EPISODE 261: Last Warning to the West with Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell

Speaker 1:                    Welcome to The Bill Walton Show, featuring conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and thinkers. Fresh perspectives on money, culture, politics, and human flourishing. Interesting people, interesting things.

Bill Walton:                   Hungary is a small country landlocked in the middle of Europe, with less [00:00:30] than 10 million people. Seemingly irrelevant, it is hated by the woke globalists. It’s the focus of angry smear campaigns against it and its president, Viktor Orbán. Yet at the same time, it’s praised as a global leader for freedom and a model of conservative values.

                                    So there must be a lot going on with Hungary that we should understand. I see it as a microcosm for the political and economic conflict in the greater [00:01:00] world.

                                    So to dig in with this, I’m back with Shea Bradley-Farrell, PhD, who is president of Counterpoint Institute for Policy and is an expert in foreign policy, national security, and international development, and has also spent a great deal of time thinking about studying and traveling to Hungary. So, Shea, why the hot focus? Why is Hungary such a target of both the left and appreciated by the right?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s a [00:01:30] great question and that’s what I start out in the book that I wrote, Last Warning to the West, talking about why is this so important. There’s a lot of reasons, Bill, but they have a real model for how to fight back against the progressivism, I always say so-called progressivism because it’s not really progressive, that is infiltrating the world right now, the Biden administration, the European Union.

                                    I really believe that they [00:02:00] learned this because they were occupied by communists for 46 years. If you listen to Prime Minister Viktor Orban talk about it, the communism that we’re experiencing today is very similar to the Marxism that they were under, and that’s why they have no interest in it. They were occupied in and out by different peoples for about a thousand years, and they want to maintain their freedom and national [00:02:30] sovereignty. So I think the catapulting of Hungary to the stage has really been because they made the leftists very angry.

Bill Walton:                   Well, they have. We’ll dig into that a lot more. You’ve written a book about this that was published, when, last month?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         December of 2023.

Bill Walton:                   And your title is Last Warning to the West?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   Hungary’s Triumph Over Communism and the Woke [00:03:00] Agenda. Why the title?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Good question also. Because when I started doing research to write a book about Hungary, I was interested in finding out why their national identity was so important to them, because if you look at the history of Hungary, Bill, nobody else in the world speaks Hungarian. As you said, they’re this little 10 million people, landlocked country. But throughout their history, they have held on … No matter who [00:03:30] was in their country and occupation, they have held on to their own sovereignty, their own culture, their own identity, and I had to find out why.

                                    So I meant for it to be more of an academic book. But then I went over and I started doing interviews of citizens out in the country, citizens in Budapest, some of the top senior officials in government. One thing that Hungarians kept saying to me that startled me is that the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminds them [00:04:00] of their Soviet era.

                                    So the more I started to dig into that and the look at the history of the Bolshevik Revolution and the things coming out of it, like diminishment of parental rights, dividing children from their parents, dividing people from religion, legalized abortion trumpeted as healthcare, these types of things, and we can go on and on about that and discuss that later, I began to see that they were right, that so much of the rhetoric and the way our [00:04:30] government here in America especially, also in the European Union, is acting is in a very top-down to almost totalitarian way, which perfectly describes their experiences with Marxism.

Bill Walton:                   Well, let’s do a bit of history. We don’t have a map here on the set, but we’ll dig one up. We can get a map of where Hungary sits, smack in the middle of Europe and it’s landlocked.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   At one point it was a much bigger country. [00:05:00] As I understand it, after World War I-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   … Woodrow Wilson, in his wisdom, was part of the process where they lopped off almost two-thirds of Hungary. So it went from a rather big state to a much smaller one. But before that, they were … What is their language? Help me out.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Magyar.

Bill Walton:                   Magyar.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah.

Bill Walton:                   Now is that a language, or are they somehow racially different? Are they just-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Both. You know what, it’s so interesting [00:05:30] because there’s such a debate about where the Hungarians actually came from. It’s hotly debated. If you dive into it, people will disagree with what you come up with.

                                    But the best historian that I found was a British man who actually had been ambassador to Hungary at a certain point of time, Cartledge, Sir Bryan Cartledge. He wrote this book. I think it’s been called the main history, I [00:06:00] think, the most standardized, the most valued. Credible is the word I’m looking for. He says that Hungarians came from the central part of the Ural Mountains. Like Third Millennium BC, they broke off from a larger tribal federation and started moving west.

