Vance’s Crusade Against European Democracy
He came to defend Western civilisation but toasted a man who calls himself a mouse to Putin’s lion, revealing the moral rot of populism.
By decrying Brussels whilst amplifying Trump on a campaign microphone, Vance proved that interference is only a crime to him when he does not lead.
The arrival of J.D. Vance in Budapest, a city whose stones still bear the scars of twentieth-century autocracy, was a spectacle of such profound ideological incoherence that it demanded a suspension of disbelief. Here was the American Vice President1, a man who rose to power on the back of a “New Right” philosophy that sanctifies the local, the national, and the sovereign, performing a blatant act of political tourism designed to meddle in the domestic affairs of a European state2. By standing on a Hungarian stage five days before a pivotal election to endorse Viktor Orban, Vance did not merely participate in a campaign rally, he executed a controlled demolition of the very principles of non-interference he purports to hold sacred.
The hypocrisy was as thick as the humidity of the Danube. In a display of rhetorical acrobatics that would be imp…
