Dutch & Hungarian Extremists Together Again; FvD Leader John Laughland Pushes “The Great Reset” at Budapest Conference

Hun­gar­i­an media is report­ing on a two-day con­fer­ence host­ed in Budapest by the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium. Accord­ing to the V4 Agency report:

Octo­ber 4, 2022 As Europe and Hun­gary are fac­ing seri­ous chal­lenges and tri­als, rad­i­cal changes will be need­ed to address the eco­nom­ic prob­lems caused by the war and sanc­tions, par­tic­i­pants heard at the two-day con­fer­ence host­ed by the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium (MCC) in Hungary’s cap­i­tal. 20 inter­na­tion­al speak­ers and experts from ten coun­tries and 15 from Hun­gary shared their views at the 4th MCC Budapest Sum­mit between 29 Sep­tem­ber and 1 Octo­ber. The con­fer­ence was attend­ed by around 800. Recent his­to­ry decid­ed the theme of this autumn’s MCC Budapest Sum­mit, with the focal point being the Rus­sia-Ukraine war and its ensu­ing eco­nom­ic effects. Numer­ous experts con­tributed to the two-day event, which kicked off with a pre­sen­ta­tion deliv­ered by Tuo­mas Mali­nen on Thurs­day evening, MCC’s state­ment reads.

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The report goes on to sum­ma­rize the par­tic­i­pants’ views which appear to have been neg­a­tive in their entire­ty, with no speak­ers view­ing the war in Ukraine as any­thing but cat­a­stroph­ic for Europe. The most notable speak­er at the con­fer­ence was John Laugh­land, iden­ti­fied only as a lec­tur­er in polit­i­cal sci­ence and his­to­ry and a vis­it­ing fel­low at the MCC. A paper by Laugh­land dat­ed two days ear­li­er is titled “The world econ­o­my as a tool of war, The West tried to turn the world econ­o­my from a pledge of peace into an instru­ment of war.” An excerpt from Laugh­land’s paper cen­ters on the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry known as “the Great Reset.”

The West is impos­ing strong sanc­tions, with the aim of “wag­ing a total eco­nom­ic war against Rus­sia” and “caus­ing the col­lapse of the Russ­ian econ­o­my” (in the words of French Finance Min­is­ter Bruno Le Maire in March 2022), try­ing to turn the world econ­o­my from a pledge of peace into an instru­ment of war. The same West­ern com­pa­nies that should have ensured that Rus­si­a’s for­eign pol­i­cy, and indeed its entire cul­ture, was aligned with that of the West by their pres­ence in Rus­sia were forced to close down and return home. Regard­less of the ques­tion of whether sanc­tions work and whether Euro­peans suf­fer more from the effects of sanc­tions than Rus­sians, this is a very unex­pect­ed devel­op­ment. The West seems to have giv­en up its 30 years of glob­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy to adopt instead some­thing most rem­i­nis­cent of Napoleon’s con­ti­nen­tal block­ade (1806–1814), which aimed to bring Britain to its knees In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, this appar­ent turn revealed the real­i­ty behind the appar­ent lib­er­al­ism of glob­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy. As we can see from the lan­guage of the “Great Reset”, glob­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy is not about increas­ing free­dom, but about increas­ing lead­er­ship con­trol through top-down poli­cies decid­ed by elites. Every word that leaves Klaus Schwab’s mouth is based on the assump­tion that human soci­ety is dan­ger­ous­ly anar­chic and that it must be gov­erned cen­tral­ly, on a glob­al scale. The glob­al­ists’ hos­tile atti­tude toward nation­al sov­er­eign­ty is not because they sup­port indi­vid­ual free­dom in the face of the sup­posed author­i­tar­i­an­ism of states, but because sov­er­eign­ty for them embod­ies that (col­lec­tive) free­dom and unpre­dictabil­i­ty that they can­not tol­er­ate. [Google Trans­lat­ed from Hungarian]

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An Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue (ISD) report  describes the “Great Reset” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry as follows:

Feb­ru­ary 2021 The Great Reset is the name of an ini­tia­tive launched by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF) in June 2020 that called for “fair­er out­comes” and a rethink­ing of glob­al invest­ment and gov­ern­ment expen­di­ture in order to revive the world’s econ­o­my in light of the cat­a­stroph­ic eco­nom­ic effects of the pan­dem­ic. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists believe this ini­tia­tive is in fact a plot to destroy cap­i­tal­ism and enact a one world gov­ern­ment under the cov­er of COVID-19.

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A Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) inves­ti­ga­tion revealed in August 2021 that Rus­sia had launched a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign spread­ing “the Great Reset” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in the West.

The GIOR report­ed ear­li­er that Laugh­land is a British nation­al and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist with close ties to Rus­sia who recent­ly spoke at this year’s open­ing of the MCC, a Hun­gar­i­an edu­ca­tion facil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the gov­ern­ment of Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán, Rus­si­a’s clos­est part­ner in the EU. A GIOR report on the new Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive alliance explained the role of the MCC in the Orbán gov­ern­men­t’s strug­gle to con­trol Hun­gar­i­an high­er edu­ca­tion and to cre­ate a plat­form for rightwing figures.

Aside from his role at the MCC, Laugh­land is direc­tor of the Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al, an arm of the Dutch far-right, pop­ulist polit­i­cal par­ty known as the FvD. In July of this year, the GIOR report­ed that Laugh­land was sched­uled to deliv­er a keynote at a pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da event spon­sored by the FvD, where the Russ­ian ambas­sador to the Nether­lands was expect­ed to par­tic­i­pate. Since that time, the GIOR has cov­ered the fol­low­ing actions by Laugh­land and the FvD:

• The FvD post­ed “A peti­tion for afford­able ener­gy in the EU.” seek­ing an end to EU sanc­tions on Rus­sia for its inva­sion of Ukraine.
• Laugh­land pub­lished an arti­cle titled “The Amer­i­cans Did It,” attempt­ing to cast doubt on the idea that the Rus­sians were like­ly behind the recent sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage of the Nord­stream 2 gas pipelines.
• Thier­ry Baudet, the leader of the FvD, was fea­tured on a pod­cast with US rightwing extrem­ist Steve Ban­non and used the occa­sion to pro­mote the “Great Reset Theory.”