Bill Walton:                   And the Ural Mountains are what separates Russia from the west, Western Europe?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right, which is very important because if you [00:06:30] trace down through Hungary’s history, there’s always been this balancing that Hungary has had to do between east and west throughout their history, both they have to balance politically, they have to balance geographically with threats from both sides. It’s very interesting.

                                    But what I found interesting also about their history is the more that they moved west, and they were occupying certain territories and communities, most of the tribes [00:07:00] doing that were absorbed by the places that they inhabited. But the Hungarians were not. They maintained their language, and they wanted the people that they … Where they had settled. They wanted those people to adopt their language. So we come thousands of years later and we still have only Hungarians speaking Magyar and, as you can see, wanting to preserve their culture [00:07:30] and identity.

Bill Walton:                   So they’ve all learned English because they’ve got a function-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Many. Yeah, many.

Bill Walton:                   … in the business world, diplomatic world, scientific world. Do they have a second, a third language that they use, or is it … Because they’re … What is it, they’re now Romania? That was the portion that was lopped off after World War I?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         During the treaty, yeah.

Bill Walton:                   What do you call that treaty, Trianon Treaty?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         The Treaty of Trianon and-

Bill Walton:                   That was Versailles?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Well, yes, 1920 was when the treaty was done. [00:08:00] It came during the series of treaties of Versailles where, yes, two-thirds. Woodrow Wilson and the allies decided to give two-thirds of Hungary away to the surrounding countries. Romania was the one that gained the largest territory. Bill, over half of Hungary’s population was lost to these other countries. So they were severely weakened by this, and it’s part of their identity even today.

Bill Walton:                   I want to make [00:08:30] this point simply because there’s all this talk about border, obviously our own border. But Ukraine, and Ukraine has been … Same thing. Their borders change every 30 years or 50 years or 100 years or whatever the course of time. There it’s largely back and forth with Russia.

                                    But Central Europe also many of the same things. What we think of as countries on a map today, if you do a time lapse over the last [00:09:00] thousand years, just massive change in what countries call themselves and where their borders are.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         [inaudible 00:09:05]. Hard to keep up with, isn’t it?

Bill Walton:                   Well, and we don’t really need to. But the reason I want to do a bit of history is World War I, it got shrunk. Then that gets us into the ’20s and ’30s. Then the ’30s, the Germans started looming in Europe and that in World War II, Hungary became, I guess, allied at first with German, Austria, [00:09:30] Hungary, and then actually got occupied by Germany.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   How did that happen?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, that’s a good question as well. The Treaty of Trianon really weakened Hungary. So they were very vulnerable to Germany, but at the same time they were saying to the allies, “You also need to be watching out for Russia.” Nobody really paid attention to Russia as any kind of a threat, and-

Bill Walton:                   Russia was then the Soviet [00:10:00] Russia.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, that’s right. And so, let’s see, you asked me going more towards World War II, correct?

Bill Walton:                   Well, I guess the point … What I’m digging into here is that your book is fascinating in the way you draw the Hungarians, the way you draw the similarities between the totalitarian nature of fascism-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   … and the totalitarian nature of communism.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         [00:10:30] That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   And so, Hungarians experience rule by the Germans. As I understand it, in Budapest, which is the capital, there was actually a big building that the Germans had occupied, and that’s where all the torture chambers and prisons were.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. That’s right. So in 1944, see, Admiral Horthy was the regent of Hungary at that time, and he had been trying to keep the Germans back, [00:11:00] sort of doing a tap dance between the Germans and the Soviets to keep them both out of Hungary. But in 1944, ultimately what happened is Hitler rolled into Budapest in 1944. In March, he lured Horthy away to Austria. So when Horthy returned, Germany had invaded and occupied, and thus began a reign of terror. This building that you [00:11:30] refer to-

Bill Walton:                   During World War II.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         … during World War II.

Bill Walton:                   In 1944. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         1944, yes. This building you refer to was occupied then by the Arrow Cross Party of Hungary. What happened is the Arrow Cross Party was the National Socialist Party. It was gaining an influence. So Hungary was not a fascist nation. Sorry, I’m losing my voice today.

Bill Walton:                   Drink some water. We’re good.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         A little water. Okay.

Bill Walton:                   Well, yeah, [00:12:00] so this building was … Wasn’t this called the House of Terror?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         The House of Terror, yes. Actually I believe it was the Soviets that named it that, but either the Arrow Cross Party Nazis or the Soviets. But because Hitler came in and occupied and arrested all of Horthy’s cabinet, took over their railroads, their infrastructure, the Arrow Cross Party, which was relatively small in Hungary, was able to take power.

