit of patriotism sweeping Europe.

Since 2016 the patriotic movement has gone from strength to strength. Which is why they are coming for Hungary. This week, a commentary in Politico titled ‘How to confront Orbán and save the EU’ comes across as a call for a declaration of war. The authors of this article go to great lengths to explain how Hungary can be sanctioned and deprived of its right to vote in the European Council. Sanctioning Hungary and depriving it of its vote is of course a first step to forcing this nation to change its government. If that does not work, they will conspire to get rid of Hungary through manipulating the rule book.

No doubt the patriotic forces in Europe possess sufficient strength to thwart the designs of the EU-NGO complex and prevent the plot against Hungary coming to a successful conclusion. But this will not be an easy task. Which is why my team at MCC- Brussels is thoroughly committed to this fight.

Original article: frankfuredi