A discomfort with Western liberalism is growing in Eastern Europe
BUDAPEST, Hungary — When President Biden greets scores of nations at his virtual "Summit for Democracy" this coming week, one member of the Western alliance won't be there.
Hungary, on the Eastern edge of the European Union, was not invited.
Washington and EU leaders in Brussels have repeatedly accused the country's ultranationalist government, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, of undermining democracy. Biden once name-checked Hungary when referring to the "thugs of the world."
But Laszlo Magas, a retired professor who helped bring an end to communism in Hungary, chalks up his country's political isolation to one thing: Western liberal bias.
"Hungary is not the West's colony," says Magas, an Orban supporter who echoes many of the prime minister's views. "The whole world is being misled about us. The mainstream media is full of fake news about us. The liberals want you to think Hungary doesn't know what democracy is because we don't share their beliefs."
Europe, he says, is ideologically divided between the conservative East and the more liberal West, something like red-and-blue America.
"And the border is the [former] Iron Curtain,"
