The annual International Religious Freedom Summit (IRF), an event that has faced criticism for partnerships with anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, convened this week in Washington, D.C., with a new sponsor tied to the Hungarian hard right.
The event, now in its sixth year, added the Danube Institute to its list of “partners.” Hatewatch previously reported on the Danube Institute’s funding from the far-right Hungarian government and its campaign to “win influence with the international conservative and far-right movements” and shape public policy by contracting with American right-wing activists. This sponsorship marks an expansion of international hard-right groups’ cooperation and points to a strategy of tying “religious freedom” rhetoric to anti-communist foreign policy priorities. It also points to the forging of international collaborations that fuel homegrown campaigns to suppress the rights of LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and non-Christians.
What’s more, the summit continues to accept the sponsorship of anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council (FRC).
In addition to the conference held Feb. 2-3 this year, the summit hosts a congressional advocacy day each year. In 2025, the group’s policy recommendations to members of Congress included “reestablish[ing] international religious freedom as a national security objective,” suggesting the group views promoting hard-right “religious freedom” rhetoric as an issue of American domestic security. According to the summit in 2025, “partners of the IRF Summit have collaborated to provide recommendations to the incoming Trump Administration.”
Strategy of forging international hard-right partnerships
In recent years, U.S.-based hate and extremist groups have refocused their efforts on building international partnerships and using those networks to export and import anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion and authoritarian policy ideas.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has previously reported on anti-LGBTQ+ hate group activity in sub-Saharan Africa that uses so-called “natural family” rhetoric to promote anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion policies. Since the mid-2000s, the rhetorical campaign helped support Russian and Eastern European policies to suppress LGBTQ+ people under the white nationalist-inspired belief that only cisgender heterosexual couples can perpetuate Western and Christian values through sexual procreation.
In May 2025, IRF partner Family Research Council participated in a convening on “family values” in Nairobi, Kenya, that perpetuated the rhetoric. In an interview about the event, FRC President Tony Perkins described the FRC’s activism in Africa as “a defensive posture for policy in the U.S.”
Organizations like the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which sponsored the IRF Summit in 2023 and 2024, are similarly exporting the language of “religious freedom” and claiming to defend “free speech” as part of global campaigns to undermine access to abortion and gender-affirming health care and amplify hard-right authoritarian propaganda.
In October 2025, The New York Times reported that the ADF’s anti-abortion advocacy in England came as it had “quietly been courting” the Reform U.K. Party since at least 2024. The report suggests the ADF is building an alliance with party leaders who can help the group encode anti-abortion and hard-right “religious freedom” rhetoric into the laws of the United Kingdom. Reform U.K. has been widely accused of spreading racist, misogynistic and bigoted rhetoric.
Also in 2025, the ADF filed a legal petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights defending right-wing billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X from what it characterized as “censorship” by the Brazilian government. “We are particularly concerned that the Brazilian state is targeting Christian expression, including pro-life views and other faith-based speech,” said Tomás Henríquez, ADF international director of legal advocacy for Latin America.
In March 2025, the ADF was represented at a “closed-door workshop” sponsored by the Christian-right Heritage Foundation in Poland. According to Polish news media, the meeting between U.S. and European hard-right groups is “forging closer ties with illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary to shape its stance on the European Union.”
The meeting fits into The Heritage Foundation’s larger project to cultivate allies in Europe by spreading Christian supremacist and antigovernment narratives. The Heritage Foundation claims that the European Union represents a threat to national sovereignty and Western values.
According to international journalism collective DeSmog, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — who faced accusations of antisemitism from within his organization in 2025 — said: “This is all about reclaiming sovereignty, reclaiming the spirit, the sovereignty of each of our nation states. … And so I can speak for a lot of Americans here and certainly all of us from the Heritage Foundation. … We’ve drawn a line in the sand and we’re ready to lead the world again.”
Funding from authoritarian governments to American extremists
Hard-right governments have found traction among American commentators willing to accept lucrative contracts. In some cases, the money has been linked to campaigns to spread propaganda or lobby U.S. policymakers on behalf of foreign interests.
This year’s IRF Summit marked the addition of the Danube Institute as a partner. Earlier, the U.S.-based Hungary Foundation (HF), which has previously funded the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies, sponsored the event. Unlike HF, the Danube Institute, which is a think tank project of the nonprofit Batthyány Lajos Foundation (BLA), is funded, in part, by the Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán.
Orbán’s government has been characterized as an “autocracy” by the European Union. According to a 2024 report from Human Rights First, “Under the leadership of its far-right nationalist prime minister, Hungary is carrying out one of the most aggressive assaults on civil society in Europe” that included rolling back democratic safeguards and tactics to “suffocate civil society.”
According to Human Rights Watch, since 2012, Orbán has “hijacked public institutions, attacked the independence of courts, and left almost no independent media standing. He has criminalized basic democratic activities by civil society organizations, attacked the rights of LGBT and transgender people, and banned same-sex unions. He encouraged ruthless and rights-abusing treatment of migrants and refugees and the criminalization of those who help them.”
A media representative for IRF responded to a request for comment from Hatewatch with a quote attributed to the IRF Summit team: “The Danube Institute did come in last minute as a partner organization at our lowest partner amount. As of yet, no funds or in-kind services have been received. The institute had no input in shaping the program.”
Hatewatch previously reported on contracts between the BLA and U.S. conservative influencers and authors including Christopher Rufo, Michael O’Shea and Jeremy Carl. Rufo and Carl were previously named as visiting fellows by the Danube Institute. In 2025, Carl was nominated to become assistant secretary of state for international organizations by President Donald Trump. His 2025 nomination failed, but he was renominated in January.
In 2023, Hatewatch also reported on conservative blogger Rod Dreher’s contract with the Danube Institute to write articles for American media. Legal experts told Hatewatch Dreher should have registered as a foreign agent for Hungary under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.
As Hatewatch reported, the Hungarian government has “long paid U.S. right-wing and far-right ideologues to speak in Hungary. These include far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos, conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Steve Bannon,” a former adviser to Trump.
IRF Summit
Since 2021, the summit has convened organizations and speakers from around the world to discuss issues of “religious freedom” and persecution. In previous years, the summit was underwritten by institutions associated with the Unification Church, like the Universal Peace Federation and The Washington Times Foundation.
Hatewatch has previously reported how the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Pennsylvania, sponsored by an offshoot of the Unification Church, and led by the son of the Unification Church’s founder, Sun Myung Moon, “showcases a widening coalition” of Christian supremacist and antigovernment figures “intent on destabilizing democracy.”
According to federal tax returns, between 2023 and 2024, the Universal Peace Federation — an arm of the Unification Church — gave the organization that previously administered the summit, the Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, a $110,000 grant to “support their outreach programs.”
Beginning in 2024, the administration of the summit passed to a new organization, Institute for Religious Freedom Summit, which is led by Lantos Foundation President Katrina Lantos Swett and Sam Brownback, formerly an ambassador and Kansas governor. The two have cochaired the summit for the past five years. Hatewatch previously reported that anti-Muslim extremists praised Brownback’s actions to ban “sharia law” and eliminate assistance to Syrian refugees while governor.
Illustration at top by the SPLC; original images from iStock,