Long War

THE RIGHT’S “METOO!”:

Identity Politics Is a Problem for Conservative Christians Too (George Yancey, 4/12/26, The Dispatch)_

Progressive identity politics led to the rise of movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which were more successful political endeavors than outright Marxism. Conservative political activists became aware of this relative success; consequently, it was unsurprising that Republicans such as Donald Trump tapped into some dynamics of progressive political identity to create their own form of identity politics. Whereas the left had defined racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women as oppressed groups for those promoting progressive identity politics, the right defined whites, men, and Christians as oppressed groups for those promoting conservative identity politics.

Now we have the rise of Christian identity politics. While conservative Christian activism erupted in the 1970s and has remained active, the early version of Christian identity politics did not focus on the notion of Christians as victims. Instead, it focused on implementing Christian values in the issues of abortion and sexuality. But more recently, some conservative Christians have focused on the idea of Christians as an oppressed group. Though it may seem counterintuitive, conservative Christians are not especially likely to be politically active. Indeed, they tend to lag behind the nonreligious and progressive Christians in the degree to which they participate in political activity. But some of those who have become very politically active have tapped into their own version of identity politics to motivate their political activism.

PROJECT 2026:

How to Defeat a Very Trumpy Authoritarian Leader: “Hungarians would vote for a goat…if it was running against Orbán.” (Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, April 10, 2026, Mother Jones)

But why the outsized attention to an election in a Central European country of fewer than 10 million people? Well, because Orbán’s singular brand of pugnacious Christian nationalism and the implications of his rule have extended far beyond the fate of this nation and its 62-year-old leader. Orban is one of the most successful populist strongmen of the 21st century. He has successfully curried favor with both President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has antagonized the EU by systematically undermining civil society in Hungary, channelling some of its generous largesse to enrich himself and his cronies, and blocking essential funding for Ukraine. With no evidence whatsoever, he insists that “Brussels is pushing us into war,” accusing the EU and anyone within earshot of attempting to drag Hungary into the conflict in Ukraine and, perforce, with Russia.

Whatever the geopolitical ramifications—or implications for right-wing populism and America’s MAGA movement—for Hungarians, this election is existential, and exhausting. A pervasive sense of anxiety permeates conversations in social media and within families, and even casual interactions are charged. Hungarians have faced the complete Fidesz takeover of traditional media channels, and turned to Facebook and alternative media channels, which are abuzz with conversation, debate, and sharing of insights—or the latest Fidesz outrage. A friend in Budapest hinted darkly at a national curfew after the election, and one of my Hungarian cousins said her hairstylist was so spent that he planned to take Monday off to recover—as did her husband.

For many Americans, of course, Orbán’s Hungary is a miniature version of Trump’s US—indeed, in some ways, it may have served as a role model for MAGA in its crusade to dismantle democratic institutions and crucial elements of civil society. When Trump first ran for election in 2016, Orbán had already “built the wall”—in his case, an electrified razor wire fence constructed by prisoners—on Hungary’s southern border, attempting to staunch the flow of Syrian refugees who, to be sure, were more likely to use Hungary as a transit point than a final destination. This also allowed Orbán to declare a “state of emergency,” which has not been lifted since. Sound familiar?

In quashing dissent, extravagantly rewarding his allies, enriching himself and his family, despairing over the dilution of the purity of the Hungarian blood line, marginalizing and oppressing the LGBTQ community—well, it’s all there really. The Orbán playbook is channeled in various ways by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second term. So understanding how the Fidesz machine might be defeated could hold some lessons for MAGA’s foes.

Depending, of course, on what happens on Sunday. Because this election might conceivably serve as a blueprint for tampering with a free and fair balloting process, or how an autocrat will challenge its results. Election laws have been altered by Fidesz to gerrymander voting districts and reduce Parliamentary seats, all in their favor. (Sound familiar?)

In cities like Budapest, or even college towns, the level of engagement and rejection of Fidesz is unambivalent, but less-educated and provincial Hungarians in the eastern part of the country remain rock solid on team Orbán. I asked Csaba Pleh, a professor of cognitive science at the Central European University, if he was concerned about election meddling. “I do not agree with those voices that claim that Orbán will create disturbances or postpone the elections,” he said. “To be cynical, I feel that his entourage is too busy securing their money. They do not have the strength or the time to try to disrupt the elections.”

FA HATES ANTIFA:

The Real Antifa (Livia Gershon April 2, 2026, Jstor Daily)

Copsey and Merrill note that the term “antifa,” short for anti-fascist, comes from the 1930s German Antifaschistische Aktion. But, unlike that Communist Party-sponsored organization, Antifa groups in the U.S. today are autonomous, ad hoc groups that exist for the narrow purpose of confronting white supremacists and other fascists.

Copsey and Merrill focus particularly on Rose City Antifa (RCA), one of the more high-profile local groups. They note that its members are typically between 25 and 35 years old, mostly white, and split fairly evenly by gender, with LGBTQ+ people well represented. Becoming an RCA member is a six-month process designed to ensure that members share values and are willing and able to work together.

Copsey and Merrill find that, in practice, RCA and similar groups tend to view violence as a poor choice.
While RCA and other Antifa groups are often connected with larger webs of activists engaged in different kinds of action, they themselves are essentially a defensive force rather than one focused on winning elections, fomenting revolution, or any other forward-looking goals. Their tactics often involve putting their “bodies on the line” to stop fascists from promoting their ideology, rather than relying on political or legal action.

