Justice Minister: Left’s attempts to exercise influence stop at Hungary

Varga said Hungary was also a rock on which the secure support of international conservative cooperation could be built.

Hungary is a place in the middle of Europe where freedom is still alive and where people can air their opinions without fear, “even if one pursues conservative family values, is a conservative, and believes in God.”

Varga said self-censorship and the thought-police had become “parts of everyday life” in western liberal democracies.

“We Hungarians are a freedom-loving nation and it is unacceptable to us, after many years of communist dictatorship, that one can be punished for speaking freely,” she said. In Hungary it is permitted to say “the mother is a woman and the father is a man” without fear of recrimination.

Hungary’s child protection law ensures parents have the right to the final say in their child’s sex education and it prevents “gender ideologies” from entering schools and kindergartens, she said. Several countries have joined a “shameful pan-European lawsuit” that is trying to force Hungarians to allow gender movements to take control of children’s upbringing, she added.

Varga said the global network of think tanks, NGOs and foundations created after the presidency of Ronald Reagan as a tool for US foreign policy had been hijacked by businesspeople, “including a Hungarian financier”, who discovered “great potential” in investing money in the network’s expensive operations, thereby gaining influence in countries where the organisations operated, and bypassing rules of democratic elections and party financing, as well as issuing instructions on what policies to pursue.

“In Europe we are still battling with this network of organisations controlled by global private capital and progressive liberal ideology, a cephalopod with hundreds of tentacles,” she said.

Citing a prophecy by Padre Pio about Hungary, Varga said: “We will not give up our Christian morals or conservative system of values.”