4Liberty: LGBTQ Community Became Viktor Orban’s Latest Scapegoat

In the second half of 2019, racism was the next topic to be tested, and the Hungarian Roma community became the focus point of Orbán’s hateful rhetoric. Orbán started with a harsh anti-Roma narrative, then denied financial compensation for Roma children who were forced to learn in segregated schools for years. Orbán portrayed the victims of segregated education as people who are “looking for free money”.[...]

In May 2020 Fidesz made a radical move: they completely banned legal gender recognition for Hungarian transgender and intersex people. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in Europe: legislators usually work towards a more equal society, not the other way around. This law ended a 20 year practise with which transgender people could (although, though a very long and malfunctioning, but still existing process) get the personal documents that provide their basic safety within the society. [...]

These cases show how Fidesz shifted from the “behind closed doors” narrative to the “pathologizing” narrative. And when Fidesz started talking about changing what LGBTQ people are doing in the privacy of their own home by sending them to conversion therapies or depriving them of their right to adopt, fundamental radical groups started to disrupt LGBTQ cultural indoor events.

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Reuters: Hungary's Orban calls for central Europe to unite around Christian roots

 “Western Europe had given up on ... a Christian Europe, and instead experiments with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies,” Orban said in a speech.

He said the monument, a 100-metre long and 4-metre wide ramp carved into a street near Budapest’s parliament building, was a call to central European nations to strengthen their alliance and rally around what he called the “Polish flagship”. [...]

Orban himself had rarely criticised rainbow, or same-sex families, but Parliament’s speaker - a long-time ally of Orban - had equated gay adoption with paedophilia.

Last weekend, two rainbow flags were torn down from municipals buildings in Budapest, prompting a warning from the U.S. Embassy that neo-Nazi groups should not be tolerated.

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TLDR News: Is Hungary a Dictatorship Now? Orban's Controversial Coronavirus Law Explained

openDemocracy: How the Greens won Budapest

On the back of an anti-Semitic re-election campaign that spring, Fidesz had secured 2/3 of the seats in Hungary’s gold-plated parliament building, giving it the right to change the country’s constitution at will – a power they’ve not been slow to use. None of the various progressive parties had managed to even reach second place: they’d also been beaten by another far right party, Jobbik. [...]

It’s not only Roma people. Orbàn has chased much of the Central European University out of Budapest, and attacked gender studies departments as part of his war on feminism. His allied oligarchs have bought out the majority of the press. Last year, openDemocracy uncovered a long list of examples of electoral malpractice in the 2018 election. And in 2018 more than one person said to me that public criticism of the ruling party – including in social media posts – can mean losing your job if you’re one of the many people on the government’s public works scheme. The country is sometimes described by those following the rise of the global far right as a model for social control with the veneer of democracy. [...]

Just as important, though, was a new innovation the party brought to Hungary: door-knocking. In a media environment where people don’t know what to believe, nothing beats meeting them face to face. While Fidesz rely on mobilising a huge database of their own supporters, the Greens knocked on thousands of doors, speaking to people about their concerns. Barabás tells me he personally knocked on 1,500 doors – 40% of the district he now represents, and that this is something other parties haven’t done in the past in Hungary.

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The Guardian: Anti-LGBT rhetoric stokes tensions in eastern Europe

In Poland, and elsewhere in central Europe, there has been a notable rise in tolerance and empathy towards the LGBT community in recent years, illustrated by the emergence of a confident new generation of activists in smaller towns and cities. But across the region, populist politicians and church leaders are using the issue to mobilise their conservative bases. [...]

That message will resonate with activists in Poland, where senior members of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) have engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign portraying so-called “LGBT ideology” as a menace akin to that of Soviet-imposed communism. In the run-up to parliamentary elections this month, which PiS narrowly won, the “LGBT issue” emerged as one of the main campaign grounds. [...]

In Hungary, where the church is less powerful than in Poland, there is less deep-rooted homophobia. Budapest was one of the first cities in the region to have pride marches. But in recent months the ruling Fidesz party of the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has begun what appears to be a coordinated homophobic campaign. [...]

n the Czech Republic, attitudes are even more progressive, with a recent survey showing 61% of people supported a bill currently under consideration that would legally enshrine gay marriage. But here too, conservative politicians are rallying part of their base with homophobic rhetoric disguised as a promotion of “traditional values”.

