Four Defeats in a Row
More than a year ago, Charlie Kirk was shot dead while advocating political renewal based on reason and faith. His legacy remains a lighthouse: uncompromising faith, open debate and a generation raised to carry both. Too many conservative elites have abandoned these principles while claiming to represent them.
In April, Viktor Orbán conceded a sweeping defeat after sixteen years in power. Fidesz–KDNP fell to 52 of 199 seats, while Tisza won a constitutional supermajority.
In Serbia’s election on 25 October, the student-led list won 140 of 250 seats in the final results, defeating the list led by Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling party.
Two days later, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc fell to 53 of 120 seats, losing its majority. Then, on 3 November, American voters handed Democrats majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Four countries, four cultures, one pattern. In my view, voters did not reject conservative values. They rejected parties that promised those values and governed against them. What would Charlie Kirk say to them?
Not an Accident
Across the West, the right has been losing power in familiar ways for years. In Poland, Law and Justice came first in 2023 after eight years in power, yet lost its majority and subsequently the government. It could not assemble a governing coalition.
In Britain, the Conservatives lost in 2024 after years of promising to cut migration. In Austria, the Freedom Party came first with about 29 per cent in 2024, but failed to secure the chancellorship through coalition negotiations. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders walked out of his coalition less than a year after it took office, and his party subsequently fell from 37 to 26 seats.
Some right-wing victories cut against the pattern: Janez Janša is back in power in Slovenia, and Andrej Babiš governs in Czechia. But without a deliberate effort to develop a new Christian conservative leadership and educate the young, I believe their success will also prove temporary.
A Deficit of Hope
Right-wing politics has failed to halt demographic decline and growing financial pressures, even where it held extraordinary power. Falling birth rates should force its leaders to ask whether a generation now in its thirties has lost hope and a positive vision of the future.
Hungary is the test case. Despite extensive family-support programmes, births fell to 72,017 in 2025 and the fertility rate dropped to 1.31. The policies may have helped individual families, but they have not delivered lasting demographic recovery.
The pattern does not stop at the Danube. Italy, under Giorgia Meloni, recorded 355,772 births in 2025, down another 3.8 per cent. In the United States, births and the general fertility rate also declined in 2025, despite the pro-natalist rhetoric in Washington.
The money is running out as fast as the children. In Hungary, new household borrowing jumped 39 per cent in 2025, helped by state-subsidised loans. That is an increase in new lending, not a one-third increase in total household debt: the outstanding retail loan portfolio grew by 14.3 per cent. Nevertheless, loans create obligations that families must carry into the years ahead.
In Serbia, Vučić’s “Leap into the Future” programme envisaged €17.8 billion across projects including Expo 2027. That figure covers the wider programme, not the exhibition alone.
In America, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2025 Republican tax-and-spending law increased projected deficits for 2026–2035 by $4.7 trillion. Its broader outlook projects publicly held debt rising from 101 per cent of GDP in 2026 to 120 per cent in 2036.
A global patriotic movement promising national economic sovereignty and demographic renewal without migration cannot ask to be judged by its rhetoric alone. Kirk urged a generation towards faith and family with little more than a microphone compared with the resources of government. Right-wing governments spent billions but struggled to speak to the young as he did.
They Blamed. He Debated.
Kirk said he spent about 100 hours a semester listening to students at his campus events. When voters turn, the right too often blames the youth, civil society, foreign interference and the media instead of the disorientation of its own closed circles.
In Hungary, that suspicion of independent voices acquired an institution: the Sovereignty Protection Office. Its abolition does not mean the new government should escape scrutiny. The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office initially raised concerns about inadequate safeguards, although the final legislation added judicial oversight and rights scrutiny. Those protections must work in practice.
Similarly, Poland’s confrontation between Donald Tusk’s government and its opponents over the Constitutional Tribunal demands scrutiny of the methods being used. Earlier violations of the rule of law cannot justify new ones. But who accepts responsibility when every side presents its actions as necessary retaliation?