                                    Hitler was ultimately [00:12:30] at power, but the Arrow Cross Party took over the House of Terror, made that their headquarters. There was a basement in the bottom where they tortured and killed political dissidents.

                                    What you referred to is something that I found very interesting, is the very next year, the Soviets ruled in, sieged Budapest, pushed the Nazis out, but the Soviet police established their headquarters at the House of Terror and did the same things.

Bill Walton:                   The very same building.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         The [00:13:00] very same things.

Bill Walton:                   Well, wasn’t there a point there, I thought was interesting, where there was a … The communists were rife in Hungary, and they felt so confident in their position that they told Moscow that, “We can go ahead and hold elections here in Hungary because we’re sure the communists will win the election.”

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, actually. Yes.

Bill Walton:                   Then they held … This gets to the character of the Hungarians. They held the election and the communists lost.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They did, and [00:13:30] they were startled.

Bill Walton:                   Then they just took it over before.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, they took it over. That’s exactly right. I thought that was an interesting point. If you go back to Yalta, where Stalin and FDR and Churchill get together to also divide up Europe after World War II, or before the end of World War II, you find that we gave Hungary and Central Europe over to the communists. [00:14:00] So, anyway, your point is correct.

Bill Walton:                   Well, I want to get into these threads because they bear on what’s happening today. We’re fighting Germany. We’re allied supposedly with the Soviets. There’s a very famous scene at the end of the movie Patton, where George Patton is saying, well, we’ve defeated the Germans, but now we’ve got to go after the Soviets because they’re our real enemy. That’s [00:14:30] made light of during the movie. Of course, Patton died under mysterious circumstances, and you wonder who was behind that. But FDR was surrounded by people who were on the payroll of the Soviets in the US government.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   And so, we were infiltrated even back then by people who were not playing for our team. And so, when it came down to deciding what we should let the Soviets do at Yalta, [00:15:00] Hitler … Or not Hitler, but FDR said, “Oh, well, Uncle Joe, we can just give him what he wants.”

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Right.

Bill Walton:                   That’s because he was influenced so much by these people who were part of the Communist Party here in the United States.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Bill, you’ve got to go back to 1939. There was a secret pact made between Hitler and Stalin before Germany even invaded Poland to start the war. So Russia and Germany [00:15:30] were aligned. This pact divided up Europe, Central Europe particularly and Eastern Europe, between Germany and the Soviet Union. The world did not know about this pact until the Nuremberg trial.

                                    So just maybe a month after that secret pact was signed, Hitler rolls into Poland, invades Poland, starts World War II. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union comes in behind them and rolls into [00:16:00] Poland as well.

                                    So what is very interesting is the way that they had decided to divide up Central Europe is exactly what Stalin got at Yalta. Then at the Nuremberg trials, there were actually Russians sitting in judgment against the Germans during the trials, and the Germans, rightly so, committed war of aggression.

                                    [00:16:30] Well, what about the Soviets? They did also. We forgot that. In forgetting that, we turned over exactly what Stalin wanted, Central Europe to Stalin. You’ll find out, if you read my book and you know history, that what Stalin did then that gave him decades of Sovietizing these countries, these satellite countries. So we’re to blame for a lot of the spread of communism.

Bill Walton:                   This is Bill Walton, Bill [00:17:00] Walton Show. I’m here with Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell. We’re talking about her book Last Warning to the West, which is about Hungary. The reason we’re going through this very interesting, hope you find it interesting, history lesson is this all bears in where we are today. At this point, I might substitute China for the Soviets, but I won’t fast forward to that just yet.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Absolutely, yeah.

Bill Walton:                   So let’s stay in the post-World War II period where [00:17:30] FDR essentially handed Hungary to the Soviets.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, he did.

Bill Walton:                   The Soviets came in and what happened?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They began their process of Sovietization. The first thing is to establish a secret police force. They did that at the … The headquarters was the House of Terror. So they tortured political dissidents. They did a lot of other bad things, of course. They started sending people en masse to the [00:18:00] Soviet gulags. Millions of people at the end of the Soviet occupation days had been killed in these Soviet gulags.

                                    Another thing they did is they took over the media. So they were the propaganda arm of the country that they were in. This especially happened in Hungary.

