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When Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo was released in 1999, the renowned film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “It’s the kind of picture those View n’ Brew theaters were made for, as long as you don’t view.” When the sequel Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo came out in 2005, Ebert was harsher still, describing it as “aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience.”
Playing the title role of a tropical fish tank-cleaner-turned-gigolo was Rob Schneider. For the sequel, Schneider won the Golden Raspberry Award for “Worst Actor”, and in 2010, he was nominated for “Worst Actor of the Decade”.
Some 15 years later, Schneider might have been expected to resurface in an even worse third instalment of the Bigalow franchise, or in another lowbrow Hollywood comedy. Instead, he appeared in a far more unlikely setting: a campaign video endorsing Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.
Schneider’s entry into local politics may have surprised Hungarian fans of Deuce Bigalow, but it did not come out of nowhere.
Over the past few years, Schneider has worked to establish himself as a leading conservative voice, railing against Hollywood’s supposed liberal bias. A frequent guest on Fox News, he has spoken publicly against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and is vocally anti-trans and anti-vaccine. In a recent opinion piece, he claimed, “Since the rise of the ‘woke’ movement, and its total domination of the creative industries, anyone with a conservative point of view has been punished and even blacklisted.”
The video also includes endorsements from other right-wing figures, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Jean-Marie Le Pen of France’s National Rally, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Lega leader Matteo Salvini, and German parliamentarian and Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel.
Why would this global cohort of far-right figures care about the political future of Hungary? The answer lies in the central role Hungary has played as an incubator for the global rise of the far right.
I saw the rise of the far right in the central European country unfold firsthand. Within a week of moving to Budapest in 2008 to pursue my graduate studies at Central European University (CEU), I was attacked by neo-Nazis. In the months that followed, amid a severe economic crisis, I encountered several neo-Nazi rallies and gatherings.
There was a sharp increase in violence targeting the country’s Roma population. In February 2009, a Roma man and his five-year-old son were shot dead in a village outside Budapest while fleeing their home, which had been set on fire in an arson attack. In September of that year, a Roma woman and her 13-year-old daughter were fired upon by armed men who had broken into their house in a village near the Ukrainian border. The mother was killed, while her daughter was admitted to the intensive care unit.
Hungary also saw a rise in anti-Semitism. In June 2009, vandals desecrated a Holocaust memorial with pigs’ feet. The memorial commemorates Jewish victims who were stripped, shot, and then thrown into the Danube River by the fascist militia Arrow Cross Party during the second world war.
Against this backdrop of rising racist violence and far-right mobilisation, Viktor Orban, having previously been in office between 1998 and 2002, returned as prime minister in 2010. He was then re-elected in 2014, 2018, and 2022, consolidating his hold on power. He used his electoral mandate to systematically take control of state institutions and suppress opposition.
Under Orban, press freedom has witnessed a significant downturn. According to Reporters Without Borders, oligarchs close to Orban’s Fidesz party have bought out media outlets and turned them into government mouthpieces. Currently, an estimated 80 percent of Hungary’s media is concentrated in the hands of Orban-friendly figures. Regulatory bodies have been weaponised to shut down independent media outlets. The government and pro-government media regularly accuse critical outlets of spreading disinformation and being financed by Hungarian-born American financier George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundation.
The institutions and laws of the state have also been weaponised to clamp down on educational bodies, civil society groups, and cultural institutions that Orban views as a hindrance to the country’s authoritarian far-right tilt. In 2018, the Soros-affiliated CEU, seen by Orban as a liberal bulwark, was forced to shut down most of its operations in Budapest and relocate to Vienna after the Orban government refused to sign an agreement that would allow it to operate as a degree-awarding university in Hungary.
In 2019, the Hungarian parliament passed a bill that allowed the Orban government to take control of the 200-year-old Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This was the first step towards 15 scientific institutes being incorporated into the Eotvos Lorand Research Network (ELKH), which is led by a board appointed by Orban. While the formal justification for this move was to “boost the funding and efficiency of Hungary’s underperforming research and development sector”, critics have maintained that this was yet another way for the government to suppress opposition.
According to civil society groups, artistic freedom and cultural institutions have also been under attack. Orban has used his “cultural approach” to advance his anti-democratic agenda, well aware that cultural and artistic spaces can play a “role in advancing pluralistic political discourse”. This has involved centralised control over the National Culture Fund and the National Cultural Council, as well as the appointment of Fidesz-friendly administrators at the helm of the Petofi Museum of Literature and the National Theatre. Notably, before his dismissal, the artistic director of the National Theatre was publicly rebuked by the Orban government “for his political views and his homosexuality”.
More recently, the Orban government established the “Sovereignty Protection Office” (SPO) to investigate critical journalists and civil society groups, under the pretext of combating threats to national sovereignty. Justifying the establishment of the SPO, Fidesz parliamentary group leader Mate Kocsis said, “We want to nettle left-wing journalists, fake civilians, and dollar politicians.”
As the Orban government’s efforts to consolidate right-wing control continue at home, elsewhere around the world, its tactics are being replicated. Its successes in Hungary have served as an inspiration for other far-right autocrats who see Orban as a first mover in establishing a conservative utopia, with far-right hegemony over all aspects of political, social, cultural, and economic life.
The Orban leadership takes this role as an inspiration and far-right instigator for others seriously. Well-funded Hungarian think tanks like the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) are making moves in Brussels to bring the Orban-brand of xenophobia, transphobia, and climate scepticism to the political mainstream in the European Union. MCC claims that it is building an alternative conservative agenda and political culture that challenges the “centrist outlook on public life”.
This agenda is particularly evident in a conference organised by MCC Brussels titled “Battle for the Soul of Europe.” The event brought together right-wing politicians, academics, public intellectuals, literary figures, and journalists from across Europe, alongside prominent American conservative thinkers and commentators.
Hungary also eagerly plays host to conservatives from around the world as a way of “spreading the knowledge”. Through visiting fellowships, book talks, and public panel discussions, institutions like MCC, the Hungary Foundation, and the Danube Institute in Budapest are nurturing a globally connected intelligentsia working towards crafting a conservative future.
Indeed, today, Hungary has become an important pit stop for world-touring conservative figures, from Nigel Biggar to the likes of Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson. In 2026, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will return to Hungary for a fifth time.
The announcement of the 2026 edition of CPAC Hungary declares proudly, “We were Trump before Trump after all, and at CPAC Hungary, the key phrase: ‘No migration! No gender! No war!’ was first spoken. This has become official policy in the United States.”
As the authors of World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order argue, the global nature of the far right is well established. Nonetheless, within this interconnected movement, Orban’s Hungary has played a defining role. Recent polls show that, for the first time since 2010, Orban will face a tough challenge from the opposition. Orban’s right-wing friends around the world know this, and they are coming to the rescue of the first mover in this global tilt to the right.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
