Mastodawn

@cstross I mean https://www.cpac.org/post/cpac-will-return-to-hungary-for-third-year-in-2024

aburka 🫣18h ago

CPAC Will Return to Hungary for Third Year in 2024

This month will mark the third year of CPAC Hungary. This international CPAC was born out of a partnership with the Center for Fundamental Rights who continues to host CPAC Hungary in beautiful Budapest. As the only CPAC conference in Europe, CPAC Hungary has been a uniting force for European conservatives and will certainly be no different this year. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set to deliver the keynote speech for the third year in a row and will be joined by President of the Dutc

CPAC

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊18h ago

I'm gleefully awaiting the sudden realization amongst the general public that these organizations are all one big circle-jerk of grifting.

(Admittedly, I keep my glee in a pickle jar because otherwise it'll escape over the long years.)

Kalshann 17h ago

@theogrin @cstross
[most dramatic sarcasm voice possible] WHHHHHAAAATTTT?

simonbp 17h ago

@cstross IIRC the NRA was mostly Russian funded and hit a cash crunch when the Ukraine invasion cut that off.

T. J. Bombadil 17h ago

@simonbp @cstross I was wondering about why we hadn’t heard much from those assholes lately.

Donald Roy 17h ago

@cstross Also likely to cause problems for the egregious #mattgoodwin in #uk 😀

Brian Tatosky 17h ago

@cstross Well, that certainly makes a lot of sense in retrospect. Gonna be an awkward CPAC Hungary 2027

Graydon 17h ago

@cstross There's this sense in which the point of taking over governments for the global right-wing conspiracy is to fund taking over other governments.

Looting a sovereign entity is, after all, about the most profitable thing you can do in one-lifetime time frames.

Hugo Mills 17h ago

@graydon @cstross So, private equity... for governments?

Graydon 17h ago

@darkling Pretty much, yes.

Only with greater scope; private equity firms don't have the ability of a sovereign to make things legal.

(You can view everything since 1500 as a process of enclosure and not be hugely wrong in terms of economic history. Which is a detached way of saying "farming human lifespan".)

@graydon @darkling @cstross pretty grim point of view. Fundametally correct though (well, I give it inordinately high probability of being correct). And, as with many other general things, it came to different parts of the world at somewhat different times.

Timo Laine (he/him)8h ago

@graydon @cstross This fits nicely with @anneapplebaum's thesis in Autocracy Inc. All these autocrats form a network of mutual assistance.

Some nodes, like Putin, are more important to the network, I guess. Orban was mostly a satellite?

Jon 17h ago

@cstross let CPAC in for the conference, then arrest them all to investigate corruption allegations. They can share a cell block with Orban.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦

17h ago

@cstross why are people surprised? Serious question. Because there was never any question at all that CPAC was getting paid cold hard cash to party in Hungary. Everyone knew there were just innumerable violations of pretty much every law regarding foreign influence and bribery on the books going on the whole time.

James Tweedie 16h ago

@cstross Now there is hope over fear (and hate)
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26016373.viktor-orban-election-loss-tells-us-far-right/

retech 16h ago

@cstross It's like a E-list* global circle jerk. Actually, not like, it is.

*E is for epstein the pedo puppet master to the billionaires.

Kierkethumbs up convincingly 16h ago

@cstross let’s guess where the money came from. Taxpayers in Hungary or Russia

GhostOnTheHalfShell 15h ago

@Kierkegaanks @cstross

I rather think that it was financed through Russia.

Gemlog 14h ago

Are you saying you think Magyar was financed through Russia? I'm not following. Although it would have been genius to oust a pro-russian leader for being pro-russian and substituting an even moar pro russian leader... :-(
I really don't know. I'm asking.

Per Cederberg 8h ago

@gemlog I think he means that Russia paid Hungary (via lower gas prices e.g) so that Hungary could support some of their clients abroad.

klausfiend 14h ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross With documents confirming that MAGA bloggers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson were funded by Russia, I think it's reasonable to conclude that CPAC became yet another Kremlin psyop, intended to disrupt and corrupt US foreign and domestic politics.

W6KME 10h ago

@klausfiend @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross Became? I'm sure they were from the start, a lot longer ago that people imagine.

klausfiend 9h ago

@W6KME @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross The first CPAC was during the tail end of the Cold War so I think it's reasonable to assume it wasn't always a Republican-flavored Gathering of the Juggalos, and at least once serious policy discussions occurred. (No offense intended to any Juggalos who might be reading this.)