                                    You know what, something interesting too, Bill, is another step of Sovietization was to ban civil society. I really dug into [00:18:30] that aspect of it because it sickeningly destroys a society when you do that. Particularly in Hungary, they banned 5,500 civic organizations.

Bill Walton:                   Civil societies like clubs, Boy Scouts.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Associations.

Bill Walton:                   Rotary Club. They didn’t have a Rotary Club in Hungary. But things like that.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, and they took over the books. They started redefining Hungarians’ [00:19:00] history. They weren’t allowed to celebrate their national independence day, the Habsburg Revolution, when they became an independent nation from Austria. They weren’t able to celebrate these things. They were told to take their crosses down and their Christian symbols off the wall. They had to put the communist dictator’s faces upon their walls instead.

                                    So the thing with civil society is even people, academics like [00:19:30] myself, weren’t … In some cases, if they were controlled, they were allowed to continue to be academics. But many of them became very menial task workers. They were not allowed to write books. They were not allowed to speak. So you lose your livelihood. You lose your purpose for life. Sir Roger Scruton talks a lot about this. Do-

Bill Walton:                   It’s in the books, yeah. We had a place in Rappahannock County, Virginia, and he had a house there.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh, [00:20:00] wow.

Bill Walton:                   So we met him.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         No kidding.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I didn’t know that.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Wow. Yeah. So I quote him a lot in the book because not only was he a great conservative mind, but he, for 10 years, was working in the underground of Czechoslovakia, Poland.

Bill Walton:                   He was there working in Hungary-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   … as an underground operative?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Taking in leaflets, pamphlets, like books where people could study, because under the Soviets, they weren’t allowed to study things. They couldn’t study history, [00:20:30] they couldn’t study philosophy. So he would go to these secret meetings and pass out things. He would also help communication along in the underground networks.

                                    He was actually arrested, and I believe it was in Czech at the time. I forget the town. But he was arrested, later released. But, yeah, he was eye witness to all of this.

Bill Walton:                   Well, you have his thoughts and other people’s thoughts. There’s like an 8-step or 10-step piece to [00:21:00] the Sovietization of Hungary and all the other countries that they took over.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, four steps.

Bill Walton:                   It was a playbook.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, that’s right. I was going to say something that’s-

Bill Walton:                   It’s similar, eerily similar, to a lot of what’s going on now in the United States …

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I think maybe-

Bill Walton:                   … which is why this is relevant to what we’re seeing today.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It is. So Scruton was an eyewitness to all of this. And what was very interesting is before he died, [00:21:30] he did a lot of writing on how the EU is acting very much like the communists were acting. In fact, his quote is the main quote from my book that says just because people are no longer behind this wall, this Iron Curtain, doesn’t mean that they’re not also being oppressed by a body. He was referring to the European Union. Perhaps you could probably-

Bill Walton:                   Yeah. He says, “Don’t accept the EU propaganda version that we are celebrating [00:22:00] the fall of the Berlin Wall as though freedom is all here.” I’m going to paraphrase a bit.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Right.

Bill Walton:                   “That we’re celebrating national sovereignty to people who would’ve been absorbed and impressed by a lawless empire. The fact is they’re now being absorbed by a lawful empire doesn’t alter the case-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   … that it could be equally totalitarian.”

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s exactly right.

Bill Walton:                   In this case, he meant the European Union.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. So lawless empire, Soviets obviously. But the European Union. So he was trying to get-

Bill Walton:                   When [00:22:30] did he write this? 19-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I think that-

Bill Walton:                   Early on?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         … that quote … Do I not have a date underneath it?

Bill Walton:                   Nada. But he saw the EU now has become very oppressive, and the member countries are beginning to push back on a lot of this.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They sure are, and Hungary is the leader of that. And so, to answer your question why Hungary, that’s a large part of the reason. They, this little country … Prime Minister Viktor Orban was one of the revolutionaries [00:23:00] that pushed the Soviets out, and he became prime minister about nine years later for the first time at that time. Then he lost again, and then later on … He’s been reelected now four times in a row.

Bill Walton:                   We mentioned … I think when we were talking before the show, you mentioned three big things that the EU is really offended by.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. Yes. You have to laugh. It’s the same three things the Biden administration is offended [00:23:30] by.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah, that’s the parallel I want to dig into.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, and why we have an antagonistic ambassador over in Hungary, which is very embarrassing. But they are … This transgender nonsense. The EU wants to push radical gender theory into Hungary, into their schools. Hungary has actually made laws to say, no, parents get to decide what children are taught about sex or sexual identity, whatever you want to call it. They even took [00:24:00] a referendum where the overwhelming majority of people said, “We don’t want this.”

