“The Barbarians Are at the Gate”—U.S. Actor and Comedian Rob Schneider

Rob Schneider is a world-famous American actor and comedian, and a public figure who speaks candidly about his politically conservative views. He was a cast member on the long-running live sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live on NBC between 1990 and 1994. After leaving the show, he starred in comedy movies such as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), The Animal (2001), Hot Chick (2002), and Grown Ups (2010). He has a long-standing friendship with Adam Sandler and appeared in many of his films, including 50 First Dates (2004) and The Longest Yard (2005). We spoke with Mr. Schneider in Budapest on the last day of his speaking tour in Hungary. 

Years ago, the MovieMaker website listed 11 actors who have switched political sides, and you were the first on that list. I understand this ‘switch’ happened around 2013: you used to be more of a liberal Democrat, and then you became conservative. 

I never even considered conservatism, because being a follower of Noam Chomsky and Manufacturing Consent, that possibility never even occurred to me. However, a shift happened under the political earthquake of Obama, which was not a positive but a fracturing of our American society. I mean, it didn’t create a radical shift. It was a very destructive administration, and I noticed it during the taking out of the Smith-Mundt Act, which really allowed propagandizing Americans in America, which was what the Smith-Mundt Act, passed in 1948, was meant to prevent. So that raised my awareness, and it was particularly under the second administration of Obama—I didn’t like the first administration either, but the second one was even more destructive. It was like there was a time limit to disrupt democracy in America.

And it was stealthy, wasn’t it? It was packaged into virtue signaling, “We’re all good people” stuff.

Yes, as you say, it was underhanded and it was obtuse, and it was meant to be. It was painted as a positive thing. There was its rise in the illiberal liberal media with terms like ‘racism’ and ‘white supremacy.’ And it was, as Douglas Murray says much more eloquently than I can [imitating Murray’s posh British accent], “Just when racism in America has never been better, it’s been portrayed as if it’s never been worse.” And in his The War on the West, Douglas Murray, as well as Andrew Doyle, explains this well. So, reading them was the turn for me. Also Thomas Sowell. In his most recent book, which was The Fallacy of Social Justice, he really kind of breaks it down. 

When I talk about this, I keep coming back to Gorbachev. Gorbachev met with Jay Leno, a comedian, another fellow comedian of mine. It was towards the end of Gorbachev’s life. But one of the things that Gorbachev said is still very striking today. He was asked what has been the most surprising thing that has happened since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and what he said was very illuminating to what’s happening now, and what potentially could happen now in Hungary. He said the most surprising thing for him to see was, after the fall of communism, the “Sovietization of Europe.” 

And I’ve seen the creep of this new form of communism, which is this robe of totalitarianism. It’s in the guise of tolerance. They use Trojan horse terms like ‘social justice,’ ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’ But these are Trojan horse terms that mean the opposite. What it is about is gaining entry and then gaining control. 

The twin towers of the threat to the West right now is this green-red alliance, communism redressed as manners, working in lockstep with Islam, to really finish off, among others, the great, incredible former superpower, England. 

In France, on the right wing, they call this phenomenon Islamo-fascism.

Well, you know, the thing about Islam, which is so effective, is that they’re not confused. No, they specifically have a plan. That plan is dismantle, and that is to dismantle Western civilization. And unfortunately, like in the United States, like in England, like in the West, with the freedoms that we have, I would say we’re having freedom fatigue. Freedom fatigue is the disease of the West, and it’s coming from a populace and a young generation of people who have no history of what former totalitarianism was. I mean, just as with the Holocaust, it’s no coincidence that as the remaining children of the Holocaust are passing away, there is a resurgence of antisemitism.

So you have, in some ways, that Weimar Republic vulnerability. We’re seeing that vulnerability happening in the West. We’re seeing Macron cling to power by his policy of cowardice. And the same with Starmer in England, who—and I don’t mean this in any metaphorical sense—is a traitor. His abject cowardice towards Islam is a very real threat to the foundations of that amazing nation.

But there’s reaction, and then there’s counter-reaction. The way I see it, conservatives around the world seem to be kind of uniting. Would you agree with that assessment?