@Kierkegaanks @cstross wouldn't be surprised, if from Russia. The balding little man was, and is, very fond of spending our nation's endowment on such things.

Ramesh #NotGoingBack 15h ago

⬆️ @cstross

>> #Hungary’s New Leader Reveals #ViktorOrbán Was Paying #CPAC.

>> #Magyar noted that his government will … no longer finance CPAC or other right-wing institutions abroad.

Surely #Orban was just a conduit but the money into CPAC actually flowed from #Russia.

Wish #Biden's DOJ had not scattered #Mueller evidence to the wind and had followed through with investigating #Trump's money trail to #Russia. What a dereliction of duty!

Extra_Special_Carbon 15h ago

@rameshgupta @cstross The least Biden could have done is drop the cases so they coild release the evidence. i mean once Trump was elected, the cases were dead, sk just put it out there.

Ramesh #NotGoingBack 15h ago

⬆️ @Extra_Special_Carbon @cstross

>> The least Biden could have done is drop the cases so they coild release the evidence. i mean once Trump was elected, the cases were dead, sk just put it out there

The LEAST #Biden could have done is appoint a competent Attorney General and not kneecap him/her with a preemptive declaration of his own desire to avoid all #Trump investigations.

What a dereliction of duty from a man who knew everything about Trump from the #Obama days!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/president-elect-biden-wary-trump-focused-investigations-sources-say-n1247959

Biden hopes to avoid divisive Trump investigations, preferring unity

Joe Biden has privately told advisers he doesn't want his presidency consumed by investigations into Donald Trump, five people familiar with the discussions said.

NBC News

Extra_Special_Carbon 14h ago

@rameshgupta @cstross That would have bern nice too, but I don’t think it qualifies as “least”. I guess technically, what he did was least, but the one slightly more than that, was release all of the documents.

ilias 🏴‍☠️💙💛15h ago

@cstross there was more from Magyar's press conference, and far worse https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-13/hungary-foreign-minister-is-shredding-eu-documents-magyar-says

(as for CPAC funded by Orban, it was a well-known fact for several years)

ltning 14h ago

@DM_Ronin @cstross Are there alternative sources? I am not going to throw money at Bloomberg :-/

@ltning @DM_Ronin @cstross

mmarcott 🐡12h ago

https://archive.ph/IZp17
Try there

George Saich 15h ago

@cstross
Yeah, if you follow the money it should probably be called CCCP(ac).

Birch-o-matic 14h ago

@cstross And probably with laundered Russian money.

Mate X 14h ago

@cstross
Put Orban to jai.
He is a traitor..all of Fidesz are traitors.

klausfiend 14h ago

@cstross Watch Trump spin this as "bringing jobs back to the US" if fash-curious American billionaires step up to pay.

Diane 13h ago

Jailing Orbán sounds like a nice treat for people who like democracy and human rights.

Jay 13h ago

@cstross Hey remember this story: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mccarthy-trump-putin-pays_n_591cc97ce4b03b485cae64c2

It really does come back to this schmuck half the time, huh?

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Said Vladimir Putin 'Pays' Trump In Leaked Tape

“Swear to God."

HuffPost

Nicole Parsons 13h ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/us/politics/russia-election-interference.html

Orban functioned as a conduit for Putin's foreign threat funding for years.

Petrostate despots and oil oligarchs fund a lot of fascism globally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html

Republicans & the Epstein Class cannot resist fossil fuel public corruption.

https://www.newsweek.com/who-konstantin-nikolaev-money-mike-johnson-1870600

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar30-million-to-elect-trump-was-it-russian-money

Russia Secretly Gave $300 Million to Political Parties and Officials Worldwide, U.S. Says

A U.S. intelligence review found that Russian agencies and figures aimed to exert political influence abroad and sway elections on behalf of the Kremlin.

The New York Times

Corey Taylor 12h ago

@cstross Gonna bet JD got paid, too.

Grumble 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇬🇱11h ago

@cstross It's moderately heartening to learn that other countries are opposed to money in politics.

Unlike here in the US, where it's only the voters that are against it.

Haji Mokhtar Stork 11h ago

@cstross There is a need to get down improving life rather then than to get political hang-ups. Every one comes with the same political gimmick throughout the world. We call it Democracy, but at the end of the day is there any real difference?