                                    The second thing is the legal immigration. They are going through very much the same of what we have gone through, except there was a point during the Arab uprising when they were allowing people to come through their country into EU. As Germany said, “Our borders are open.” They said, “We have to stop.” They declared a national emergency because they couldn’t handle it. They actually erected [00:24:30] fences.

                                    The third issue, Bill, is the Ukraine war. They have Hungarians, ethnic Hungarians, because of the division, which we talked about earlier-

Bill Walton:                   Well, and they share a border with Ukraine.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They share a border. There are ethnic Hungarians fighting in this war. And they simply said, “We were against sanctions,” because their economy relied on Soviet gas and energy. [00:25:00] Anyway, I can go into that into depth, but-

Bill Walton:                   Well, no, we should go into depth because it’s important, because it bears on what’s happening in the United States right now.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   With the immigration issue, they were ordered by the EU that they had to let … I don’t know how many, hundreds of thousands, 10 million people. I don’t know. That’s a lot. I don’t know how many they ordered. They said, “You have to take in X number of immigrants from Muslim [00:25:30] countries.”

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         The EU does give migrant quotas to Hungary and the other members.

Bill Walton:                   Are they mainly Muslim or is it a polyglot?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I mean it is a variety, but it is mainly Muslim that have come through, and-

Bill Walton:                   And they were ordered to take them, and Viktor Orban and … Now I think … Keep in mind, they tried to single Orban out. He’s supported by like 70, 80% of the Hungarian voters.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh, yes. He had a landslide victory [00:26:00] in this last one. In his very first election, which was ’98, I believe, he won two-thirds of the majority. So he was able to actually reject the previous communist constitution that they had and put in a democratic constitution.

                                    So he really is … And they do referendums on all three of these issues. They’ve done citizen referendums. We’re talking like between 78 and 93% of the people say no to [00:26:30] all three of these issues.

                                    So that’s the point he makes and I make in the book. I mean national sovereignty is important. They’re a member of the EU, they want to be a member of the EU, but they want to maintain their own decision-making power.

Bill Walton:                   Well, that’s the bigger theme for all of us.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah.

Bill Walton:                   I mean American sovereignty, our own border, what’s happening is egregious …

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, it is.

Bill Walton:                   … and on purpose. But the EU, people in Brussels are the [00:27:00] same mindset as the people in the Biden administration. It seems like they want to change the culture of Hungary as much as they want to change the culture of the United States.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s exactly right.

Bill Walton:                   You look at what’s happened in France … I’m involved with a group that writes I think very interesting things about the markets worldwide. They talk about France, and they’re Frenchmen. They say, well, France basically have three elements [00:27:30] here. If you want to understand what’s happening, there’s the central element, Paris, which is the elites, intellectual class, business, government.

                                    Then surrounding Paris is a ring. In Paris’ case, it’s a literal ring of immigrants, and they’re there to serve the elites with the gardening and truck driving and whatever you do. Then outside that ring is the rest of France, which is, I think, 60, 70% [00:28:00] of the population. That 60, 70% outside those ring is beginning to push back. That’s the reason Macron has become so … What’s his approval rating now, 18%?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It’s not good, is it?

Bill Walton:                   He’s bordering on Joe Biden numbers. He may be actually doing-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Worse.

Bill Walton:                   Worse.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Is that possible?

Bill Walton:                   Worse than Joe Biden.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Well-

Bill Walton:                   But-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Go ahead.

Bill Walton:                   But that’s happening in most of the countries in Europe. Even in Germany, we’re seeing German farmers beginning to push back. That’s what Orban [00:28:30] stands as a symbol of in Hungary.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Absolutely. I think he’s quite a leader of it. Italy voted in a conservative prime minister. We see in the Netherlands, they just elected a conservative who will form a conservative government.

Bill Walton:                   [inaudible 00:28:47].

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Bill, I have friends in Austria, from the Freedom Party, who they are leading in the polls. That’s the conservative party there. They’re leading in the polls now. You’re talking about the farmers in Germany, the farmers [00:29:00] in France. Javier Milei was elected in this country that’s been socialist for over a hundred years.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah, Argentina.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, in Argentina.

Bill Walton:                   My favorite.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I love it.

Bill Walton:                   You know what he calls himself?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         What’s that?

Bill Walton:                   An anarcho-capitalist.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Anarcho.