I mean, I would say it’s too late in England. Too late. It is, unless they reverse course. I mean, you have the political situation, in my understanding of it, in England; it’s very much like an ocean liner. It’s very hard to turn a course if the course correction is going to be gradual, and if it’s not, if they don’t find a way to make the engine on the other side of that ocean liner [work], it’s not going to be able to turn efficiently and in time to save England. I mean, I agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali that England is lost. She believes Europe is lost.

You know, as I walk the streets of Budapest, I not only marvel at its beautiful architecture; I admire and envy how safe the streets are, as compared to Brussels, as compared to some districts of Paris, which are unwalkable now, or London, or Birmingham. 

So, I mean, it’s, to me, despicable that we have leaders like that, not wanting to investigate the grooming gangs in England. They don’t care about the population. 

Maybe Central-Eastern Europe is an exception, though.

So, Central Europe—that’s why I’m here [in Hungary]. It’s the buttress against the West completely falling. Also Poland. So the jewels of Europe used to be Paris, London, and Berlin. And now, I must say, walking around these beautiful, clean, safe streets, free streets, the real jewels now of Europe are Hungary and Poland…

And the Czechs, hopefully, with Babiš returning to power. Central Europeans are maybe less prone to embracing ‘suicidal empathy’ because of the past, because we know what communism looks like. 

Yes, the memory of totalitarianism is still fresh in the minds of Hungarians and Poles and Czechs, because, unlike Western Europe and the United States, the war never ended. For you guys, the war never ended in Hungary. It was just an extension. It was an extension of the capture of your society. So I mean, in some ways, I mean in a very strong way, you see a society that wants to be independent and return to its heritage. 

I’m worried about the young people, though. In one of your posts on X you said people who don’t take things for granted understand what is at stake now. And I’m not so convinced about young people.  

Well, I will tell you right now. In Hungary, you don’t have a Charlie Kirk here. You don’t have a powerful young person. But what Hungary has is Viktor Orbán and his government, who has protected his nation from the hordes of immigration that will destroy the culture. And there’s no self-loathing that goes along with that destruction. It is still the post-war idea of a revulsion and a reaction against fascism and a rejection of nationalism as a source of evil. I am for nationalism. It has become a buzzword for something negative. I would say nationalism is dangerous only in its expansion. I would say nationalism is required when your nation is under attack, Hungary is under attack, the United States is under attack, France is under attack. Western civilization is under attack. Charlie Kirk said, you know, if people come into a country and they don’t assimilate, it’s an invasion. So we’re having an invasion, by Islam. It is spreading like a disease, Islam. It’s a cancer to the West, Islam. 

Let me ask you about another topic. There is a narrative now being pushed by Brussels, Kyiv, and the Hungarian opposition that there’s some kind of Russian interference into the Hungarian elections. This, in my view, is just another Russia hoax, the same thing that they did to Donald Trump back in 2016. What is your take on that? Is this narrative credible? 

If the Left is good at anything, it is undermining something that’s working, with a vague promise of “we have no idea what will replace it,” and they will use anything. They will take any measures, including violence. In my country, and in every country, they will use violence too, and rhetoric. And Hungary’s Russia hoax is just like our Russia hoax. Such narratives have an infinitesimal effect. It has the smallest impact. Hungarians are smart. Americans are smart. They know what’s happening. But they can make a 2, 3, 4, 5% impact and get people to get into that anti-Russian fervor, because it works. Russians are still the bad guys in Tom Cruise movies. So it still works, unfortunately, but I hope Hungarians won’t fall for it. I will just leave you with this: Hungary has a beautiful system that is working, and there’s no country that’s perfect. There’s no system that’s perfect. But what the opposition to Orbán offers are not plans, because they don’t have any. But I will tell you this: if the opposition wins, it’s not a system where you can go back and forth. Go back to conservative, go back to liberal. Go back and forth like the United States has done. There is no going back. If you let the horse out of the barn, the Left will consolidate its power, and they will crush this nation. So I would just say, Hungarians got to hold the line. The barbarians are at the gate.