call Budapest a Mecca, were Islam not anathema to the pilgrims flocking there. An anti-Davos would be a better description: a place where conservative nationalists from all over the world gather to compare notes on how to defeat international liberalism. Either way, Hungary’s capital is at the heart of a global movement to reinvent right-wing politics.
This new form of conservatism marks a radical departure from the sort that prevailed in the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Instead of sunny optimism and a view of America as a “shining city on a hill”, as Reagan had it, it sees decline and “American carnage”, as Mr Trump puts it. In place of muscular internationalism is a profound scepticism of foreign wars and multilateral organisations.
On February 13th one of the architects of Heritage’s Project 2025, a detailed plan to defang the deep state in a second Trump presidency, arrived in Budapest to present his findings at an event hosted by a state-sponsored think-tank., an annual meeting of the American right, invited Mr Orban to Dallas to give a speech in 2022.
The desire to defend the family sometimes manifests itself as a fixation with fertility. “Perhaps you weren’t expecting to have to think about making babies at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning,” mused Miriam Cates, a Tory, at NatCon in 2023, “but if you want to be a national conservative, you need a nation to conserve.” At a recent conference hosted by Ms Meloni, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, urged those present to “make more Italians to save Italy’s culture”.
Yet in office she went along with other European leaders to suspend billions of euros in payments to Hungary over its dubious commitment to the rule of law. Ms Meloni has also strongly supported aid to Ukraine despite Mr Orban’s objections, and helped twist his arm to allow a recent tranche of €50bn to go through. Since 1998 Ms Meloni has organised an annual conservative conference called Atreju . In 2019 her honoured guest was Viktor Orban.