Bill Walton:                   An anarcho-capitalist.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   Isn’t that a great word?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I saw that. Also, he has very cool hair.

Bill Walton:                   Yes.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         He’s in a rock band.

Bill Walton:                   It’s a Rolling Stones cover band.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh, is that right?

Bill Walton:                   So I guess he does the Mick Jagger on top of everything else.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh my gosh. [00:29:30] Well, he’s an interesting guy, isn’t he?

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         But your point is right. I see another populist uprising all over the world right now. I think that when Trump got into office, we had the first wave of that. But we’re seeing that more and more.

                                    Just to go back to what you said about the influx of illegal immigration, in Europe, what’s very interesting is that the countries that said no to this illegal immigration, [00:30:00] mass influx, Poland and Hungary have had no terrorism. Now the other countries have seen a massive rise in terrorism, especially since the Hamas attacks. So isn’t that interesting?

Bill Walton:                   And also crimes like rape.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Crimes like rape, yeah.

Bill Walton:                   Particularly in the Nordic countries.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That I didn’t know.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah. It’s bad. It’s an epidemic. It’s-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Wow.

Bill Walton:                   They’re seeing their culture dismantled.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, that’s right.

Bill Walton:                   So [00:30:30] funding the … Well, let’s do the LBGT agenda, because Hungary is about 70% Christian, Catholic. Is that about right?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, it’s a Christian nation. They’ve been a Christian nation for 1100 years, Bill.

Bill Walton:                   Roman Catholic. Not Russian, Roman Catholic.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right, western. They became the eastern most western kingdom in 1000 [00:31:00] AD

Bill Walton:                   And they’re very serious about it.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Very serious, Catholic.

Bill Walton:                   They really say, “We want to live by our Christian virtues.”

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   Of course, they have issues with the LGBT transgender issue.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   They pose it and they pose it vehemently. And what does Biden do? Give us the profile of our ambassador, the US ambassador to Hungary.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Have mercy. Our US ambassador to Hungary, in his [00:31:30] confirmation hearing in the Senate, called Hungary backslider of democracy, an authoritarian government, aligned Orban with Putin and with China. This is how he started out.

                                    You have to understand, Hungary is a country with a … Like I said, it’s a republic with a parliamentary system. They have a democratic constitution. I’ve spent a lot of time in Hungary, three months last year in Hungary. [00:32:00] For example, nobody cares if you are a gay couple. My husband and I saw gay people walking around holding hands. Nobody cares. But the majority of the people are saying, “That’s not what … We want to decide for our children.” Yeah, they do not uphold an LGBT agenda, that’s true. I just say that to say human rights are upheld in Hungary.

Bill Walton:                   Well, isn’t our ambassador also gay?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, which I don’t think is [00:32:30] an accident by the Biden administration.

Bill Walton:                   It’s not an accident.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         He’s married to a man.

Bill Walton:                   It’s not an accident.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They have two children in Hungary. Again, the Hungarians would respect him and respect that, except he has gone out of his way the whole time that he is there to publicly rebuke and punish Hungary for their stance on these three issues that I’ve told you. With our money, by the way. They’ve rented billboards with our money to shame Hungary [00:33:00] into wanting to support more money to the Ukraine war, and I can explain why they don’t want to do that.

Bill Walton:                   I do. Explain it.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Well, let me start out by saying I was in the Ukrainian refugee center last year in Hungary. They’ve spent … They won’t say how much, but they’ve taken in over three and a half million refugees from Ukraine, many of whom they paid plane, train, automobile to go wherever [00:33:30] in Europe that they wanted to go.

                                    But it was a very nice center set up. People were being taken care of to the ninth degree, veterinary care services even, which I’m a dog lover, so I thought that was cool.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah, me too.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         But they first started out were against western sanctions on Russian energy, because they’re reliant on Russian energy. They’re a small country, and they said, “It will crush our economy.” [00:34:00] They’re trying to diversify, but can’t do it that quickly.

                                    The other thing, Bill, is … And I’ve actually had the privilege to sit down with Prime Minister Viktor Orban with a group of other conservative leaders and talk to him about these things. He’s a very thoughtful man. The other thing is over 400,000 Ukrainians have been killed, some of whom are Hungarians ethnically, and they-

Bill Walton:                   That’s not a widely reported number in the United States.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         No, it’s not.

Bill Walton:                   I heard it could be closer to a [00:34:30] million.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         You know what, at this point, because this number I’m using from probably six months ago or so. But maybe so.