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The Guardian: Election results give hope to opposition in Poland and Hungary

Cas Mudde, a political scientist and leading populism expert at the University of Georgia, said: “In both Hungary and Poland the opposition seemed to understand the fundamental challenge to liberal democracy they were facing. Strategic collaboration is crucial, particularly when the government party is gaming the system by, for example, controlling the media.” [...]

In Hungary, meanwhile, the hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, suffered his greatest political setback in a decade when a pro-European, centre-left challenger ousted the Fidesz-backed incumbent as mayor of Budapest by 51% to 44%. [...]

The tactic of fielding joint candidates could potentially offer a route to mounting a serious challenge to the strongman prime minister at the next general elections in 2022, although it could prove more difficult to replicate on a national level. [...]

But the performance of Poland’s Left alliance in returning to parliament also suggested that “with good organisation and positive messaging, opposition parties can do well” even in environments where they are under pressure, he added.

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The Atlantic: Why Doesn’t Steve Bannon Matter in Europe?

Yet after all that time, Bannon has little to show for his efforts. Though many far-right parties have made significant gains, further establishing themselves as permanent fixtures on the European political stage, the far-right surge that was expected didn’t come to pass. (This was reaffirmed in subsequent elections across the Continent, where although some parties underperformed, they at least demonstrated their relatively high electoral floor.) [...]

But perhaps the greatest inhibitor of Bannon’s success in Europe has been the very far-right parties he has professed to support. Though the former Donald Trump strategist has appeared alongside some of Europe’s most high-profile far-right leaders—from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally in France, to Matteo Salvini, the head of the League and Italy’s erstwhile interior minister—few have agreed to unite under his nationalist banner. The Sweden Democrats expressed “no interest” in Bannon’s project. Vlaams Belang, a Flemish nationalist party, called the effort “poorly organized.” The Alternative for Germany said the interests of Europe’s anti-establishment parties are too “divergent” to be united. [...]

But it’s not just Bannon’s Americanness that makes some European nationalist parties resistant to working with him. Their reluctance also stems from what is perceived as a fundamental misunderstanding of the way these parties work. Though many of Europe’s far-right movements are united in their shared views on immigration, the economy, and the role and future of the European Union, these beliefs don’t always manifest themselves in the same political goals. Despite hopes that they would be a dominant force in the European Parliament after elections this May, right-wing populist parties instead had to settle for forming the fifth-largest grouping in the legislature—their national priorities took precedence over any broader project. (The current far-right grouping, led by Salvini, failed, for example, to persuade Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz to join it.) [...]

“The mere fact that you are writing an article about him, I think, is part of his personal strategy,” Eric Maurice, the director of the Brussels-based Robert Schuman Foundation, a European think tank, told me, “of trying to look like someone who is everywhere, pulling the strings, working on a master plan to put the far right … in power.”

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euronews: Hungary local elections: Opposition candidate Karácsony unseats Fidesz-backed incumbent in Budapest

Hungary's opposition scored its biggest election victory in a decade on Sunday when opposition challenger Gergely Karacsony defeated ruling party-backed incumbent Istvan Tarlos in the Budapest mayoral election. [...]

Opposition parties were also projected to win a majority in the Budapest General Assembly with 17 members, compared with 14 delegates from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance and two independents. [...]

Budapest is home to about a fifth of Hungary’s population of 10 million, but it is responsible for more than a third of its economic output and plays an outsized role in all walks of national life.

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EURACTIV: Orban lost in the European wilderness

Moreover, Orbán’s illiberal rhetoric and cultural war elevated to the European level contributed to the rise of liberals at home as well as in Europe. In Hungary, the party of the former Socialist prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, led by the energetic Klara Dobrev (Gyurcsány’s wife) came second with 16% of the votes. The young, Western educated liberals Momentum secured third place with 10%, giving a sign of hope for the opposition.

