CPAC Head Hails Abortion Ban As Solution To Racist ‘Replacement’ Fears: Vice

The chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference hailed the possibility that forcing people to bear children via an abortion ban would make it harder for immigrants and people of color to “replace” white people in America, Vice reported on Thursday.

“If you’re worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why don’t we start … with allowing our own people to live?” Matt Schlapp, who is white, asked U.S. media shut out of CPAC in Budapest, where he spoke on Thursday.

Scuttling Roe v. Wade is a “good start,” Schlapp reportedly emphasized, referring to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion doing just that.

“If you say there is a population problem in a country, but you’re killing millions of your own people every year through legalized abortion every year, if that were to be reduced, some of that problem is solved,” Vice quoted Schlapp as saying.

The “replacement theory” Schlapp referenced has motivated the perpetrators of several racist mass killings — including the gunman who shot 13 people, most of them Black, in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last Saturday, killing 10.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were 630,000 abortions in 2019 in the U.S., not “millions.” Yet several observers have linked right-wing politicians’ drive to suppress reproductive rights to the racist belief that the “supply” of white babies in America is at risk. It’s uncertain how an abortion ban would ultimately affect the demographics of the U.S. population.

Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who was the keynote speaker at CPAC in Budapest — referred to the “replacement theory” in an earlier speech on Monday. In an apparent nod to the extreme right in America, he said the West is “committing suicide” through immigration.

Orbán also called on conservatives in Europe and the U.S. to mobilize “troops” to “reconquer” institutions in Washington and Brussels from progressives ahead of elections in 2024, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“We must coordinate the movement of our troops as we face a big test; 2024 will be a decisive year,” he told the crowd.

The Hungarian leader also blasted “progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies.”

It was the first time the CPAC event was held in Europe, in a country whose leader, Orbán, is notorious for his Christian nationalism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. The event highlighted how an increasingly organized far right is eroding freedoms even while ironically touting them at the conference.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson spoke via video at CPAC on Thursday, and the Trump administration’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was also scheduled to speak remotely.

U.S. and most international journalists were barred from attending the conference, several publications and wire services reported.