Bill Walton:                   Nobody really knows …

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Nobody knows.

Bill Walton:                   … but it’s underreported.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Well, and I will tell you, my husband and I, living in Central Europe last year, we were seeing a lot of the real reporting, not the US, BBC reporting that is propaganda to support the Ukraine war. We were seeing the horrific casualties that the Ukrainians were [00:35:00] taking, the infrastructure that has been leveled. Prime Minister Viktor Orban and I believe that Ukraine is not going to win this, that Russia’s going to grind on and on until they’re devastated.

Bill Walton:                   Well, you and I didn’t think we should get into this even two years ago.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Two years ago when we talked about this.

Bill Walton:                   We thought we could negotiate something that would be a settlement that would satisfy Putin and get him to stand down and this need not have happened.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Totally.

Bill Walton:                   It need not have happened.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It need not have happened. That’s exactly right. Thank you for reminding me.

Bill Walton:                   You were there.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, it was almost [00:35:30] two years ago.

Bill Walton:                   Remember, this is-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         We talked about that, and we tried to get the US to broker a peace deal.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         We’re still not talking about a peace deal in the administration. This is crazy. It’s craziness.

Bill Walton:                   Well, now they’re lobbying for, what, another 60 billion as part of this so-called immigration bill?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. If you look at that bill, it also implies that we’re going to continue ongoing to fund. So they know the war will be ongoing. Yes, 60 billion, another.

Bill Walton:                   So sticking in Hungary, it’s [00:36:00] such a great … What I’m hearing you say about the Hungarians is they’re generous people. They’re not excluding, for example, the gay population. They just don’t want to change their institutions.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   They don’t want to change their laws. They want to make parents’ rights preeminent.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes.

Bill Walton:                   And so, so long as that’s the case, that they’re tolerant of people and they’re also … In Ukraine, it’s not like they don’t want to help Ukraine. They’re helping him to the tune [00:36:30] of bringing in three million people, but they don’t want to supply arms to Ukraine. They don’t think that that’s the right strategy in dealing with this-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         They don’t.

Bill Walton:                   … which is very sensible.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         But, Bill, we are trying, and the EU is trying, to strong arm them into supporting the war. The EU, just last week, there was this confidential document that the Financial Times found that showed that the EU was actually planning to destroy Hungary’s economy because [00:37:00] Orban at the time would not support this $50 billion loan that the EU wanted to take up for Ukraine to continue it. They were talking about doing … The EU wanted to discourage investment into Hungary, devalue the currency.

                                    Anyway, they’ve sanctioned Hungary previously on COVID emergency funds, all funds that Hungary has actually paid into [00:37:30] the EU already. So it’s been quite a battle.

Bill Walton:                   Well, and Orban’s hanging strong now. Unfortunately, Orban and Trump like each other.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah, they’re friends.

Bill Walton:                   So that’s another wrap against-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         That’s right. That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   But he’s really … I hate … It’s a Hungary first strategy, but a lot of the other European countries are beginning to wake up to that, at least the people are.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I think you’re right about that. That’s [00:38:00] actually one of Orban’s 12 points that I do put in my book, because I think they’re very practical strategy on how to keep your country sovereign, conservative, focused on traditional values, family values. One of those points is to put your country first. Yeah, just like America first policy, Hungary first policy. It makes sense.

Bill Walton:                   So he’s written this out, and for everybody interested, and everybody should be interested, you [00:38:30] can see all the elements of what he sees as a way to preserve self-determinization and your values right here.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. It’s in the last chapter. There are things we all can do, like support conservative organizations, which you’re doing today by helping me spread the word about the work at Counterpoint Institute, to start organizations like that like I’m doing, to take the media back like what you’re doing. So there’s [00:39:00] things in there everybody can do and I just think we need to do it on a larger scale as people that want to preserve our culture and our country.

Bill Walton:                   What kind of response have you got to the book? You’ve talked with a lot of people.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah. Excellent response, actually.

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It was cool. I spoke with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago about the book, and he called it a guidebook on how to do an effective, popular-based [00:39:30] conservative-

Bill Walton:                   Oh, I so agree.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Thank you.

Bill Walton:                   I so agree. It’s a guidebook.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Thank you.

Bill Walton:                   It’s a guidebook.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It is a guidebook.

Bill Walton:                   This is a very useful manual, instruction.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Thank you. I don’t want to just talk about the problems. I try to lay that out so people understand it. But I want to say here’s also … Here’s the path forward. Here’s hope. Here’s the blueprint. We have to continue to fight for our country. I think Hungary has done it extremely effectively.

