"The husband of that woman"

Uncle Orban comes to CPAC: Part 2

Eleanor Roosevelt

There are many epithets that Donald Trump has hurled at his enemies. Their accumulation by his targets are mostly badges of honor for having had the combination of guts, decency or wisdom to confront the obvious danger Trump represents. All pale in comparison to the “insult” hurled at one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Eleanor Roosevelt, by Adolph Hitler. 

Hitler was not content to just spout his perverted racial theories as justification for his declaration of war against the United States. He directly targeted Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. He referred to the 32nd President of the United States as “the husband of that woman,” while talking about American commercial interests and conspiracies in exactly the same manner as Viktor Orban is doing in 2022.

Poland can be switched out for Ukraine to keep it fresh for 2022 ears. The class grievance and virtues of imaginary martyrdom are ever-present in both the Hitler address of December 11, 1941, and the Orban speech of July 23, 2022.  Orban’s antisemitism is restrained, but that is true of antisemitism everywhere. There are cranks and racists like Louis Farrakhan who still give it their all, but generally everything is much subtler today.

Orban uses George Soros as a gateway to make the same points. The rising antisemitism that results in Orban’s Hungary is the policy of Orban’s autocratic Hungary. The notion of illiberal democracy is a chimera. It is the path to disaster. Listen to the words of the most evil human being of the 20th century. This is what Orban is preaching.

The crowd who will cheer in rapturous adoration at this week’s CPAC in Dallas is not like the crowd at Woodstock or Davos as the Associated Press so stupidly and offensively reported. It is much more like the crowd that heard these words in 1941:

The grubby Fuhrer didn’t die alone. He poisoned his dog, offed his wife and shot himself in the head. His SS adjutant carried him and Eva Braun to a shallow shell crater, doused them with diesel fuel and lit them up. The Russians got the bodies and Stalin wanted them back in Moscow. That’s where they went. Reich Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels and his wife Magda killed their six children and then committed suicide. Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, had ten children. He, too, likely committed suicide. All of the men around Hitler were expected to raise gigantic National Socialist families steeped in traditional values. Racial purity and cleanliness were at the heart of Nazi propaganda and warnings.

The threat was what Orban maintains it is today. Extinction. Racial extinction. Cultural extinction. National extinction. All of it prefaces the collapse of civilization that is defended by a virtuous leader and movement. It is all bunk, but it has killed more people than any other bunk. 

The parallels aren’t coincidental. They are structural. 

When the war ended in 1945, Franklin Roosevelt, the President of the United States – who stands peerless as America’s greatest Commander-in-Chief – did not live to see it, though the end was not in doubt. His concerns until the end were about the world that would come after the peace.  

His wife Eleanor was his indispensable political partner and conscience. 

She was the driving force behind one of the most remarkable agreements in human history. In the aftermath of the horror of World War II, and at the edge of the frontier of the Cold War, Eleanor Roosevelt brought the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into existence.

Article 1 reads: 

This is the opposite of Hitlerism, Orbanism and Trumpism. 

Viktor Orban is a global menace because he is becoming the new icon of an old movement. He has found an American market for it. The American market has always been sought after by Europeans. It’s fickle. The Beatles hit it right, and so did ABBA. 

There is a new act, and it is just like an old one. The old one filled up Madison Square Garden with giant swastikas next to an imperious George Washington banner. Matt Schlapp and CPAC can’t fill up Madison Square Garden, but they certainly want to. 

All of this is madness. It is absolutely evil. The purpose of the phrase “Never Again” was supposed to mean that society had the ability to recognize what any of it means. It all happened because of belief, ideas, politics and electoral choices. 

It is not enough to know what Adolph Hitler did. It is not enough to know the cartoon version. It is necessary to know who venerates his memory in word and deed. They are among us, and two of their names are Viktor Orban and Matt Schlapp.