The fascists are coming to Dallas

Matt Schlapp was lost, but he was not alone. He was in Budapest – in a back alley – but it was a paradise. “It’s orderly, it works, it’s practical, it’s clean. If I was in Chicago or Los Angeles, I would have been scared to death.” Fear is ever-present in the fascist cause. Everything is fear-based.

A few years back, Matt Schlapp was unafraid. He was outraged by a great indignity that had befallen Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the prolific liar and nascent Arkansas Governor. She had been made fun of as a liar at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Schlapp, cocooned in the back seat of a stretch limousine headed to the MSNBC afterparty, was on the phone with a New York Times reporter lamenting the oppression of conservatives, presumably those who didn’t make the invite list.

During the chaotic final days of the Trump administration, Schlapp fought for freedom by pocketing $750,000 in cash from Parker Petit, a pardon supplicant beseeching Trump for favor. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you in that line of work. Sadly, Schlapp fell short. No pardon was granted.

Schlapp found his way to hard-edged fascism through the surprising route of George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Maybe it was opportunism and the megabucks that come from leading a grift as substantial as CPAC, but Schlapp embraced Trump with fervor – but pushed beyond the orange hustler from Queens. He found a leader more worthy, more committed, and more faithful to what really mattered.

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t an American. It didn’t matter that he was disdainful of democracy, political opponents, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, academic freedom, gay rights and pluralism. It didn’t matter that his cause was a rejection of the American idea or ideal. It didn’t matter that his country fought on the wrong side of both World Wars. It didn’t matter that he represents a country with deep ties to fascism – one that collaborated enthusiastically with the Nazis and sent scores of volunteers to enthusiastic service and murder with the SS.

Only one thing mattered to Matt Schlapp and his CPAC brethren in their embrace of Viktor Orban: what Orban believes. Schlapp knows Trump is a buffoon and a false prophet. Schlapp and others saw Trump and saddled up to ride the tiger. Some were eaten, many got rich, more got power, a few got judges, appointments and pardons. Some got all of the above and more.

The true believers, like Schlapp, got a lot from Trump, but it was all transactional. The truth is that they all made each other’s skin crawl. Viktor Orban solved the problem. He has the ambition to be a global icon in the way a Russian can never be. He has the ambition to restore his lost empire and the superior culture brought low by a conspiracy that is unseen by but a few.

Sound familiar? It’s an old story.

Viktor Orban is coming to Dallas, Texas, this week to speak to CPAC at the invitation of Matt Schlapp. Tucker Carlson is an ardent disciple, as is JD “Gilead” Vance, the fraud from Silicon Valley running in Ohio to be Peter Thiel’s senator.

The hard-right core that wants culture war mixed in with their insurrection is a big part of the MAGA power train. They are hostile to the idea of a pluralistic America. They are yearning for an American politician who will run for President on the illiberal platform of domination and control of the “pure” population against the lesser people who are societal drags and burdens. These people are always racial or religious minorities. The threat is always the same. It is the idea that all people will have equal standing under the law and an equal voice. Hitler rejected this as a pathway to slavery. The idea that a master race would be subjugated through equality with lesser people was at the foundation of Nazi ideology and Hitlerism.

Where did all of this come from?

The deadliest essay in world history was written by a French nobleman, Arthur de Gobineau, in 1853. It was a scientific paper that was called the “Inequality of the Human Races.” This essay invented the word “Aryan,” and placed it atop the list. Aryans were the highest ranked, Jews were regarded as clever, and predictably, the darker the skin, the lower the ranking. This was called scientific racial theory, and it was at the core of the American eugenics movement, and broadly embraced from Teddy Roosevelt to Margaret Sanger.

The group that adopted Gobineau’s theories most enthusiastically was an obscure far- right German political party in the early 1920s. When it took power in the 1930s, it made the Frenchman’s theories law. They were called the Nuremberg Laws, and they were written to protect the purity of the “master race.”

What is it that the Nazis believed? What did Hitler dream of for his 1,000-year Reich?

First, he dreamed of a world without Jews. They were responsible for all of the treachery in the world. Every failure was pinned on the Jews. Every crisis was caused by a Jewish conspiracy. Every grievance was blamed on the Jews. It was what held the Nazi cause together.  

Hitler wanted more room for the master race, and he wanted more members of the master race. Women were given stipends and cash to have children. Taxes were postponed in return for the bearing of children that replenished the purity of the Volk.

He dreamed of an agrarian master race and a 1,000-year Reich where peace, freedom and prosperity reigned. The conquered lands in the east would be the breadbasket of the Reich, and their enslaved populations, the labor. The world would be sorted and stratified into hygienic racial silos and ranked accordingly. The madness ended in 1945 after a global war that nearly annihilated western civilization and killed 100 million people.

That put an end to scientific racial theory nearly everywhere — except in the small closets where the white supremacists met.

Tucker Carlson has brought this cancer back to life, as have Donald Trump and Matt Schlapp. They have advanced the idea, but not quite like Orban, who just said the quiet part out loud. He said what Hitler said.

No, he didn’t quote the Nazi Fuhrer. Instead, he embraced his central idea. So did Matt Schlapp.

Race mixing. Maybe that is what Matt Schlapp really meant by “clean” in Budapest. Maybe he means racially clean. Absolutely, it is what Orban means. How do we know?

Well, he just said it. Matt Schlapp embraced it, and he is going to introduce the latter day Central European autocrat in Dallas, Texas, on August 4th.

Viktor Orban is not entering America as a friend. He made that clear when he rallied Schlapp’s extremist cause in Hungary. Orban called on his American audience to return home and burn down the most important institutions in the country. Orban doesn’t care about the Constitution. He cares about “culture.”

Specifically, this means the primacy of white Europeans above all other people because the white race has superior blood. This is what they all believe. It is an un-American idea, and it is well past time to call it that.

Viktor Orban is coming to town, and people all over the world who love democracy and count on the United States should be outraged by it.

What is CPAC? The Associated Press stupidly compared it to Woodstock. It’s not. It’s the 21st century Bund, and there is nothing gentle or cute about it. Dangerous extremists should be treated like ones. The reporting on this matter remains nearly as disturbing as Orban’s sinister visit. Matt Schlapp has embraced Orban because he believes in what Orban does. If you have ever celebrated July 4th that should both terrify and appall you.