Italian Conservativism Conference Keynote Speech – 2023
Buon giorno, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome!
I just arrived from Athens, where I participated at the New York Times’ Democracy Forum.
Imagine a discussion between a radical left movie director, a women’s rights activist, and a Hungarian politician, moderated by a liberal journalist.
Sounds like the opening line of a bad joke.
As you can image I was attacked by both the moderator and one of the panelists in the first 3 seconds of the conversation.
Looking at the lineup of this conference as well as the faces in the audience, I’m a little bit more optimistic for today.
It’s great to be back in Rome after last year’s event.
In 2022 the conference was a special highlight as it was right after the historic win of the Italian conservative alliance.
With the frequent mentions of Hungary during the political campaign, it definitely felt like a win for Hungary too.
A large part of this success can be attributed to the exceptional think tank community in Italy.
Speaking of which, we have two remarkable people here with us today: my friends Francesco Giubilei and Mario Fantini, whom I’d like to thank once again for organizing this event.
Gramsci
During the summer, two Italians made headlines in Hungary.
One was Marco Rossi, the captain of the Hungarian football team.
But that’s a different story.
The other Italian was surprisingly Antonio Gramsci.
Even more surprising was the person who mentioned Gramsci: Prime Minister Orban.
This August, at one of our conservatives conferences – also known as a far-right gathering – the Prime Minister mentioned that he wrote his dissertation about the Polish solidarity movement and applied Gramsci’s ideas about civil society to Solidarnosc.
He explained how it led him to understand the left’s so-called “battle for intellectual and moral leadership”.
We are all familiar with what this means: we’ve witnessed it many times from today’s progressives and liberals.
They dictate what’s good or bad, ugly or beautiful through their influence on institutions and the media. They reshape the political culture and language, in the end affecting politics itself.
Externally what they stand for are noble principles like tolerance and pluralism.
But what they actually want and do is cultural hegemony and oppression.
This is what we, on the right should realize: having to support of the people is not enough. We also create a more equal cultural environment so we can compete fairly.
Seeing successful initiatives such as Nazione Futura here in Rome or the recent establishment of the new Brussels center of The European Conservative, right in the lion’s den, is very encouraging.
We need more and more cities emerging as a capital and safe haven for the European right, alongside Budapest.
The Hungarian Way of Strategy
I’ve been invited to speak about my book.
Let me start by saying that I’m really honored that Francesco and his colleagues felt that it might be interesting to an Italian audience.
I particularly liked that they slightly changed the title of the book.
While the original was “The Hungarian Way of Strategy,” the Italian version has a bit different connotation.
“LA SFIDA UNGHERESE: UNA STRATEGIA VINCENTE PER L’EUROPA”: The Hungarian Challenge: A Winning Strategy for Europe.
My book discussed many different aspects: history, geography, culture, national identity and so on.
But my point with this was not to share them self-servingly. The point was to draw conclusions from these so that we can outline a uniquely Hungarian strategy.
This strategy is of course not a one-size-fits-all.
It is not universal, does not apply equally to all countries.
There are of course some tips that can hopefully be a useful toolkit for other nations. But my argument is that you in Italy need a strategy tailored to the Italian national character.
For it to be successful, it should be based on your own way of thinking, your own view of the world, and your own story.
Each nation is characterized by a unique worldview.
A narrative shaped by its geography, history, and culture.
If you aim to succeed, you must examine this and draw conclusions for your own nation.
This, essentially, is what national conservatism means.
Instead of embracing a single, universal, globalist ideology, every nation should choose its own path and adapt to changing environment accordingly.
I believe this is what the success of the European Union also depends on: the strength of its Member States.
It’s these nations, with their distinctive perspectives, that can the Union.
And we have to admit: Europe probably needs a winning strategy now more than ever.
And once the strategy’s made and applied, we can’t forget an important step: to assess how good of a strategy we came up with.
Which is not an easy task, because we need to define success.
Lorenzetti
This leads to a section in my book that I particularly like and is also relevant here in Italy.
The part dedicated to a wonderful fresco from Sienna.
