The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) returns to Hungary on May 29, 2025 featuring a host of authoritarian and bigoted speakers from the United States, Hungary, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Israel, Estonia, Austria, and the Czech Republic, among others. This is the latest in a series of CPAC events, including one that occurred in Poland earlier in the week.
CPAC Hungary is organized by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s main propaganda organization, the Center for Fundamental Rights (Alapjogokert, CFR), and due to massive financing from the Hungarian treasury, CPAC Hungary tends to be one of the largest events within the franchise outside of the yearly American conference (see the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s profile of the Center for Fundamental Rights here).
Here are a few of the individuals who will be attending this year as speakers.
Far-right social media figures:
- Eva Vlaardingerbroek is an Identitarian activist and prominent believer in the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which alleges that political elites are secretly orchestrating a “replacement” of the native white population with a non-white immigrant population, and other conspiracy theories. Her appearance comes only a week after having participated in the “remigration” conference in Italy, alongside neo-fascists, antisemites, white supremacists, and other extremists, advocating for the ethnic cleansing of non-white individuals by way of mass deportation as a “solution” to the Great Replacement (see GPAHE’s reporting on this event here).
- Jack Posobiec, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has numerous ties to white supremacist groups and has led disinformation campaigns.
- Dave Rubin, an American content creator who was implicated in unknowingly accepting money from a covert Russian influence operation in 2024 to produce content favorable to Russian interests.
- Ben Shapiro, the American Daily Wire (DW) content creator who once tweeted in support of Israeli settlements stating: “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.” He will attend alongside fellow DW contributor Michael Knowles who stated at CPAC 2023 that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
- Yair Netanyahu, the far-right son of the current Israeli prime minister, and podcast host, who regularly makes inflammatory comments about Muslims and Palestinians and directs wild conspiracy theories at the opponents of his father, earning him the applause of the white supremacist website Daily Stormer. Over the past several years, the young Netanyahu has built ties with far-right politicians in the West including senior Trump campaign staffers in 2019 and Brazilian far-right activist Eduardo Bolsonaro, whom he invited on his podcast in 2020. He has previously voiced his support for far-right politicians including Orbán, the UK’s Nigel Farage, Italian Matteo Salvini, and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders in EU elections, referred to anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson as a “political prisoner,” and was quoted in the German far-right political party Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) campaign material calling for the death of the European Union and the return of a “Christian” Europe.
Far-right leaders:
- Santiago Abascal is the leader of the far-right Spanish party VOX that holds anti-immigrant views and nostalgia and fondness for the former fascist Franco dictatorship. He will attend alongside fellow VOX MEP Jorge Buxadé, a former candidate for two different Falangist parties in the 1990s and member of Vox’s far-right Foro Madrid (Madrid Forum) organization.
- Geert Wilders, the leader of the rabidly anti-Muslim, far-right Dutch party Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV), known for referring to the Koran as a “fascist book” that should be banned “like Mein Kampf.”
- Isabella Tovaglieri, an MEP for the Italian far-right party Lega (League) led by Matteo Salvini. Identitarian activist Andrea Ballarati, who helped organize the “remigration” conference, recently expressed his thanks to Tovaglieri for “fighting for remigration” (see GPAHE’s reporting on this conference here).
- Herbert Kickl, the leader of the far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria, FPÖ), who calls himself the “Volkskanzler” (People’s Chancellor) a term that originated with the Nazis, and advocates for a “Fortress Austria” and “remigration.” Other scheduled speakers from the FPÖ are Harald Vilimsky and Christian Hafenecker.
- Martin Helme, the president of the far-right Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond (Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, EKRE), who once argued while on the board of EKRE in 2013 that Estonian immigration policy should consist of: “one simple rule…if (they’re) black, show the door. As simple as that,” He emphasized that “We shouldn’t allow this problem [riots] to emerge in the first place.” Going further, he elaborated that he “want[ed] Estonia to be a white country.”
- Amichai Chikli, Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism for Likud, who previously voiced his support for Elon Musk after he was criticized for an antisemitic tweet he shared about George Soros in May 2023. Chikli voiced his support for French far-right leader Marine Le Pen in 2024.
- Stephen Bartulica, a Croatian MEP for the far-right Dom i Nacionalno Okupljanje (Home and National Rally, DOMiNO) party and member of Opus Dei who recently participated in a panel organized by the anti-LGBTQ+ legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) against the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
- Daniel Tarczynski, a Polish MEP from Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, PiS) who was quoted as saying during a meeting at the European Union Affairs Committee that “not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim.” He will attend alongside the deputy speaker of the Polish Parliament, Krysztaf Bosak, also from PiS.
- Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD). The AfD is such an extreme party that its identitarian faction, Der Flügel (The Wing), was dissolved by the party after being designated as a “proven extremist endeavor” by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in 2020. The former AfD youth group Junge Alternative für Deutschland (Young Alternative for Germany, JA) was officially categorized as an extremist organization by the BfV in 2023, and the AfD party as a whole was declared to be right-wing extremist by the BfV in May 2025.
- Viktor Orbán, the far-right authoritarian leader of Hungary whose government recently passed a constitutional amendment recognizing only “two sexes” and banning LGBTQ+ public gatherings.
Think Tank representatives:
- Edward Corrigan, the president of the election denialist group Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a member organization of the American rights-stripping Project 2025 (see GPAHE’s report on these organizations here).
- Terry Schilling, the president of the anti-LGBTQ+ American Principles Project (APP), another Project 2025 organization.
- Chad Wolf, the executive vice-president of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), an organization with an extensive amount of influence in the current Trump administration (see GPAHE’s former reporting on AFPI principals in the administration here and here). Serving in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during the first Trump administration, Wolf was one of the architects of the inhumane 2018 family separation policy, in addition to other anti-immigrant policies.
- Jerzy Kwasniewski, the co-founder and president of the Polish anti-LGBTQ+ Ordo Iuris and chairman of Christian nationalist university Collegium Intermarium (CI) (see GPAHE’s profile of the Collegium Intermarium here).
- John Eastman, the affiliated with the Project 2025 organization Claremont Institute, who is known for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
- José Antonio Kast, the former president of the international anti-LGBTQ+ coalition Political Network for Values (PNfV).
Allies of Orbán:
- Balázs Orbán, one of Viktor Orbán’s (unrelated) most trusted advisors, known for his comments saying that, unlike Ukraine, Hungary wouldn’t have defended itself against a Russian invasion. Other individuals from the Hungarian government include Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, and Viktor Orbán’s international spokesperson Zoltán Kovács, among others.
- Gavin Wax, the chairman of the New York Young Republican Club and American ambassador to the Wokebusters coalition, conceived as a “rapid reaction force and political action coalition of Conservatives in the international arena” organized by allies of Viktor Orbán (see GPAHE’s previous reporting here).
- Bryan Leib, an American senior fellow at the CFR who the Hungarians have been pushing for Trump to appoint as Hungary’s next ambassador.
- Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister who now serves as a senior visiting fellow and the director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation at the pro-Orbán Danube Institute (see GPAHE’s profile of the Danube Institute here).
- Stefi Deri and Dániel Bohár, the masters of ceremonies, who are both social media content creators from the pro-Orbán Megafon network, set up to support the agenda of the government online, and attack politicians in opposition parties, in Brussels, and in other EU member states. They are also signatories to the CFR’s “Wokebusters initiative.”