@cstross see https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3mjhbhrv3mc22

Raven Onthill 10h ago

emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social)

I'm fairly gobsmacked by the number of people who profess surprise that Orbán was funding CPAC. Did you know of his ties to Heritage and Project 2025? One of the most telling, tho, was he funded Rufo and the racist Trump tried to install at State, Jeremy Carl. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/contracts-between-hungarian-nonprofit-and-christopher-rufo-others-raise-foreign-agent/

Bluesky Social

Toni Aittoniemi 10h ago

@cstross Viktor Orban’s Hungary was more meaningful to MAGA than you think. Steve Bannon and many others visited there frequently, and many think-tanks operated from there!

Jeff McNeill 8h ago

@cstross @pluralistic And CPAC was taking the money

xs4me2 7h ago

A treasonous crime and Orban and his whole regime should pay for this.

@cstross a person, whose Telegram channel I'm reading since 2022, has this take: every known (far-)right politician contemporary to us is a scam, a fraud, a con artist, a grifter, and a thief. This heuristic more or less holds, with almost no exceptions.

Charlie Stross 5h ago

@militant_dilettante I suspect there used to be some who weren't, who genuinely thought they were doing the right thing for their nation … and they got shoved out of the way or trampled by the mob. And then there's Liz Truss, who *believes* every scam, fraud, and grift they feed her and earnestly regurgitates them without understanding what it's really about (she's the comic relief on the lecture circuit).

@cstross oh, yes, there might be some types of "true believers", and there might be some incredibly gullible persons. I think, we have both locally, within the so called "Z-movement" for example, and in other places.
Liz-Who-Didn't-Outlive-A-Head-Of-Salad?

Frank Bennett 🇯🇵5h ago

@cstross @militant_dilettante If Liz wanted to remedy her public image, she could (pay whatever gatekeeping fee they charge and) join Reform, and then attend a public event with a Comic Relief nose-pincher.

@fgbjr @cstross Would the Reform take her, though? Taking into account that her campaign slogans/punchlines would be something along the lines of "I WILL CUT YOU, SALAD!!"

I might be using an incorrect grocery term for a leafy vegetable, a refrigerated specimen of which had outlasted Truss in her shooting-star-like career as a Prime Minister of the UK. English is obviously not my first language.

Charlie Stross 5h ago

@militant_dilettante @fgbjr It was a head of lettuce—which is indisputably a salad leaf. (Watery and tasteless at that.)

Charlie Stross 5h ago

@fgbjr @militant_dilettante Or she could flee to Dubai or Argentina and publish a tell-all autobiography explaining how she was recruited by the KGB in the upper fifth at Roundhay Grammar School in Leeds and groomed to destabilize the UK by her controller, one V. Putin. At which point … she wouldn't be *popular*, exactly, but her reputation for ineptitude and stupidity would instantly flip upside-down.

@cstross @fgbjr A good strategy, although there is one wrinkle in this storyline (do not tell Liz about it!). V.V.Putin was totally devoted to Germany, and Germanosphere. I doubt he knows even the basic conversational English.

On the other hand, all this East Germany, BRD business of the balding little man could have been one big ruse, and he might be secretly very language-proficient, and a huge UK-nerd (or a general British Isles nerd).

Marcus Marcius Marcellus 3h ago

@militant_dilettante @cstross @fgbjr I don't know how devoted Putin is to all things German. But having watched the broadcast of his speech, many years ago, to the Bundestag, I can confirm that his German is very good.

@cstross @militant_dilettante

JdeBP 4h ago

@fgbjr

#ReformUKLtd won't touch #LizTruss with a barge pole.

#NigelFarage has already gone out of his way to avoid being photographed with her at events that they have both attended.

And this despite Truss having money to pay. She has a well-financed social media operation and is touring the U.S.A. claiming that she will spearhead an English version of MAGA.

Reform U.K. Ltd has nonetheless clearly drawn the line at letting her in.

militant_dilettante 4h ago

@JdeBP @fgbjr @cstross Well, to chase the awkward and not very smart joke into its swampy shallow grave: does that mean that the "Reform U.K.K.K. Ltd." is firmly on the side of lettuce and other leafy greens?

Fazal Majid 4h ago

@JdeBP @fgbjr @cstross @militant_dilettante that’s a very low bar for sanity

Marcus Marcius Marcellus 3h ago

@cstross @militant_dilettante When AfD was formed, it was not a nazi party. Its founders were ordoliberal* economists whose idea was to withdraw Germany from the eurozone to alleviate the Greek debt crisis. (As a € state, Greece could no longer kill debt by devaluing the drachma. AfD figured German withdrawal would effectively devalue the euro.)
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