Sam Bács: How The Rejected Sam T Francis Was Reincarnated As A Based Patriot By A New Generation of Conservatives
Weekly briefings on the life of The New European Capital of Conservatism.
Events This Week
Democracy - a god that failed? Or just a god that just never got started? Eric Hendricks wants to take on the liberal ideal that democracy must be mediated to us commoners via judges and an elite class. In that, he is joined by Philip Manow, a professor of International Political Economy. And by Stefan Auer, Professor of European Studies at the University of Hong Kong. This one's early doors. 4:00 PM on Tuesday at the Villa.
Prosperity Institute star Guy Dampier is back in Budapest this week, at a one-day seminar at the MCC on the question of political Islam. Guy is speaking on something spicy: "From Londonistan to the Gaza Independents: Britain and Political Islam". But there are plenty more spices in the rack: 9AM till half-three on Tuesday, at MCC.
Finally, tonight DI Anglosphere Fellow David Oldroyd Bolt is hosting an event on Enoch Powell - not in Budapest, but in London. DOB has recruited a stellar lineup of speakers: Simon Heffer (Lord Blackwater), the eminent Telegraph columnist, who was Powell's official biographer. Alongside him is Lord Glasman, the jocular Blue Labour peer, and Tim Montgomerie, former editor of UnHerd. For non-Anglos, Enoch was a kind of prophet, with a strange accent, who wrote poetry and never met a hill he wouldn't die on. A bit like the last Ayatollah. A seminal figure in British public life, Powell's influence only grows by the year. It's at 5:30, at the King Harald Room of the Naval & Military Club, 4 St James's Square. RSVP to events@danubeinstitute.hu.
Around Town
Perspectives and people from the week
Stop what you're doing (and why were you doing that anyway?) - and listen to the new episode of Danube Politics, in which infinitely-storied John O'Sullivan talks through his time refereeing the Paleocon-Neocon wars of the mid-90s, when he was editor of National Review. Aided by Markus Johansson-Martis, we whipped John into a fugue of memory, in which he spilled out all kinds of glorious details about who said what to whom in the lift with Pat Buchanan at the Dole convention. A fascinating glimpse into a lost world, capped by his story of his time with arch-Paleocon Sam Francis: "Sam was asked to explain American politics to these visiting foreign dignitaries. He said: there are two parties in America... the Stupid Party... and the Evil Party. I am proud to belong to the Stupid Party. But sometimes the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do Stupid-Evil things: this is the worst possible outcome, and it is called 'bi-partisanship'."
Blasphemy: the hip new scene in the Catholic Church, at least according to Father Mario Portella, who has picked on the second-ever Catholic 'National Queer Christian Youth Retreat', held in Italy this month. It's the spur to a general attack on the forces of woke in the papacy. The title of the Queer retreat in question? ‘Lazarus, Come Out’ (aka John 11:43).
Remember Ann Selzer?
Most will only remember AlkaSeltzer, but for a few days in late 2024, Ann really stole the lead from her antacid rival.
Selzer was the 'queen of polling', who published that SHOCK Iowa poll, three days before Election Day, showing Harris up 3 points over Trump in a Republican tilted state.
In the end, Trump won Iowa by 13 points. And that was the end of Ann’s career. Philip Pilkington brings her up as a way of discussing the extraordinary variance in Hungarian polls right now. There is a 20 per cent spread between Tisza-skewed polls and Orbán-favoured ones. What could it mean?
Fraud, is Pilko’s typically brisk answer. Indeed, he appears to have uncovered a data scandal, in which a ‘shock poll’ released last Wednesday was groomed to look as though Tisza was firmly ahead, when in fact the two were neck and neck.
For anyone with a background in statistics, Pilko’s suspicion is down to the variance between the polls: the Fidesz polls tend to have much more regular variance: implying larger sample sizes and more internal consistency of method. While the pro-Tisza polls are wildly different from each other, just all over the shop. Make up your own mind here.
Anika's I Go To Sleep was one of the most piercing tracks of the 2010s. Like being harpooned with ice, it was a sort of Sandie Shaw chanson, filtered through Nico, then reimagined in the arc lights of the synthwave revival. Lately, Anika has scored a new Jim Jarmusch film. She finally makes her Hungarian debut tomorrow, aboard the floating gig venue A38.
It's ONYX's 19th Birthday. This is ONYX Műhely, the reinvented version of what was CEE's first two-Michelin-starred restaurant. They now hold a Michelin Green Star (eco stuff) and operate as a "creative community", normally via an immersive 11-course tasting menu that is as much experiential theatre as food. To celebrate their birthday, they're running five separate events, breakfast through dinner, each with a different vibe, with the rare chance for cheap eats and much more casual dining. Sunday 8 March 2026 Vörösmarty tér 7-8, District V.
Paper of the Week
Ne damo svetinje: The Orthodox Church’s Political Role in Montenegro
Montenegro - late lamb of the Balkans, now potentially ready to eclipse them all in sheer tourist potential. But beyond the beauty of its obsidian rocks, this is a society divided: a place where the Serbian Orthodox church holds tremendous sway, but where it is both challenged and bolstered by a kind of religious street protest, known locally as the Litije. Visting Fellow Stefano Arroque has been teasing apart Montenegro, in a delicate piece of religious anthropology, asking what lessons could it hold for Hungary?
Montenegrin politics have been shaped since independence by the instrumentalization of its ethno-religious cleavages for political purposes. The adoption by the Democratic Party of Socialists, the ruling party until 2020, of a ‘Law on Religious Freedom’ targeting the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, the largest Orthodox denomination in the country, triggered mass clergy-led protests, known locally as Litije. The Litije positioned the Church as the country’s most important non-Parliamentary political actor, a role it has continued to play following the 2023 Parliamentary elections.
Dates For Your Diary
Christian Revival Conference, Oxford — 11 -12 MarchCPAC Hungary — 21 March"Halból lehet halászlevet főzni, de halászléből nem."
— You can make fish soup from fish, but you can't make fish from fish soup.