In the EU, the new political division lines are climate change and illiberalism – and less so on migration or particularly economic governance that European voters are actually unhappy about. Representing two different angles of behaviour but the same neoliberal economics, Orbán needs French President Macron to maintain his position as much as Macron needs him. [...]

However, Hungary was in a different situation when he took over in 2010. The economy was in tatters, the country needed an almost $26 billion bailout in 2008 after years of high deficit, unsustainable debt levels, very low social spending, and mismanagement by the socialist-liberal government coalitions. For the majority of Hungarians Orbán is managing the economy better, what is the main reason behind Fidesz`s continuous popularity. Meanwhile, the opposition is oversaturated with previously discredited political figures.

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UnHerd: The corruption of Hungary

Orbán took office for the first time in 1998 at the helm of his right-wing Fidesz party, becoming at 35 the country’s second youngest leader. Already his modus operandi was becoming apparent. He had little patience for negotiation, seeking to sweep aside parliament and others who stood in his way. His administration was marked by a number of corruption scandals. In spite of the problems, Western governments saw him as a reliable ally. Hungary was joining Nato and the European Union.[...]

Old school friends, neighbours and football mates (he was obsessed with the sport) made fortunes. The more control he seized, the easier it became to distribute largesse – and to receive loyalty in return. Self-styled entrepreneurs queued up to ‘work’ with him. Except they weren’t particularly entrepreneurial. It was all about state assets, or ‘state capture’ as it came to be known.

Unlike famous Russians such as Roman Abramovich or Oleg Deripaska, their Hungarian equivalents are not household names. Nor do they count their money in billions. For them it tends to be merely hundreds of millions. But as a proportion of national income, it is still not to be sniffed at.[...]

Perhaps the most exotic is Lorinc Meszaros, a former gas fitter and mayor of Orbán’s home village of Felcsut (a village where they built a football stadium to accommodate a crowd more than twice the size of its population). Thanks to a number of state contracts, he jumped to number five on the rich list, his wealth soaring five-fold in just one year to £330 million. Asked by reporters how he had grown his business faster than Mark Zuckerberg, he declared: “maybe I’m smarter”.

Hungary has built this system from within the European Union – with EU funds. Some 60% of state contracts, billions of Euro, are funded by the EU. The Corruption Research Centre Budapest, a non-governmental organisation, analysed all public procurement contracts from 2010-16. It found that the aggregate value of contracts won by four Fidesz-linked businessmen (including the prime minister’s son-in-law) was 13 times larger than the size of other contracts. Their total haul came to £1.8 billion. Sometimes contracts are put out to tender; sometimes tenders take place, but competitors know they are going through the motions.  

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Social Europe: Migration And Forgetting In Central Europe

These effects have been most noticeable in East-Central Europe, where they have fuelled the rise of an “axis of illiberalism.” While intolerance is a problem across the post-communist space as a whole, Victor Orbán’s Fidesz and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) parties have succeeded in creating regimes that combine elections and market economics with illiberal elements, including gerrymandering, the manipulation of voting rules and control of the media. These all come with the rejection of individual human rights and the rights of social minorities. Known as the Visegrád Group, these parties have fueled a counter-revolution against “Western European dogmas” of tolerance and multiculturalism. [...]

The success of this movement in post-communist Europe – as well as the sympathetic reception they have received on the far right across the continent – testifies to a shocking historical amnesia. As the generations of Europeans with personal memories of total war – as well as the massive transfers of people that followed – pass away, Europe risks repeating the mistakes of the past. At a time when migrants and stateless refugees have once again become “the most symptomatic group in contemporary politics,” we must remember the lessons of the 1930s, which testify to the importance of ensuring the liberal protection of both human and minority rights. [...]

This problem dates back to the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789), which links the “the Rights of Man” – human rights, in modern parlance – to the “will of the people” through the concept of citizenship. While this system works for so called “state peoples,” i.e. nationals who have their own state, it does not protect unwanted individuals and minorities from “having no community” or from having their citizenship stripped away “quite democratically – namely by majority decision.” This realization is the basis for Arendt’s call for the protection of “a right to have rights […] a right to belong to some kind of organized community.” Her key insight is that the killing of the “juridical person” during the nationalist furore of the inter-war crisis was the first step towards the larger atrocities of World War II.