After defeat, the familiar script returns. At this year’s Kötcse gathering, Orbán attributed the electoral challenge to circumstances including Brussels, three foreign intelligence services and the Soros network. He acknowledged that neither the campaign leadership nor he had found the answer. Yet the emphasis on hostile forces leaves the harder examination of governing failures unfinished.
Vučić used the same vocabulary, portraying the student protests as a foreign-backed colour revolution. Foreign influence deserves investigation where evidence supports it. But at the end of the day, political movements still have to do the fieldwork, in the footsteps of Charlie Kirk.
A movement that explains every defeat by conspiracy learns nothing from any of them. Worse, it teaches its own voters to distrust the very civil society a conservative order depends on: parishes, associations, independent media and the free initiative of citizens. It becomes incapable of offering a positive future or a clear vision of moral revival. Instead, it gathers around the promise of revenge.
They Built Courts. He Lived His Faith.
Kirk spoke openly about his spiritual life and the place of faith and family in his work. Too many right-wing leaderships promise freedom and practise centralisation. Hungary is the clearest example because Fidesz had sixteen years and repeated two-thirds majorities to show what it meant.
It meant political control. Under the KEKVA model, large holdings of public assets, including universities, were transferred to foundations whose leadership included ministers and figures associated with Fidesz. The arrangements entrenched the influence of appointed boards beyond an ordinary electoral cycle.
That is not subsidiarity. It is the old socialist reflex in national colours: the centre decides which institutions receive resources and which people can be trusted to lead them.
In Washington, the same instinct appeared in executive overreach and a spending law that expanded projected deficits instead of restoring fiscal discipline. Even within the Republican Party, the post-election argument now includes accusations that its leaders abandoned conservative principles.
The deeper problem is an elite that promises national sovereignty while becoming detached from the nation it claims to serve. Political loyalty becomes a qualification in itself. Public institutions become instruments for maintaining influence.
Corruption allegations must be investigated, whoever they concern. In Hungary’s “gold convoy” case, former chief prosecutor Pál Fürcht alleged that Orbán personally ordered the seizure of Ukrainian money transporters. The report also noted that Fürcht had not publicly released the investigative evidence supporting that allegation. It remains an allegation, not an established finding of guilt.
The historical elites of Central Europe understood service and obligation. Charlie Kirk understood them too. Today’s political elites should be judged by the same standard. Building fortunes and protecting loyalists cannot become patriotism simply because those involved wrap themselves in the national flag.
Their Alliances Fade. His Outlived Him.
When Kirk was killed, the movement he helped build did not simply disappear. By contrast, too much right-wing politics depends on one leader’s charisma and the spoils of office. Its coalitions weaken when either is lost.
The patriotic alliance is fractured. Orbán helped establish Patriots for Europe in 2024, but his defeat deprived it of an important centre of governmental influence. Babiš remains in power, yet another leader’s survival cannot settle the movement’s wider problems.
The AfD is not a member of Patriots for Europe, but Orbán congratulated it on its Saxony-Anhalt victory, while Wilders, Vox and Chega also welcomed the result. Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella did not join the celebrations, and National Rally maintained its distance. That alone exposes the fragmentation.
Nor does the patriotic label resolve disagreements over economics. Parties can defend national sovereignty while making expensive promises that leave unanswered questions about taxation, pensions and public spending. National colours do not make fiscal arithmetic disappear.
This year’s NatCon in Jerusalem made another fracture visible. Observers described a deeper split on the right beneath the conference’s pro-Israel platform. Jonathan Keeperman warned against relying on Holocaust appeals and accusations of antisemitism to secure American support. The intervention was presented as advice to supporters of the alliance, but it showed how much could no longer be taken for granted.
Serbia’s balancing act presents a different contradiction. Analysis of US sanctions on Russian-owned NIS warned that Belgrade’s manoeuvring between Russia and the West had become increasingly difficult, with China offering another potential source of influence. Sovereignty requires more than the ability to alternate between powerful patrons.
In America, the coalition that won in 2024 has fractured over Iran, Israel and the meaning of “America First”. The right is now fighting over whether MAGA failed or Republicans failed MAGA’s grassroots.
An alliance held together by common enemies still needs a common purpose. Otherwise, the first serious disagreement reveals how little its leaders have built.