WHAT THEY MEAN BY aNTI-wOKE:

The Heritage of American Terror (Charles M. Blow, October 8, 2025, Bitter Southerner)

Peter H. Wood, a history professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says that what he finds striking is the “longevity” and “gestational period” of America’s appetite and tolerance for the forcible control of bodies — then Black, now brown — and “a lot of the things we’re seeing now resonate with that [pre-Civil War period.]”

Out of this period came the slave patrol, official local law enforcement, and slave catchers, bounty hunters often prowling the streets of cities in non-slave states or monitoring known routes to freedom.

The lust for control didn’t end with slavery. In a way, it was amplified. As Wood put it, during Reconstruction the Ku Klux Klan picked up on the tradition of slave patrols and night riders, “but they intensified it partly because they had lost control, you know, that the country had become woke.”

That battle against liberalism and multi-racialism, a form of wokeness, keeps resurfacing and has now done so again in the Trump era.

THE REVOLUTION EATS ITSELF:

The Historical Irony of Feminism’s Silencing of Women (Abigail Favale, November 30, 2021, Church Life Journal)

When I was in graduate school, I remember reading an essay in which Jacques Derrida purports to “write as a woman.” I was in a gender studies program in a highly secular context, and we had a lively seminar on Derrida’s essay, eventually reaching the consensus that no, Jacques, you can’t simply step into a woman’s identity like you might step into a set of trousers. This was the mid-2000s, a different era, when the word “woman” still had some fleeting connection, however tenuous, to female embodiment.

Now, fifteen years later, we have reached a juncture where appropriating the identity of women is considered laudatory, liberating, the next frontier of civil rights—and raising cautions or questions is blasphemous. Increasingly, defining a woman as an adult human female is considered hate speech.

AMERICA IS CONSERVATIVE, NOT TRUMPIST:

Why Democrats are suddenly winning back the left — and the “double-haters”: Plus, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans just hit a decade low. (G. Elliott Morris, Apr 05, 2026, Strength in Numbers)

The Democrats’ consolidation of left-wing liberalism is one piece of a broader backlash to Trumpism that shows up in the polling data right now. Another notable finding this week is from a new CNN/SSRS survey that found that about one-quarter of the public holds an unfavorable view of both parties. These are the so-called “double haters.” This group prefers Democrats on the 2025 generic ballot by 31 points.

This is a big deal for two reasons. First, that’s a massive shift; Double haters broke for Trump in 2016 and again in 2024. Now they’re swinging hard the other way.

Like Franklin’s polling, the CNN report also finds that Democrats’ gains are driven largely by opposition to the GOP, not enthusiasm for Democrats themselves. When asked what they dislike about Democrats, 22% of double haters called the party “do-nothing” and 11% said they aren’t standing up enough to Trump and the GOP, while 10% said they’re too liberal.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Judge Rebukes Prosecutors as ICE Protest Cases Falter: “Not Ready for Prime Time” (The Intellectualist, Apr 03, 2026)

A series of federal prosecutions against immigration-enforcement protesters in Los Angeles has encountered setbacks in court, with some cases ending in acquittals or dismissals and others drawing scrutiny over the government’s evidence and the circumstances of the arrests. […]

Reporting from the Los Angeles Times described one of the most serious courtroom setbacks: a federal judge’s criticism of prosecutors after late disclosure of evidence in the Escobar-Gutierrez case, followed by a reported dismissal with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again. During the proceedings, U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. told prosecutors, “You’ve got to be ready for prime time and you’re not,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

In arguing for dismissal, a federal public defender echoed that criticism, describing the episode as “amateur hour at the U.S. attorney’s office,” also according to the Los Angeles Times.

TRUMPISM DOESN’T WORK:

Orbán Will Lose Hungary’s Election in Two Weeks—If It’s Clean (H. David Baer, March 30, 2026, The Bulwark)

But Hungary is hardly a democracy at all. It’s an autocratic, kleptocratic mafia state, where all the levers of power are controlled behind the scenes by a single man. Since returning to power in 2010, Orbán has rewritten the constitution and amended it fifteen times, changed the electoral laws to give his party structural advantages, captured the top layer of the judiciary, occupied the chief prosecutor’s office to protect his cronies and prosecute his enemies, weaponized the tax authority, commandeered the media, installed spy software on the phones of journalists and opposition figures, harassed and restricted the rights of NGOs, revoked the rights of religious communities unwilling to collaborate with his regime, forced the country’s most prestigious university to move to Austria, harassed opposition political parties, denied them resources and spied on them illegally, nationalized and reprivatized banks and businesses to reshape and dominate the economy, steered his country into an alliance with Russia, Hungary’s historic enemy, and enriched his family and friends beyond their wildest dreams.

Given these overwhelming structural advantages, many observers of Hungary—myself included—had concluded that Orbán could never be removed from office through democratic means; that the end of his regime would come through crisis and collapse. The fact that Orbán is not only likely to lose a national election but could easily get creamed is nothing short of utterly amazing.

His kryptonite has proven to be Péter Magyar. A former Fidesz insider, Magyar understands the regime he is fighting against and has proven remarkably adept at anticipating and countering its tactics. Bestowed with seemingly superhuman levels of energy, he has barnstormed the country since he burst on the scene suddenly two years ago, demonstrating that with enough conviction, determination, and will, persuasion is possible even in a soft autocratic regime. And unlike the liberal opposition he replaced, Magyar understands the importance of national symbols and patriotism. This has allowed him to steal Fidesz’s nationalist brand and highlight the regime’s enormous hypocrisy and betrayal of the country.