Our think-tank MCC Brussels has been investigating the use of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) by the European Union. Our published reports expose the laundering of billions of euros to institutions charged with promoting the European Commission’s propaganda throughout Europe.
This misuse of taxpayer’s money is an outrage. But what is of even greater concern is how this corruption of civil society undermines democratic decision making in the EU’s member states. In particular, the EU-NGO propaganda complex has sought to use pliant NGOs to promote regime change in Hungary and Poland.
The EU has channelled funds to NGOs in countries such as Poland (€38 million) and Hungary (€41 million) through the CERV program, aimed at promoting ‘EU values’ and, in some cases, undermining the elected government. For example, the Ökotárs Foundation in Hungary, which received a €3.3 million grant from the EU, has been involved in disputes with the Orbán government and stands accused of being a “local distribution centre” for foreign influence.
This propaganda network first came into being in the 1980s, in the lead-up to the liberation of the nations of central and eastern Europe from Soviet domination. The initial goal was to insert supposedly neutral NGOs into the sphere of East European politics. Their objective was to ensure that the new post-communist regimes would fall under the spell of the globalist values favoured by Western political elites.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Western NGOs and international institutions collaborated with East European liberal intellectuals and politicians to educate post-communist societies about the pitfalls of nationalism and the virtues of an anti-sovereigntist, civic values-based society. These initiatives were inspired by the concern that former members of the Warsaw Pact were historically disposed towards the embrace of patriotism and national identity.
Curing Eastern Europe of its strongly-held national sentiments was one of the main themes at a pivotal three-day conference of the Soros-MTA Foundation held in Krakow, Poland in September 1991, as the Soviet bloc was collapsing. In Hungarian émigré Péter Kende’s keynote speech, ‘Return to Tradition … What Tradition?’ he dismissed as “fleeting” the “so-called national traditions which originate … in rhetoric and pious wishes” and called for eastern Europe to instead embrace the Western liberal-style “civic virtues inherent to a democracy: the defense of rights, the toleration of difference and active solidarity (liberté—égalité—fraternité).”
For Kende, central and eastern Europe’s “moment of healing” required a determination to avoid “the exploration of the past”. His speech articulated a lack of empathy towards the meaning that national tradition and sentiment could have for large sections of society. That is why he prefaced national traditions with the de-legitimizing term “so-called”.
For Kende and his liberal colleagues, national sentiment was a disease that required a political cure. Their future goal was breaking the nations of Eastern Europe from the traditions of the pre-communist past. Since then, imposing a cordon sanitaire around sovereigntist ideals and politics has been one of the main aims of the European elites.
At least one person who attended that key conference in Krakow understood that in Eastern Europe, national conscience was far from “fleeting”. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, editor of Die Zeit, wrote after the conference:
There in Krakow, I realized that nationalism, which we Westerners regard with a lot of scepticism, had been indispensable for the survival of the East Europeans. That was the only way they had been able to fight for their identity and finally achieve freedom.
Dönhoff recognized that a robust national identity was essential for the achievement of freedom in East Europe. Nevertheless, in line with the mainstream ethos of Western European political culture, she concluded that now, “everything depends on them [East Europeans] … returning to a form of normal liberalism.”
In recent decades, the leaders of the EU and a global network of NGOs have taken up the challenge to ensure that the former members of the Soviet bloc return to a form of ‘normal liberalism.’ They have mobilized their resources to re-educate sovereigntist-inclined East Europeans.
Since the early 1990s, this network has played a central role in promoting American woke values in Central Europe. The main target was the national sensibility deeply rooted within societies that had recently gained freedom from Soviet domination. From the standpoint of the EU oligarchy and its cosmopolitan collaborators in America, people’s aspiration to secure national independence needed to be challenged and the value of sovereignty discredited.
In the decades to follow, globalist NGO activists pursued a silent war against the national traditions of Central European societies through influencing educational and cultural institutions to embrace American identity politics. The EU took a lead in organizing what was in effect a culture war against sovereigntist values, by promoting ‘diversity’ and minority rights as a counterpoint to the authority of the nation. In effect it claimed that minority rights were de facto morally superior to the principle of national sovereignty.
The affirmation of identity politics, paralleled by the devaluation of national sentiment, constituted the pivotal point in this undeclared Culture War. As the leftist Hungarian social commentator Agnes Gagyi argued, as opposed to the upholding of “the symbolic value of the nation” by conservatives, their opponents offered a version of solidarity that was directed at the defense of groups “typically referred to as minorities (Roma, Jews, Women, LGBTQ).” Although Gagyi was no friend of the conservative bloc, she recognized that the purpose of importing US/EU-style identity politics into Hungary was to de-legitimize national sovereignty.
During the past 15 years, Hungary and the national-conservative Fidesz government of Viktor Orbán have become the principal target of the EU bureaucracy and the anti-sovereigntist network of globalist NGOs. One of the objectives of this network was to cultivate the emergence of local partners who could articulate its politics. In this way, the hostility towards the sense of nationhood that characterized the outlook of the EU oligarchy could be refracted through Hungarian domestic politics.
In the aftermath of the overthrow of the Communist regime, Hungarians in leftist and liberal political circles sought to consolidate their authority by developing a special relationship with the West. They used their informal alliance with Western institutions to promote the claim that they were best placed to promote the interests of Hungary in a globalized world.
Paradoxically this orientation towards external political actors further distanced this layer of Hungarian society from national realities. The reliance of the Hungarian liberal left on its connections with Western transnational institutions, NGOs, and the EU oligarchy weakened its capacity to engage with the problems facing the people of Hungary.
The lack of success of the Hungarian liberal left and its NGO allies became all too evident in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States in 2016. Writing in The Washington Post, Miklós Haraszti—the former Hungarian dissident and opponent of the Fidesz government—warned his American readers, “I watched a populist leader rise in my country.”
Describing Hungary as a ‘populist autocracy,’ Haraszti warned that the election of Trump threatened to drag America down the same illiberal democratic path. These fears have intensified since Trump’s second election as U.S. president last year signalled the continuing rise of the patriotic populist wave in Western politics.
Typically in NGO circles, populism is portrayed as authoritarian, anti-democratic, and even racist. “How can we resist illiberal democracy and populism?” was the title of a conference for NGO activists devoted to discussing “the growing trend toward illiberal democracy, autocracy, and populism” held in November 2016 at the Human Rights House in Belgrade. What they really meant was ‘how can we discredit the spirit of patriotism sweeping Europe?’
Since 2016, the patriotic movement has gone from strength to strength—which is why the EU elites are coming for Hungary. Last week, a commentary in Politico entitled “How to confront Orbán and save the EU” came across as a call for a declaration of war. The authors went to great lengths to explain how Hungary can be sanctioned and deprived of its right to vote in the European Council. Sanctioning Hungary and depriving it of its vote is of course a first step to forcing this nation to change its elected government. If that does not work, they will conspire to get rid of Hungary through manipulating the rule book.
No doubt the patriotic forces in Europe possess sufficient strength to thwart the designs of the EU-NGO complex and prevent the plot against Hungary coming to a successful conclusion. But it will not be an easy task. That’s why we must be committed to this fight.
This is an edited version of an article from the author’s Substack, Roots & Wings, appearing here with kind permission. Subscribe here.