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Social Europe: CEU And Hungary’s War Against The Enlightenment

Hungary’s current political leaders, most of whom were socialized in the ‘70s and ‘80s during the Communist era, seem fully at ease with the notion that a government can dictate what is taught in schools and universities, as illustrated by the recent removal of gender studies from a list of approved postgraduate programs in accordance with a decree signed by Hungary’s Prime Minister. Similarly, the ruling Fidesz Party appears to have no qualms about the influence it wields over the choice of news items carried by most of Hungary’s print and electronic media. Marius Dragomir, Director of the Central European University’s (CEU) Center for Media, Data and Society, has estimated that “some 90 percent of all media in Hungary is now directly or indirectly controlled by Fidesz”.[...]

As under Communism, ideological conformity – or at least a willingness not to question the core values and assumptions of the ruling regime or the private and public behaviour of key figures in the administration – is both expected and enforced. Sanctions may include withdrawal of state funding, punitive taxation, the imposition of complex and restrictive regulations, loss of employment or public shaming. To date, there has been no need for Fidesz to resort to the cruder, less sophisticated methods favoured by Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, and Turkey’s ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in dealing with their opponents.[...]

CEU’s ‘sins’, in the government’s eyes, are many and grievous. As indicated above, it is largely immune to the forms of pressure and manipulation that have allowed the government to exercise ever greater control over other Hungarian universities. Equally disturbingly, at least for Prime Minister Orbán, CEU is a self-avowedly liberal institution. As noted by the Canadian scholar and former politician, Michael Ignatieff, now CEU’s Rector and President, its mission is “to teach the values of open society: free minds, free politics and free institutions”. This open, pluralist political and intellectual vision is starkly at odds with Orbán’s declared intention of turning Hungary into an “illiberal democracy”. [...]

Perhaps one of CEU’s most important contributions to intellectual life in Hungary has been to host regular public lectures by prominent intellectuals from around the world. In the past year or so, visiting speakers have included the French economic historian Thomas Piketty, the Princeton-based political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, the Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan and the Oxford historian, Timothy Garton Ash. Without the stimulus provided by such widely acclaimed scholars, the quality and vitality of Hungary’s intellectual life, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, will inevitably decline.

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Bloomberg: Populism Hits Home for EU Party Papering Over Its Orban Problem

“This resolution is definitely aimed at Orban and is a balancing act in trying to explain why the EPP accommodates an illiberal party within its ranks while confronting populists elsewhere,” said Julian Rappold, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “But this debate won’t go away as long as Fidesz belongs to the EPP.” [...]

The EPP members will choose between two contenders: Manfred Weber, who backed triggering a sanctions mechanism against Hungary but who nonetheless said he supports dialog over punishment for Orban; and Alexander Stubb, a former Finnish prime minister who has said he would expel Fidesz from the EPP if it violated the group’s values. Orban backs Weber, the EPP’s current chairman, in Thursday’s vote. [...]

At the same time, Orban has ruled out trading his seat in the most influential group in the EU Parliament for one in the populist camp before the elections, which might help explain why the party may ultimately sign the anti-populist resolution. Fidesz would sign the text in its present form, according to a party official who asked not to be identified because no final decision has been taken.

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Politico: Sebastian Kurz: Keep Viktor Orbán in conservative fold

“I don’t believe it would make sense to create another new party of Eastern Europeans, who are unevenly matched when it comes to morals,” Kurz told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper in an interview published Sunday.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “no longer has a place” in the European People’s Party. The grouping — the largest in the European Parliament — counts Juncker’s Christian Social People’s Party and Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats among its ranks.[...]

Last month, the European Parliament declared that Hungary is at risk of breaching the EU’s core values, citing concerns about judicial independence, corruption, freedom of expression, academic freedom, the rights of minorities and migrants, and other issues in the country.