While I’m sure it’s common knowledge among our Italian friends, let me provide some details to our international audience.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the talented 13th-century painter created a remarkable fresco on the walls of Siena’s town hall on the allegory of good and bad governance.
Essentially, it served as a reality check for politicians, urging them to reflect on the consequences of their actions.
This approach was pretty straightforward: good OR bad.
It was way before the era of moral subjectivity.
Lorenzetti’s fresco portrayed two scenarios: the effects of good governance and the impact of bad governance.
Under good governance, the streets were characterized by safety, prosperity, happiness, and joy.
In contrast, bad governance led to an increase in criminality, widespread poverty, and human suffering.
Imagine a politician gazing out of their window.
If they witnessed the scenes depicted on the side of good governance, they could be sure that they were on the right track.
If the streets they saw were more similar to the other part of the painting, it was an obvious sign that they had to change their approach.
Taking today’s Europe, I think European leaders see the second option.
They just don’t want to look out from their windows.
How is Europe doing now?
The outlook is not bright, and ordinary citizens know this.
Which is why questions like how often do you think of the Roman Empire went viral.
People think so often about it because it’s hard not to see some similarities between the civilizational challenges now and back then.
In Europe, we are losing both our economic and geopolitical importance. There is a huge influx of illegal migrants. Growing poverty and unemployment.
Less and less babies are born. We lack strategic sovereignty, rely heavily on others to protect us.
There are internal conflicts, EU corruption scandals, institutional competence creep, and a strong ideological division.
Over the past few decades, Europe has become less and less competitive. In 1990, the EU accounted for the 23% of the world’s economic output. Fast forward to 2022, this figure has dropped to 15%.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Europe had 41 of the world’s 100 most valuable companies. Today? Only 15 remain.
We witness a shocking lack of leadership too.
As one of the founding fathers, DeGasperi said, if we dismiss the importance of what he called “the higher political will” and focus on creating shared institutions only, we risk the possibility of creating a European project that is cold, lifeless, and oppressive.
Which is exactly the direction we are heading to.
The obvious questions that everybody wants an answer for: what can we do about it?
What Should We Do?
Before we go into that, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the European left and right seem to differ on how seriously they take these issues.
The left thinks that we’re living through a transition period, which has to pass before we transition to a new, neo-Marxist society – no families, no national identities, no religions.
According to their understanding, it is inevitable. Something we need to endure.
And while we’re enduring this chaos, we should distract ourselves with less crucial topics like gender and so on.
We strongly disagree.
We think that issues like competitiveness, sovereignty, migration, demography and so on are life-or-death questions.
Solving these should be our number one priority.
First, migration
For some time now, Europe has been dealing with an enormous migration pressure.
Every month, thousands cross our borders, leading to millions yearly and tens of millions over a decade.
And despite this, for Hungarians it is quite a déjà vu, since 2015 we have no solution at all.
Brussels tries to find a middle ground for an issue that is a yes-or-no questions: either you let illegal migrants in or you don’t.
Our stance is clear: we do not and will not.
This is why we didn’t endorse the recent Migration Pact.
And let’s be frank here: Brussels’ Migration Pact, adopted in the summer, by the end of September utterly collapsed, leaving Italy in a very difficult situation.
Prime Minister Meloni’s government was left alone and have to handle the situation on their own. We express our solidarity to Italy and its government.
Arrivals through sea routes are overwhelming Lampedusa, and illegal immigrants are not stopped outside Schengen-zone as it was promised.
What’s even worse, European governments and EU authorities fund NGOs that transport illegal immigrants to Italian shores.
If you watch the videos taken at Lampedusa, it’s rather difficult to find women and children – what you often see is strong adult men behaving erratically.
Our fundamental experience is that once illegal immigrants are within the gates, finding a solution becomes incredibly difficult.
The three pillars of the Hungarian strategy since 2015 has been
- first, zero tolerance on illegal migration;
- second, increased support for transit countries
- and third, asylum procedure outside of Europe.
Second, the Family
We also witness a worrying demographic decline.
This is a very simple issue in my view: if we want to survive, we need to have as many European babies as possible.
We should encourage European citizens to have more kids and we should provide help so that they can have as many children as they want.
It is totally absurd that we’ve reached a point where this simple, logical claim sounds like a radical, far-right idea.
