The Weekly Forum - 16 April 2026
20 april 2026 | Forum for Democracy Intl
Thierry Baudet, FVD’s founder and president, and John Laughland, director of FVD International, attended the ‘U-Turn for Europe’ conference, which FVD sponsored, in Vienna last weekend. The goal is to create a conservative network dedicated to rediscovering and restoring European civilisation. The organiser, Stefan Korte, who lives near Dresden, has obtained the patronage of Leo Hohenberg, otherwise known as Prince Leo von Hohenberg, the great-grandson of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination on 28 June 1914 sparked off the First World War. In addition to his personal talents and charm, Prince Leo’s patronage of this wonderful endeavour is a huge honour. In his talk, Thierry spoke about meta-politics – FVD’s phenomenal undertakings with young people, in the food sector (Eerlijk Eten), with the Forum App, various other ambitious plans -while John addressed the question of how to define European civilisation.
John Laughland was also once again a guest on Stanislav Krapivnik’s podcast, In the Eyes of Truth, this week. They discussed the psychotic nature of the post-truth world Donald Trump and his administration have created. One minute, the Iran war was won on Day One, the next Trump is threatening to defeat Iran and demanding NATO’s help to do so, while denouncing the alliance as a paper tiger which will never help the USA. Is the point of all this to destabilise opponents or it is just what it appears to be, just incoherent rambling?
Viktor Orban has been defeated after 16 years in power. This is a very severe setback for conservative and patriotic movements across Europe. There is much talk of AfD and the Rassemblement national but Orban was in power, unlike them, and for a very long time indeed. He managed to create a regional network of opposition to the EU’s warmongering, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Republika Srpska in Bosnia. Now the central link of that chain has broken. The Prime Minister designate, Peter Magyar, Made in Brussels, has lost no time using an old Hungarian irredentist trope to declare his hostility to Slovakia, where PM Robert Fico is the only anti-war head of government left in the EU. David Engels has written a long piece reflecting on the fall-out from Orban’s defeat, which we are honoured to republish.
George Szamuely and Kit Klarenberg were our guests on The Forum this week. Together with John Laughland, they are British citizens who have been held for hours at Britain’s borders and interrogated by the security services. These ordeals are, alas, proof that the UK has become a repressive state.