No Return, No Saviours
Some on the right comfort themselves that Orbán or Vučić will return, or that Weidel and Le Pen will save their countries. For a moment, the Hungarian right also had reports of Orbán’s possible move to the United Nations to celebrate.
The facts are thinner than the excitement. Euronews, citing the Wall Street Journal, reported that Trump administration officials were encouraging a possible Orbán bid for secretary-general. That is not an appointment or a guarantee of a viable candidacy.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister said Moscow would not nominate him, while leaving open consideration of an officially nominated candidate. France, which holds a veto, said the position should not become a consolation prize for a leader defeated at home.
And what would Hungary’s conservative movement gain if its former leader acquired a prestigious international office? Such appointments do not answer the questions left behind at home.
The phenomenon is familiar in the EU. António Costa resigned as Portuguese prime minister in 2023 amid an investigation and became European Council president in December 2024. Costa has denied wrongdoing, and Portuguese prosecutors said in October 2026 that he had not been made a formal defendant in any of the inquiries. The political appointment establishes neither guilt nor vindication.
For the right, the lesson should be clear. A New York office would not refill a single Hungarian parish, school or family. It would merely offer the old leadership another destination while the movement postponed facing what it had built.
A Threefold Answer for Small Nations
For Hungary and other small countries, the solution is threefold.
First, find new candidates who represent Christian conservatism at its best and youngest, and prepare them for the elections ahead. Give them responsibility before the next campaign forces the issue. A movement cannot depend indefinitely on one person and then act surprised when no successor is ready.
Second, collect new ideas, open up to new trends and social circles, and develop a language that speaks to the generations. Independent right-wing parties, associations and conservative voices should be partners in this work rather than treated as competitors for the leadership’s attention.
Orbán’s own words reveal the difficulty. Asked in October how Fidesz could reach younger people, he acknowledged that the party lacked an answer and said, in translation, that at 63 he had no desire to renew himself. He distinguished renewal from remaining intellectually fresh. But that still leaves the party with an urgent question: who will answer the young if its leader does not want the task?
Third, win people over. Hold the vision and sell concrete actions instead of relying on ideology, fear and references that no longer speak to younger voters. For Europeans, breaking from communism cannot be the finishing point of their political identity. They need answers about living costs, defence, jobs and the possibility of building a family.
In Hungary and elsewhere, this requires fighting the culture war. Fidesz’s institutional dominance should not be confused with cultural success. Power was used to build institutions for loyalists; winning hearts required more.
The goal is a political identity that wins voters, not merely elections. The key is freedom and what it means in everyday life, beginning with the grassroots. Young people who reject corruption and arbitrary power should be invited into a movement founded on truth, liberty and faith.
Kirk’s example offers a way to begin. It needs to be continued through work, not merely commemorated in speeches.
So What Would Charlie Kirk Do?
The way forward begins with reading the signs of the times: where young people are looking and what they are asking for. The young are not lost to faith or conservative values.
The French Catholic Church’s 2026 survey recorded 13,234 adult baptisms, with 18–25-year-olds the largest age group. That is not an election forecast, but it should challenge the assumption that younger generations are unreachable.
A movement must come from existing social forces. Péter Magyar was an insider in the political world he challenged. Serbia’s victorious list came out of a student movement. The next conservative movement will not be founded by decree of the old elite. It will grow from parishes, families, associations and the young people already in them.
That is what Charlie Kirk understood. He built a movement by taking his convictions into public and inviting people to argue. His supporters should preserve that habit, rather than turn his memory into another slogan.
He had personal conviction and a spiritual life he spoke about openly. Unlike so many who claim to be Christian conservatives while governing like party managers, Kirk made publicity, debate and challenge central to his work.
The values worth preserving are family, faith, subsidiarity, honest stewardship of public money and the freedom of citizens to organise without permission. They are not the property of the political systems that claimed them.
Prioritise those values and let young people inspire the movement instead of being lectured by it. The right does not need oracles. It needs a new generation willing to sit at the table and be proven wrong, and a cause worth being proven right. It needs to start fighting the culture war.
Bela Teleki
Campaign Director | CitizenGo (Hungary)