Bill Walton:                   [00:40:00] We’ve covered so much. I want to give you a way to give us a … What else your institute is doing and how should we … How does America take this from here? What’s our lesson?

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         First of all, we have to remember that freedom is valuable. I know a lot of people say that, but it’s right now a very, very precarious position, I believe, that we’re in. One thing that Hungarian [00:40:30] said to me is that, “We remember what it’s like not to be free.” They were only free from the Soviet Union in 1991, during most of our lifetimes here.

                                    Americans don’t see the insidious encroachment that Marxism has grown in our country over the past hundred years. That was actually the goal of the Communist International to spread communism. I believe we helped them with giving Stalin these satellite [00:41:00] countries, where if we had made sure that they were still western countries aligned with western values, we would not have helped perpetuate the spread of Marxism and communism.

                                    So I want Americans to understand that this could be our last warning. I don’t think in recent history, and, Bill, you can tell me what you think, that we’ve ever been in such a position [00:41:30] where our government is trying to take freedom away from us.

                                    There are 11 points in my book of communist psychological warfare, Bill, that were written by our Department of Defense in 1959. Every one of those points apply to us today. One of those is using a crisis to gain control. What did we just see with COVID? All over the world, governments-

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         … especially ours, was trying to do that.

Bill Walton:                   Well, and now [00:42:00] they’re going to declare that climate is a health crisis as another way to bring about the same measures they’ve brought about with COVID.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yeah. You have to watch them.

Bill Walton:                   Well, yeah. Well, I so agree. Now I read this, I come to this, my career has been mainly in Wall Street and finance and private equity. And so, I was not really … I was tunneled into that and [00:42:30] didn’t really pay much attention to these trends. And a lot of these things like communism in America, isn’t that just McCarthy era stuff? That didn’t happen and that was just dramatized by him. He was a ridiculous man.

                                    When you read this book and you begin to realize, no, no, no, if you think of it as cultural Marxism, taking over institutions, changing values, getting rid of the church, getting rid of civil society, that’s been going since even before the ’50s.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         It did.

Bill Walton:                   It started actually [00:43:00] in the ’30s in the United States, and you had a lot of those people working in FDR’s administration.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes. That’s right.

Bill Walton:                   So these things which seemed to … My friend Todd Zywicki used this before.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I’ve heard that name.

Bill Walton:                   He’s a brilliant professor of law.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh, okay.

Bill Walton:                   I think it’s George Mason.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Oh, yes.

Bill Walton:                   And the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality, three months.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Yes, I agree with you. Bill, I did not know these things either. I thought they were conspiracy [00:43:30] theory as well until I went to Hungary-

Bill Walton:                   Yeah. No, no, no, no. That’s just-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         … heard the stories-

Bill Walton:                   Yeah.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         … looked at history, did the research, and absolutely we have been infiltrated with values that our country was not founded on.

Bill Walton:                   Okay, this is the Last Warning. Read the book.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Please.

Bill Walton:                   Shea Bradley-Farrell, PhD.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         [inaudible 00:43:55].

Bill Walton:                   It’s so great to talk with you, have you back again. We’re digging [00:44:00] more into this topic on this show, so I hope you’ll come back with some other people-

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I’d love that.

Bill Walton:                   … and we can drive home these points.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Well, and if your listeners would like to go to counterpointinstitute.org, we send out a newsletter like twice a month, that will update them on what’s going on, or go to Amazon and get the book and read it yourself.

Bill Walton:                   And you’re on Twitter.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         I’m on Twitter, @DrShea_DC, and Instagram.

Bill Walton:                   We love Dr. Shea. All right, I’ve been here with Dr. Shea. This [00:44:30] is Bill Walton, Bill Walton Show. As you know, you can find us in all the major podcast platforms’ websites, our website as well, and, oh gosh, substack.com, and just about every place you can find a digital show, that’s where we are.

                                    If you liked it, please subscribe. If you’re already subscribed, urge your friends to do it. Sign up to our show and also send us your comments if you like this, other things you’d like us to see doing. And [00:45:00] welcome to the cause. Shea, thanks for being here.

Dr. Shea Bradle…:         Thank you, Bill.

Bill Walton:                   Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Want more? Click the subscribe button or head over to the billwaltonshow.com to choose from over a hundred episodes. You can also learn more about our guest on our Interesting People page.

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