Eight years have passed… On January 20, 2017, Sebastian Gorka was among the guests at Donald Trump’s inauguration, in the cold winter of Washington. It’s easy to notice: the child of Hungarian immigrants raised in London, this pillar of the MAGA movement who arrived in the United States in 2008 wears a traditional Magyar vest decorated with a medal. Not just any one! This is the order of Vitéz, founded by Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian nationalist and anti-Semitic leader of the Interwar period, who collaborated with the Third Reich.
A few days later, Sebastian Gorka, protégé of Steve Bannon, became one of President Donald Trump’s deputy advisers, under the leadership of Bannon and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. But after seven months, John Kelly, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, fired the character, known for his anti-Islam diatribes and his errors of judgment. Shortly before the car-ramming attack in Charlottesville (Virginia), perpetrated by a white supremacist, Gorka believes, for example, that the far right “does not represent a serious threat” in the United States.
Seven years after his ouster, here is Sebastian Gorka again! Having left through the door, he returns through the window. Appointed deputy national security advisor and senior director of counterterrorism at the White House, he will occupy a senior position in the new Trump administration. Which is not to everyone’s taste. His return to Washington angers Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, for whom Sebastian Gorka is a “crook”. The latter really built his reputation from 2019, with editorials for the alt-right media Breitbart News (created by Steve Bannon) and interventions on Fox News. Author of a bestseller on jihad, he also created his own podcast, “America First With Sebastian Gorka”. His business? The exaltation of Donald Trump, traditional values, the “culture war against the left” and political incorrectness.
“Vladimir Putin? A bloodthirsty officer!”
But before Sebastian the American, there was “Sebestyén” the Hungarian. In 1992, this young graduate of philosophy and theology born in the United Kingdom arrived in Budapest where his father, a former political prisoner, fled during the anti-Soviet revolt of 1956. Sebastian Gorka worked at the Ministry of Defense studying international relations and diplomacy. Later, he contributed to the creation of a think tank and to the preparations for Hungarian membership in NATO. After September 11, Gorka established himself as an expert on security policy in the Magyar press.
But unlike Donald Trump, Rod Dreher, a Republican essayist based in Hungary, or former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, Sebastian Gorka is not a big fan of Viktor Orban. In the mid-2000s, on the contrary, he increased his criticism of the Prime Minister. After Orban’s defeat in the 2006 legislative elections, he denounced anti-Americanism and the lack of democracy in the Prime Minister’s camp then ran for municipal elections in a town near Budapest. Before his departure to the United States, he even launched a small anti-Orban party that quickly fell into obscurity.
He also criticizes China
Viktor Orban, who prides himself on being the European leader closest to Donald Trump, must therefore deal with a detractor installed at the heart of the future American administration. In August 2023, Sebastian Gorka even reiterated his anti-Orban speech to the Hungarian site Válasz Online. He judges his party, Fidesz, “as corrupt” as the single party during the era of Magyar communism and hopes that American conservatives “will become aware of the true nature of Fidesz”. In the same interview, he compares Vladimir Putin to “a bloodthirsty KGB officer” and advocates armed support for Ukraine. Not really in line with the positions of Orban, who is courting the Kremlin and trying to block European military aid to kyiv.
“Sebastian Gorka being a true anti-communist conservative, not a fake like Viktor Orban, he will probably oppose a pro-Russian and above all too pro-Chinese policy of Viktor Orban”, analyzes the political scientist Péter Techet. When he lived in Hungary, he was closer to the anti-Orban right than to Fidesz. Furthermore , Gorka never participated in the various forums of Trump-Orban cooperation, such as the European version of CPAC [NDLR : le grand forum des conservateurs américains] organized in Budapest.”
The maverick Gorka undoubtedly did not appreciate Orban’s “peace mission” to Moscow and Beijing in July, which marred the start of the current Hungarian presidency of the European Council. Not sure either that he applauds the confiscation of the economy by those close to the Prime Minister, including the oligarch Lorinc Meszaros, Orban’s childhood friend. The establishment in Hungary of Chinese factories like BYD, the Tesla of the Middle Kingdom, or CATL, the world No. 1 in electric batteries, which will start their activities in 2025, is not his cup of tea either.
Can Sebastian Gorka disrupt the “bromance” between Viktor Orban and Donald Trump? Or, on the contrary, will he swallow his criticisms in the name of the anti-woke alliance from the Danube to the Potomac? Another question: will he snub “Viktor” or not when Trump’s European model returns to the White House, where he was already received in 2019? “The most important thing is that Gorka has Hungarian roots. Any differences that may have existed between him and the government are secondary”, minimizes the Magyar executive, questioned by the Hungarian press on the appointment of Sebastian Gorka.
“Sebastian Gorka will have allies in Congress and among Republicans who criticize the Orban regime because of its heavy dependence on China, says Daniel Hegedus, political scientist at the German Marshall Fund. But as a security and antiterrorism policy advisor to the House -White, Hungary is unlikely to find itself at the heart of its work, unless Budapest’s policy towards Russia or China directly clashes with Washington’s interests.” The only certainty: one way or another, Hungary will have its way into the White House.
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