Conservative peer and right-wing commentator Toby Young is due to deliver a talk tomorrow (25 November) at the in-house think tank of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán.

Young is being interviewed by Mathias Corvinus Collegium’s “Center for Journalism” in Budapest, Hungary, about censorship in the UK. Entitled “when a tweet can land you in jail”, the event will discuss how people have been arrested in Britain for posting on social media.

Young is covering this topic despite Orbán’s record of censorship and repression. Since he returned to power in 2010, the Hungarian prime minister has rewritten the country’s constitution, seized control of its media and judiciary, and imposed sweeping laws designed to crack down on the rights of LGBT people, women and girls, asylum seekers, and civil society groups.

Orbán’s regime has also not been opposed to arresting people for their social media posts. In 2020, a new law passed by Orbán and his Fidesz government resulted in dozens of people being investigated and detained for allegedly scaremongering on social media about the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Toby Young’s decision to speak at MCC’s ‘Center for Journalism’ about censorship in the UK is deeply misguided and irresponsible,” said Olivier Hoedeman of the anti-corruption campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory.

“MCC is a propaganda mouthpiece of Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian regime, which has for almost 15 years been cracking down on the free press, exercising censorship towards journalists that report critically on the regime.

“The timing of Young’s appearance at MCC couldn’t be worse – Orbán’s party is currently pushing through a new Putin-inspired foreign agents law that would deal a final blow to freedom of expression, independent journalism and civil society.”

MCC is bankrolled by the Hungarian government and is seen as an instrument of Orbán’s regime.

The group received more than $1.3 billion in Hungarian state funding in 2020, largely via a 10 percent stake in the country’s national oil company MOL.

MCC, which has a Brussels arm, also received a 10 percent stake in the pharmaceutical firm Gedeon Richter, plus $462 million (€402 million) in cash, and $9 million (€7.8 million) in property. In 2023, MCC earned €50 million in dividends from MOL, a firm that has in recent years received 65 percent of its oil from Russia, according to an investigation by German broadcaster ZDF.

MCC Brussels has called on the EU to “ditch the net zero madness” and stated that one of its key campaigning objectives in 2025 has been to help create “a Europe unshackled from environmentalism”.

MCC has been working with the Heritage Foundation, the radical right-wing U.S. group that authored the Project 2025 blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term, to disseminate its proposals for how to dismantle the European Union. Viktor Orbán’s political director Balázs Orbán is the chair of MCC.

Young, who became a Member of the House of Lords in January, is a prominent opponent of climate action, and has regularly promoted the idea that carbon dioxide does not contribute to climate change but instead is a benefit to the planet.

GB News presenter Charlie Peters previously spoke at an MCC Center for Journalism event on 24 September.

Young and MCC were approached for comment.

Reform and Hungary

The British right – in particular those associated with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – are developing ever-closer ties to MCC and Orbán’s regime.

Leading this mission has been anti-migration commentator Matthew Goodwin, the newly-appointed honorary president of Reform’s student wing.

Goodwin was until recently an MCC “visiting fellow” and has spoken at its last two summer festivals. He’s also due to speak at MCC Brussels’ “Battle for the Soul of Europe” conference in early December.

Goodwin, who’s a GB News presenter and a visiting professor at the private University of Buckingham, is a vocal admirer of Orbán’s government.

In an interview with Mandiner – a pro-Orbán publication – in August 2024, Goodwin claimed that “The British elite often portrays Hungary as a country in violation of EU laws, regulations and standards. But I think their country is just resisting the pressure to impose a liberal agenda represented by a narrow minority of Western countries.”

He went on to praise Orbán’s regime for “fighting” the supposed liberal elite on issues such as Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Hungary’s approach to the war has seen it attempt to systematically block and delay EU military aid packages, and sanctions on Russian oligarchs. 

After MCC’s 2024 summer festival, Goodwin tweeted: “I just spent 4 days in Hungary, a conservative country criticised by elites across the West. I saw no crime. No homeless people. No riots. No unrest. No drugs. No mass immigration. No broken borders. No self-loathing. No chaos. And now I’ve just landed back in the UK.”

Goodwin has also recently appeared at numerous other events connected to the Hungarian government – including speaking at the Roger Scruton Symposium at the Hungarian Embassy in London alongside MCC Brussels executive director Frank Furedi in October, and at the Budapest Global Dialogue co-hosted by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation in June.

The Hungarian Institute of International Affairs is funded by the government and speakers included Balázs Orbán, several Hungarian government ministers and advisors, former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, as well as representatives from MCC, the Danube Institute, and the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as the Legatum Institute).

The University of Buckingham runs a partnership with MCC whereby students attending MCC training programmes are allowed to study at the British university.

Goodwin’s sympathy for Hungary also reflects the views of new Reform senior advisor James Orr, who has praised Orbán’s approach to the Ukraine war.

At this year’s MCC summer festival, Orr lauded Hungary’s government – describing it as a “counterexample to the ideology in my own country that rejects national pride and heritage”.

He has also claimed that “a lot more people have got into trouble for free speech offences in the UK than in Putin’s Russia” – a statement not supported by credible evidence.

In addition, during last year’s general election campaign, Reform employed the editor of a publication that has received funding from Orbán’s regime.

Official records show that Reform paid £5,100 to Mick Hume for 17 days of “communications work” from 13 June to 4 July 2024. Hume is the editor-in-chief of the European Conservative, which has received funding from the Batthyány Lajos Foundation (BLA), a non-profit group that channels money from the Hungarian government. Hume is also an MCC visiting fellow.

Goodwin, Hume, and the European Conservative were approached for comment.

Orbán’s Repression

Orbán’s regime has been condemned by international watchdogs for restricting democratic freedoms and persecuting opposition groups.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the Hungarian prime minister has built a “media empire subject to his party’s orders”.

Fidesz now controls 80 percent of the country’s media, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that “independent and investigative journalists face major obstacles in their work, including surveillance, threats, limited or no access to decision makers and public information and smear campaigns against them in pro-government media.”

After winning the country’s 2010 election, Fidesz fired more than 1,600 staff at the public broadcaster MTVA, replacing them with “government talking heads”, according to HRW.

Orbán’s administration has also attacked the rights of minority groups. Recent constitutional amendments have allowed the government to ban LGBT events, and revoke the citizenship of dual nationals if they are deemed to constitute a threat to “public order, public safety, or national security”.

The government has also banned pro-Palestine protests and has tightened abortion rules, making it “harder to access a legal and safe abortion” according to Amnesty International.

In 2018, Hungary passed a law – later ruled to be incompatible with EU law – that made it a crime to help asylum seekers.

Orbán has also been accused of packing the legal system with judges favourable to the regime after rewriting the constitution, after appointing a family friend to oversee the judiciary.

A version of this article was published by The New World