Fidesz has gradually become the main political force in Hungary by exploiting the highly explosive “national question,” which concerns the trauma caused by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, through which Hungary lost two-thirds of its historic territory and over 3 million Hungarians found themselves living in foreign states. The national humiliation, and the fate of ethnic Hungarians now living in bordering states, have filled generations with bitterness. Since his lurch to the right, Orbán’s rhetoric has been characterized by professions of faith in the nation, in the homeland, and in Christian values. [...]
But by early 2015, the Orbán government had lost its supermajority, and the prime minister was using immigration as a wedge issue to regain support. The migrant and refugee crisis, which hit its zenith that year, proved a godsend for that project. Hungary received 174,000 asylum applications in 2015 alone—or 1,770 applicants per 100,000 residents, the highest rate of any European country. Voicing sharp opposition to the influx of migrants, Orbán built a 110-mile-long fence along the border with Serbia to keep them out, and later one along the border with Croatia. He was able to dictate the narrative about migrants—initially in Hungary and subsequently across the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe—by exploiting two predominant elements of Hungarians’ self-image both byproducts of the Treaty of Trianon: the victim myth and the will to survive. [...]
Opinion polls leave little doubt that Orbán successfully won back support by weaponizing the immigration issue. In a September 2015 poll, two-thirds of respondents in Hungary supported the building of the fence along the Serbian border. A 2016 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in 10 European countries ascertained that Hungarians were the most likely to believe that refugees would increase the chances of terrorism in their country: 76 percent of Hungarians questioned said they believed this, compared with a median of 59 percent for the 10 polled countries. Even stronger was the belief that refugees are a burden because they take a country’s jobs and social benefits: 82 percent of Hungarians polled identified with this belief, as against a median of 50 percent. [...]
It would be a mistake to compare the Hungarian regime to, say, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Opposition politicians are not jailed, and antigovernment demonstrations are not subject to police brutality. But over the past eight years, Orbán has pioneered a new model of what some Hungarian scholars describe as a “half democracy in decline” or a “soft autocracy,” merging crony capitalism with right-wing rhetoric. He has flatly rejected accusations about the alleged impropriety of the sources of his allies’ enrichment, but opposition speakers in parliament repeatedly complain that he has become not only the most powerful but also the richest man in Hungary. On the Corruption Perception Index compiled by Transparency International and released this February, Hungary is ranked as the second most corrupt EU country after Bulgaria. By gerrymandering the electoral system, subjugating the free press, and curbing the judiciary, Hungary has also achieved the dubious distinction of being named by Freedom House the “least democratic country” among the EU’s 28 members.
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