IMPORTANT Message from Meidas Co-Founder…

By Ben Meiselas

Hello Meidas Mighty. It’s Ben Meiselas here, co-founder of the MeidasTouch Network. I wanted to share my morning thoughts with you as we reflect on the latest developments we’ve been reporting on. Let me start by thanking our subscribers to this Substack. If you haven’t subscribed yet, we hope you will subscribe now and help the MeidasTouch Network continue to expand in the United States and internationally.

An important observation we made on the latest MeidasTouch Podcast is the similarities among authoritarian leaders across time and place. Trump is a vessel of a broader authoritarian movement that is battling against democratic movements. With the release of the Epstein files that is supposed to take place on Friday (although we all know Trump will pull more stunts to obstruct), I think it’s notable to compare what’s taking place in Hungary to what’s happening in the United States.

Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban originally rose to prominence several decades ago purporting to be a liberal, but he cemented his personal accumulation of power in the past decade using an authoritarian toolkit which included ultra-nationalism, racism, anti-multiculturalism, anti-empathy, discrimination of marginalized groups, repression, and the taking away of personal freedoms. One of the techniques Orban used to get into power was to claim his regime was going to take down a “deep state” of child sex traffickers and that he alone could fix it. A lot of the MAGA fixation on Orban is based on the fact that he used Hungary as a laboratory to test these potent brainwashing tools on the people to aggregate power.

Currently, Orban is losing power, and most polls have him losing handily in the upcoming election to a centrist opposition leader. By all accounts, Orban is working with Putin to try and keep power and rig upcoming elections. There are currently massive protests in Budapest, Hungary against the Orban regime for being implicated in, and covering up, their own version of the Epstein scandal. The Orban regime, which claimed it was stopping child sex trafficking, was actually behind it, and they have been using the juvenile prison system to engage in massive abuse and human trafficking. Their claim to help victims was just a facade for victimizing children.

This provides an important lesson for the United States, where the GOP has become the PPP—the pedo protection program. The authoritarians across the world borrow from the same Putin playbook of tricks to brainwash and exert mind control on populations. The problem is that when you fight within their framework and framing of ideas based on the authoritarian playbook, it is no different than Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a mountain.

We have to develop new frames. There are forces of good versus evil. We have to recognize that the behavior we are seeing from MAGA is not just bad and dangerous, but is fundamentally evil. MAGA is a movement rooted in evil, harm, and hate. We must support, at a higher level, a framing that shows people that doing good, showing empathy, and love leads to a better life, a better society, and better outcomes individually and for the community.

Yes, policy matters. Yes, details matter. Yes, the day-to-day political grind and rapid response matter. But fundamentally we need to be focused on a higher calling of doing good, being good, and living honorable lives where we support each other. We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about that. Empathy is our strength, not our weakness. The politics fall into place easily when we are strongly committed to our sense of values, principles, and purpose.

As I reflect on the chaos and craziness in the news cycle, the most important thing I try to do at this network is always be faithful to these guiding principles and values. It’s the only way to fight back against the forces of evil that seek destruction. I don’t want this to sound corny, but it’s absolutely true: we need to fight with a bigger weapon, which is love, hope, and imagining a better world.

I hope this has given you some additional insight into how we approach our reporting and the theory behind the reporting. With that said, it’s time for me to make a morning video.

A quick reminder for you: please subscribe now if you can. We need your help more than ever to stay on top of all the digital news charts. Thanks to you, we lead in the video and audio charts, and we now lead on the Substack charts—and we are just getting started. You’ve helped us lead all independent media, and we intend to keep on growing and expanding thanks to you.

Hit subscribe now if you can. And thanks for all you do.