Two lies, &c.

The 2020 election, January 6, defamation suits, Hungary, Poland, the Super Bowl, George Shultz, and more

I n my opinion, there are two great lies that must be rooted out of the Right, if the Right is to be healthy again: the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen; and the lie that the January 6 mayhem at the Capitol was the work of Antifa, BLM, and other left-wing groups.

I do not say that the Republican Party will not continue to win elections if these lies aren’t rooted out. I’m not talking about popularity. The GOP has about half the country now. I’m talking about something more like moral health. Integrity. Credibility.

I have the post-Soviet experience in mind. The lies of the Soviet period were never properly dealt with — never properly acknowledged and repented of. This has consequences every day.

Putin rides on billows of Soviet lies.

In my opinion, the American Right needs some form of lustration, or a truth-and-reconciliation effort.

• “The only people who think that the Left committed January 6 are kooks,” you may say. “No one mainstream thinks that.” Okay.

What about the Wyoming Republican Party? In censuring Liz Cheney, the party said, “Ample video evidence suggests the riot at the capital was instigated by Antifa and BLM radicals.”

What about the Oregon Republican Party? “A ‘false flag’ operation designed to discredit President Trump.” A “false flag effort.”

The latest comes from the senate majority leader in my home state, Michigan. “That wasn’t Trump people,” said Mike Shirkey, talking about the marauders of January 6. “That’s been a hoax from Day One. That was all pre-arranged.”

A little more: “That was all arranged by somebody that was funding everyone.” “It was all staged.”

Incidentally, Shirkey was saying these things in an apparent attempt to avoid censure by his fellow Republicans. (For a news story, go here.)

The January 6 lie is one that goes deep, like the election lie.

• Smartmatic, the voting-software company, filed a defamation suit against Fox News and three of its hosts, including Lou Dobbs. The next day, Fox eased Dobbs out.

I’m not for the speech regime of Canada or Great Britain. In those countries, defamation is easy to prosecute. I think it ought to be harder. But I must say, I’m glad that, even in our country, you can’t just lie and lie with no consequences whatsoever.

Do you know what I mean?

Dominion Voting Systems, too, has sued its defamers. This is conducive to health, I think. Bullies and liars need to be stood up to, else you get more bullying and lying.

About two weeks after the election, Charlie Kirk tweeted, “Has anyone checked Hunter Biden’s laptop for any references to Dominion or Smartmatic? I have a good feeling they would find something there.”

In my estimation, this tweet is almost an encapsulation of the mindset of the Right today.

• “If the #Jan6 organizers were Trump supporters,” Marjorie Taylor Greene began a tweet. She is a freshman Republican congresswoman from Georgia. Another freshman Republican, Peter Meijer of Michigan, responded, “The #Jan6 organizers were Trump supporters. They attacked the Capitol to stop the Electoral College certification,” etc. They were “emboldened by lies about a stolen election.”

Meijer concluded, “Enough lies.”

Which is good.

• Back to suing people for defamation and the rest: Did you see this news?

The Fox News Channel has reached a private settlement with the parents of the slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. The network had baselessly reported in May 2017 that Rich leaked thousands of Democratic party emails to Wikileaks during the height of the 2016 presidential campaign.

• From Budapest, Reuters reports,

A Hungarian opposition radio station lost an appeal against the removal of its licence on Tuesday, cutting by one the already dwindling ranks of media outlets critical of the country’s nationalist government.

There is a reason that Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty felt it necessary to restart its Hungarian service.

• Speaking of RFE/RL, Jamie Fly has been restored as president of the service. He was fired in a Trump purge last summer. Fly is a veteran foreign-policy analyst (Republican) and an expert on Kremlin disinformation. I did a Q&A podcast with him last August. (For a blogpost, which links to the podcast, go here.)

A valuable fellow, Jamie Fly.

• After the Kremlin’s latest crackdown on protesters, 26 members of the European Union issued a statement condemning the crackdown. There are 27 members of the EU. The EU could not issue a statement as a bloc because Hungary refused to join.

The Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán has often played this role. Hungary vetoed resolutions against the Turkish government after Turkey invaded Syria in “Operation Peace Spring,” to “cleanse” the Kurds. Orbán and the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have close ties. Orbán was the only European leader to attend Erdogan’s latest “inauguration.”

Hungary has also vetoed resolutions against China and its human-rights abuses. Orbán has forged close ties with Beijing, offering Hungary as China’s gateway to Europe. For instance, Budapest is now host to the first Chinese campus outside China itself (a branch of Fudan University). At the same time, the Orbán government has chased Central European University from Hungary.

When Vladimir Putin came to Budapest in 2017, Orbán exclaimed, “We all sense — it’s in the air — that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment.” That is hard to deny.

• A news item:

A Polish journalist was questioned by police in Warsaw last week on suspicion of “slandering the good name of the Polish nation,” following an article in which she wrote that Poles were involved in the Holocaust.

Chilling stuff, in my book.

How about this, from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum?

The current lawsuit in Poland against two eminent Holocaust historians raises serious concerns about the future of independent Holocaust scholarship in Poland and elsewhere. . . .

Honestly reckoning with Holocaust history is essential to the health of societies.

Yes.

• Let’s seek relief in the Super Bowl. (Not much relief there if you’re a Kansas City Chiefs fan, to be sure.) Did you hear the national anthem? Not sure who sang it — a couple of different “stars” I think. Anyway, they made José Feliciano look, and sound, like Robert Merrill.

• Feliciano sang his famous — or infamous, depending on your point of view — national anthem in Detroit (during the 1968 World Series). Speaking of Detroit: Jerry Green, of the News, is the only reporter to cover all the Super Bowls — every one of them, from 1967 through 2021.

• You want to know what a juvenile I am? Maybe you don’t, but I’m going to tell you: I couldn’t help noticing that the Bucs had a kicker named Succop, and the Chiefs a kicker named Butker.

• Jack Nicklaus won his sixth and final Masters at 46; Tom Brady has just won his seventh Super Bowl at 43. A golfer, I can understand. A quarterback — a little mind-boggling, or a lot.

• I was glad to see Brady and Patrick Mahomes competing against each other. Again, I thought of golf: In the 1960 U.S. Open, Ben Hogan and Nicklaus were paired with each other, for 36 holes. (Hogan the great star of the era just concluding; Nicklaus the star-to-be.)

• Christopher Plummer, the actor, has died. He lived in Connecticut, not too far from the Buckleys. Pat Buckley would see him in the grocery store now and then, she told me. They bonded as fellow Canadians (long resident in the U.S.).

• About George Shultz, there has been some really good writing. See Elliott Abrams, here. See Eric Edelman, here. See Lou Cannon, here. Each one has a lot to offer, on Shultz — different things, too.

“George P. Shultz was at once a patriot and an internationalist,” writes Cannon. So true. Many people — especially young ones, I’ve noticed — think that patriotism is at odds with internationalism. Which is nuts.

For National Review’s obit of the late Shultz, go here.

Tell you something that makes me smile: Shultz celebrated his hundredth birthday last December. There were many tributes. So, in a way, he got to read his own obituaries.

• Care for a little music? I’ve done a post on the Rome Opera — or rather, its orchestra, which played a concert. Go here. And for my “livestream chronicle” in the current New Criterion, go here.

• Want to see the “cancel culture” skewered? Saturday Night Live does a good job of it — a deadly job of it, actually. Go here.

And I’ll see you later. I’ll try not to be canceled, and you do the same!

If you’d like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.