J.D. Vance went to Hungary to defend the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and western civilization itself. “Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy?” he beseeched a crowd in Budapest last week. “Will you stand for western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the god of our fathers?” Defy “the bureaucrats” of the European Union, he told them; go to the polls and stand with Orbán. The Hungarian people did not listen. On Sunday, they ended Orbán’s 16-year-long rule and handed power to Péter Magyar, a onetime Orbán ally who ran on an anti-corruption message. Magyar’s party, Tisza, has won two-thirds of the country’s parliamentary seats, a supermajority which allows it to reverse Orbán’s most autocratic assaults on the Constitution and the rule of law. Vance told Fox News on Monday that he was saddened, though not surprised, by the result. Orbán’s polling has been terrible, but the campaign speech was “the right thing to do” for such a loyal friend of the Trump White House, he added.

Orbán’s loss is a blow to Vance, who has aligned himself with the departing prime minister and his party, Fidesz. There are similarities between the two men. Both had a Christian awakening when it was convenient; both are obsessed with fertility; both scapegoat immigrants. Orbán once said that Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” a kind of bigotry Vance echoed when he smeared Haitian immigrants in Ohio. Resentment is part of the Vance brand and has been since Hillbilly Elegy, which makes him a natural counterpart to Orbán. Both act and speak like they are populist heroes at war with the elite.

Still, Vance is one player in a much bigger game. As Orbán concentrated power, he built a sophisticated, transnational infrastructure to prop up reactionaries around the world. In the process, he became an intellectual and political hero to the American new right — a nativist and profoundly illiberal movement.

Orbán reserved his generosity for........

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