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The Guardian: Hungary is making a mockery of ‘EU values’. It’s time to kick it out

Consider the latest act in Hungary’s slide towards what its prime minister Viktor Orbán boasts is an “illiberal democracy”. The country’s parliament has not just passed a law making claims for asylum almost impossible: the very act of helping migrants and refugees has been criminalised. Furthermore, a 25% tax has been slapped on funding for NGOs that “support immigration”: in practice, that means having anything positive to say about immigration.

In the same week, the musical Billy Elliot was cancelled in Budapest after a vicious homophobic campaign by the pro-government press, including the claim in one government-linked newspaper that it could “transform Hungarian boys into homosexuals”. [...]

But Hungary, along with increasingly authoritarian Poland, is making an utter mockery of the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and human rights. In 2016 Luxembourg’s foreign minister called for Hungary to be expelled from the EU because of its treatment of refugees. He was right. Yes, the EU is buffeted by multiple crises, from Brexit to the assumption of power of a Eurosceptic Italian government. But its acceptance of its own member states succumbing to authoritarianism may prove its greatest existential threat of all.

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Social Europe: Will Defunding Hungary And Poland Backfire?

In both Poland and Hungary, the ruling parties have brought the opposition into line through nationalist blackmail. Any criticism of the Polish or Hungarian government is spun to look like criticism of Poland or Hungary itself. And, in Poland, the fear of being labeled unpatriotic has pushed opposition politicians to concede that the country belongs to the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) and its chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński.  [...]

Opposition members who criticize the idea of suspending EU funds for populist governments may make public appeals to morality, but what they really want is efficiency. They assume the suspension of EU funds would be broadly unpopular, and would strengthen populist rule rather than weakening it. Similarly, the moralizing manifestos of Verhofstadt and Macron are not entirely unselfish. Politicians and journalists often mistakenly read this situation as if it were simply “about Poland,” or “about Hungary,” while in fact criticism of these countries forms part of a bigger picture. Both the ALDE and the European People’s Party Group (Christian Democrats) are expected to suffer severe losses, owing to Brexit and the larger collapse of the political mainstream in France, Germany, and Italy.  [...]

But if the principle of “EU funding in exchange for the rule of law” is indeed implemented, the costs might not even be borne by Kaczyński or Orbán, but rather by the next Polish and Hungarian governments. This is particularly true in Poland: although the PiS is still at the top of the polls, a coalition of non-populist opposition parties could well overtake it. The more the EU Commission sours on what was once Eastern Europe’s model student of democracy, the clearer it becomes that Brussels will not be as favourably disposed to Poland as it once was, regardless of who is in power.  

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Politico: Populist plan for 2019 election puts EU in crosshairs

Emboldened by the success of populist role models in Italy and Austria, leading members of the two Euroskeptic groups in the Parliament have begun work on parallel strategies to expand their influence. The effort will involve an aggressive push in the European election next May, involving a less overtly Euroskeptic pitch to voters, new parliamentary alliances and no mention of Brexit. [...]

A larger populist presence in the next European parliament is a growing concern in Brussels and other key EU capitals. It could deny the mainstream right and left parties control over the chamber and complicate plans to choose replacements for the biggest EU jobs becoming vacant in 2019 — the presidency of the European Commission, European Council and the European Central Bank. It could stifle French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions to reform Europe. And if the populists do well and then manage to unite as a single force in Parliament, then they could muster the strength to start to implement their agenda for the EU.

Nicolas Bay, a member of Marine Le Pen’s National Front party from France and co-leader of the Europe of Nations and Freedoms group (ENL) in the Parliament, said that his party would offer a “true alternative.” That would no longer be based exclusively on criticism of the EU though, he added, but on “a real European project aimed at another Europe — a Europe designed differently.” Last weekend, the party voted to rebrand itself as the National Rally — part of an effort to broaden its support and move away from the racial hatred and anti-Semitism associated with the party’s founder, Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie. [...]

Populists across the Continent are pulling back from some of their most strident messages to attract voters. Under its new name, France’s National Rally hopes to profit politically from its strategy of ameliorating some of the party’ more hard-line political messages, a process that began before last year’s presidential election. It no longer advocates Frexit from the EU or leaving the euro currency. In Italy too, the League and 5Star coalition government is not pushing to leave the euro despite both parties campaigning for it in the past.

