John Laughland

The GIOR has report­ed that John 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.”