Article content continued

So how does Taylor plan to change this? “That’s a good question. I think it might be possible to run as a Republican under certain circumstances, but we are really very far behind our European comrades on this. They’ve been much more successful at expressing themselves politically.” Taylor pointed to several congressional Republicans—Reps. Joe Wilson, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, and Dana Rohrabacher, among them—whose anti-immigrant rhetoric has at times mirrored that of far-right parties in Europe.

In Budapest, I also spoke with Kevin DeAnna, a young conservative activist from Washington, D.C. DeAnna was staying in a cheap hostel with Spencer, since they had both been thrown out of the swankier hotel where they had planned to stay. DeAnna joined Taylor as a sort of last-minute organizer of the conference, or what was left of it. He met the attendees in a dingy subway station, wearing baggy jeans, sneakers, and a blazer and tie. “We’re kind of running this underground as a guerrilla movement now,” DeAnna said when he arrived to the subway station, where the conference attendees had been told to gather, awaiting further instructions.

Despite the intervention by Hungarian authorities, the conference did go on as planned, even though Taylor insisted on calling it a dîner-débat, rather than a conference, to avoid possible legal repercussions. The day after the meeting, Taylor and his fellow attendees stood in the sunshine in Heroes’ Square, discussing whether they would visit the House of Terror museum, where the violence of communism is documented, or the Museum of Ethnography. He was pleased with the event. Europe gets it, he said. And America? “The left is constantly describing us as either insane, or evil, or ignorant, or all three. That’s simply not the case. They are, frankly, terrified that people who hold positions like mine or Richard Spencer’s will have an opportunity to speak openly and publicly. If Americans had an opportunity to vote for my views, I believe many of them would. But the political system is not set up in a way that makes that possible or practical.”