The New “European Zionism” and Viktor Orban’s Hungary | Opinion

“Zionism for the nations of Europe,” wrote Dutch anti-immigration crusader Geert Wilders in Breitbart this month. “The Europeans should follow the example of the Jewish people and safeguard the sovereignty of their nation-states.” Wilders’ party took first place in Holland’s national elections late last year, a portent of the so-called shift to the Right that propelled nationalist parties to electoral success this year in Germany, France, Austria, and the Czech Republic. But the first European “Zionist” and the inspiration for many European conservatives was Hungary’s long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Hungary is a small nation that is determined to survive the demographic winter that has crept across the industrial nations. It devotes nearly a tenth of its budget to support for families, but even more important than family subsidies is a renewed national spirit and resistance to the European Commission’s attempt to homogenize the nations of Europe into a supranational blur.
“Humans are about to enter a new era of history. Call it ‘the age of depopulation. For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the planetary population will decline. But whereas the last implosion was caused by a deadly disease borne by fleas, the coming one will be entirely due to choices made by people,” economist Nicholas Eberstadt Oct. 10 in Foreign Affairs.
That’s a death sentence for Europe’s smaller nations. When Orban came to office in 2010, government demographers gauged the total fertility (number of live births in a lifetime) for Magyar women at just 0.83, then the lowest in the world. Since then, Hungary’s TFR has roughly doubled to about 1.6, and a surge in the marriage rate portends further improvement.
Orban became a figure of controversy in 2016 when he refused to open Hungary’s borders to the millions of Middle Eastern migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war and other conflicts, defying migrant quotas assigned by the European Commission. It also put Orban in conflict with the world’s wealthiest Hungarian, George Soros, whose Open Society Foundation promotes free migration.
European nationalists look to Israel as a beacon of hope. It’s the only high-income country with a fertility rate above the 2.1 breakeven level—so far above breakeven at three children per female that its working-age population will more than double from today’s 4.5 million to 11 million by the end of this century, according to UN demographers. The same UN projections show that the working-age population of Turkey and Iran will fall by about half, and by three-quarters in Taiwan and South Korea.
As a member of a scientific advisory board to the Hungarian government, I have had the opportunity to speak to numerous high-ranking officials, and can attest that their admiration for Israel and the Jewish people is sincere, principled and deep. They view Israel as “the exemplar and paragon of a nation,” as Franz Rosenzweig put it.
Liberal American Jews cannot wrap their minds around the new philo-semitism among conservative European nationalists. Retired diplomat Alfred Moses writing in Newsweek cited Donald Trump’s admiration for Viktor Orban as proof that Trump himself is a fascist. Wrote Moses: “In his stumbling debate performance against Harris, the only leader of a NATO country Trump mentioned was Viktor Orban, Hungary’s fascist-leaning leader with antisemitic tendencies. Trump’s admiration of Orban tells us as much about Trump as it does about Orban, who frequently condemns Jews in his speeches.”
Orban a fascist? He won a fourth term as prime minister by outpolling the opposition 54 percent to 33 percent in free and fair elections in 2022. His political opponents campaign against him unrestrained. Unlike the United States, there’s no social media censorship in Hungary, nor is there lawfare directed against political opponents, unlike Biden’s America. Not a single opposition politician or journalist is in jail.
Jewish life flourishes in Hungary, with its Jewish population of 100,000 and large Israeli community. It’s safer to walk around Budapest with a kippa than New York City, let alone Paris or Berlin.
Orban defied his European Union peers and refused to permit mass immigration from the Middle East in 2016—the source of appalling violence in other European countries.
Orban banned anti-Israel demonstrations after the October 7 massacre, the only European country to do so. Hungary denounced the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu. And it maintains diplomatic representation in Jerusalem through a trade office, again uniquely among European nations.
French President Emmanuel Macron demanded an arms embargo against Israel, and Spain’s Prime Minister Sanchez wants to cancel the European Union’s free trade agreement with Jerusalem. Orban defends Israel. Liberals cite Orban’s fiery polemics against one particular Jew—not Jews—as putative evidence of his antisemitism. That is George Soros, the world’s wealthiest Hungarian and an ultra-liberal political meddler.
Soros has spent an estimated $400 million to push Hungarian politics to the Left; given the relative sizes of the Hungarian and U.S. economies, that’s the equivalent of $60 billion in political spending in America. Soros draws the wrath of Hungarian conservatives not because he is a Jew, but because his Open Society Foundation is a gigantic presence in Hungarian politics. To call this antisemitism is perverse.
Viktor Orban’s support for Israel stems from deep conviction. The State of Israel is a beacon of hope for European conservatives. The Old World is dying of childlessness, and Israel’s unique fertility rate of three children per woman is an inspiration to Europeans who want to preserve their culture.
I have met Viktor Orban and many of his senior aides, and can say without a hint of doubt that their support for Israel and for Jewish life in Hungary stems from genuine admiration for Jewish accomplishment as well as Christian religious conviction.
David P. Goldman is Deputy Editor of Asia Times and a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Hungarian Research Network, a government-sponsored organization.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.