Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decried the “woke movement and gender ideology” in his remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest Thursday.
“The woke movement and gender ideology are exactly what Communism and Marxism used to be,” Orbán said, according to The Associated Press. “They artificially cut the nation into minorities in order to spark strife among the groups.”
Orbán, a popular figure among U.S. conservatives, has championed anti-LGBTQ efforts in Hungary, including a 2021 law that banned the use of materials in schools viewed as promoting homosexuality and gender change.
“Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies,” he added. “Hungary is the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”
The Hungarian leader also called Thursday for former President Trump’s return to office, echoing Trump’s claims that the war in Ukraine would not have happened if he were president.
“If President Trump were president now, there would be no war affecting Ukraine and Europe today,” Orbán said. “Come back, Mr. President, make America great again, and bring us peace!”
Trump and Orbán have long held close ties. The former president endorsed Orbán’s race for a fourth term in office last year, and the two met up in August.
Ahead of Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan last month over his role in a 2016 hush money payment, the Hungarian prime minister voiced support for the former president and urged him to “keep on fighting.”
However, Orbán, an advocate of the concept of “illiberal democracy,” has been accused of eroding Hungary’s democracy. The European Parliament declared in September that Hungary can no longer be considered a democracy, instead classifying it as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”