Supporting families should be a non-partisan or rather bipartisan issue.
The cover of papers like La Stampa and La Repubblica should be all over it.
Even yesterday, at the Democracy Forum, I was asked by the moderator if I agree with President Putin’s claim that families are important.
Why would somebody be called Putin’s puppet for stating the obvious: that families matter.
It is common sense and has been proven through centuries that traditional families are the fundamental building blocks of a well-functioning society.
This is why we in Hungary invest heavily in our family policy.
Since 2010, we’ve tripled our family policy expenditure, making Hungary the top spender on family policy in the EU per capita.
And the results speak for themselves. In just a decade, we’ve increased the number of marriages, reduced divorces, and seen a 50% drop in abortions without changing any regulations.
To be honest with you, I wish there were more policy areas where results come in such obvious metrics.
In the face of current economic challenges, we have also chosen to stand with our families.
We’ve kept price control on energy and essential goods, making sure that Hungarians have the lowest fuel, natural gas, and electricity prices in the European Union.
Which leads to my final point: the economy.
Economy
When the Meloni government came to power, we were happy to see the establishment of a Ministry dedicated to promoting “Made in Italy.”
But the question we must ask ourselves now is whether there’ll be “Made in Italy,” “Made in Germany,” or “Made in Hungary” in the future at all.
Deindustrialization had a horrible impact, eroding our manufacturing capabilities and reducing our export markets.
In the midst of the challenges of the war in Ukraine, instead of utilizing European financial resources to enhance competitiveness or aid companies grappling with rising energy prices, resources have been directed toward non-EU countries, supporting migration, or exerting political pressure on Member States.
I really wonder if this was the best use of our taxpayer’s money.
The sanctions against Russia worsened our economic situation.
Recent polls show that European citizens are very skeptical of Brussels’ approach. Despite the results, Brussels persists, further fueling the conflict.
It is absolutely undeniable that Russia is the aggressor in this conflict and Ukraine is the victim.
For months, thousands of people have been dying on a daily basis, while the fronts are not substantially moving anywhere.
Our strategy should be based on our own, European interest.
Is it in Europe’s interest to have another iron curtain from dividing our continent?
Are we sure that supporting Ukraine will lead to victory when Russia has gained control over more territories than a year and a half ago?
These are the questions we should ask ourselves and what is driving Hungary’s position in this conflict.
In our view, we must call for an immediate ceasefire and prompt peace talks with the involvement of not only Russia and Ukraine, but the United States too. Because peace in this conflict can only be imagined with the participation of the United Sates.
As of now, almost everyone, including the United States, Russia, Ukraine and China, can still gain from the war, except for Europe.
We can only lose. And the longer the war lasts, the more we lose.
Conclusion
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, the last point that I would like to conclude with is to mention an important event coming up: the European elections.
The situation is difficult, and the stakes are high.
For the sake of our continent, our interest is to have strong political forces claiming that a successful European Union
relies on the cooperation of independent and sovereign Member States.
We can only strengthen Europe by having a better balance between federalist and sovereigntist voices.
The upcoming European elections offers a great opportunity for this. Paradoxically, even those who don’t typically support sovereigntists would benefit from voting for them, while even those leaning towards federalists would be worse off if they voted for them.
Currently, the European right is fragmented, while progressive and liberal forces stand united.
Despite a large number of voters leaning towards the right, the progressive left continues to hold power.
It’s time to change this. My proposal is to follow the Italian model. Something Prime Minister Meloni showed that can be done.
We need an alliance on the right. We need to unite conservative, center right and identity-based voices to create a strong front.
Only through this we can have a chance against the left and work towards a stronger, more prosperous Europe.
A Europe which streets resemble the Good Governance part of the fresco. A Europe we would proudly pass on to our children and grandchildren.
Conferences like the one today offer a great way to learn about each other and join forces for this fight.
Which is why I’m really glad to be here today.
Thank you for the invitation, I thank Francesco once again for the Italian translation of my book.
And I thank the audience for, despite popular belief, being way more tolerant than the one yesterday.
I wish you interesting and fruitful exchanges for the rest of the conference.
Thank you very much.
