Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s career as a champion of “illiberal democracy” and a poster boy for “national conservatism” took a startling turn last Saturday when his speech at a summer event in Romania veered into explicit “Great Replacement” rhetoric, complete with a denunciation of the “mixed-race world” of liberal Western countries. The controversy escalated on Tuesday when sociologist Zsuzsa Hegedüs, a longtime Orbán adviser and ally, submitted a scathing resignation letter that slammed her now-former boss for delivering an “openly racist speech” and “a purely Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels.” (After the letter was leaked to the press, Orbán issued a petulant statement professing shock that Hegedüs could suspect him of racism.) The speech was also denounced by the International Auschwitz Committee; by Hungary’s chief rabbi, Robert Frolich; and by Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, who called it “unacceptable.”…

In context, Dreher insists, Orbán isn’t talking about race-mixing at all but “using the term ‘race’ as a symbol of religion and culture”—in other words, as a euphemism for “Muslims,” which is apparently not bigoted at all. (Yes, you can discuss problems of acculturation and integration in immigrant communities, particularly following large influxes of migrants from war-torn countries, without promoting hate. No, talking about “Islamic invasion” or “Islamic occupation” as Dreher does—using more belligerent language than Orbán himself did in his speech—is not the way to go about it.)

In fact, even if “he’s only talking about Muslims” were a viable excuse for the prime minister’s words, it would be patently inaccurate in this case. While Orbán did mention “Islamic civilization’s . . . incursion,” he explicitly defined the “post-Western” part of Europe as “a world where European and non-European peoples live together” (emphasis mine), which he believes amounts to loss of nationhood. And while he predicted that Hungary would eventually have to take Christian refugees from those de-Westernized and deracinated Western countries, there is no indication that he would be willing to extend such a welcome to Christian refugees from the Middle East or Africa. Finally, Twitter users with knowledge of Hungarian language and culture have pointed out that the word for “race” used by Orbán has a long history of being used with a strong antisemitic connotation—something that was clearly not lost on Hegedüs, who is Jewish and a child of Holocaust survivors.