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Political Critique: The illiberal tandem vs Europe

This process of awakening national pride goes hand in hand with euro-sceptic slogans, highlighting the cultural distance of the left-liberal West to Eastern Europe. Here, the Brussels-based dictate of European bureaucracy is invoked. The fight for economic independence and Christian values, especially in times of massive immigration to Europe, is its own moral imperative. [...]

Although there are many similarities to be found between Hungary in Poland, it is not justified to present these countries as mirror cases. It is often forgotten that despite pulling all strings, Jarosław Kaczyński, the PiS party leader, is just an ordinary member of parliament, abstaining from taking any public offices. On the contrary, Viktor Orbán has held the PM position unchanged since 2010. This also tells us a lot about the leadership style of both gentlemen as well as about the structure of their parties: the hierarchical, commanding style of a single authority in PiS differs from the court united around Viktor Orbán. [...]

Fidesz and PiS are conservative in their mindset and therefore stand for traditional values. However, the Hungarian government seems to be more relaxed on minority rights. Unlike in Poland, same-sex partnerships have remained recognized in Hungary since 2009. No amendments around reproductive rights have been put in place either. Ever since PiS has taken over, Polish women regularly face the risk of restricting abortion laws. After all, it is not by accident that at the European level, Fidesz is affiliated with the European People’s Party (EPP), centre-right Christian-democrats, whereas PiS has joined the European Conservatives and Reformists, the Euro-sceptic right-wing of the European Parliament. [...]

Jarosław Kaczyński, usually not very keen on travelling, lately made his way to Budapest to manifest his support for the Hungarian ally shortly before elections. In his address after the successful vote, Orbán expressed his gratitude to the Polish leaders. And so, the illiberal affair in East-Central Europe continues. Nevertheless, its future depends now on the performance of the Polish partners in the parliamentary election in 2019. There, the results should not be taken for granted.  

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Social Europe: Hungary’s Lost Democracy

Despite the evident strength and sincerity of my companion’s convictions there is ample evidence to suggest that the truth is a great deal more complex. While Fidesz may have gained an impressive number of seats in Hungary’s Parliament, the election results show conclusively that the Party does not enjoy overwhelming support amongst the electorate. Without taking account of possible electoral irregularities – now the subject of mounting speculation – Fidesz-KDNP received one hundred thousand fewer votes than the opposition parties combined. Fidesz’s striking success, in terms of winning parliamentary seats, is far from an accurate barometer of its real approval ratings. Rather, the party’s two-thirds majority in the new Parliament is the product of Hungary’s spectacularly skewed election laws, which were designed by Fidesz and passed by a Fidesz-dominated legislature. As underlined by the historian and blogger, Eva Balogh, “many people underestimated…the devilish nature of the electoral system Viktor Orbán created.” [...]

Aside from alleged material inducements, occasional reports of pressure from employers on their workforce and, most worryingly, suggestions of serious election irregularities, including the contention that as many as 125,000 votes may have simply “vanished”, the governing party’s campaign was greatly helped by a range of dubious practices. In its preliminary report on the Hungarian elections, an OSCE Election Observation Mission noted: “the ability of contestants to compete on an equal basis was significantly compromised by the government’s excessive spending on public information advertisements that amplified the ruling coalition’s campaign message.” The Observation Mission also emphasised that, while the public broadcaster had “fulfilled its mandate to provide free airtime to contestants”, its “newscasts and editorial outputs clearly favoured the ruling coalition”. At the same time, most commercial broadcasters – the bulk of which support Fidesz – had been “partisan in their coverage”. These factors go some way towards explaining why Fidesz was able to attract significantly more votes than any other single party in the elections. Persistent and grossly biased media coverage – in combination with omnipresent state-funded “public information advertisements” that, in reality, simply reinforce the anti-migrant, anti-EU and anti-(George) Soros rhetoric of Fidesz – have helped to create and sustain a fearful social climate in which poorly educated, low-income citizens, in particular, especially in deprived rural areas, have grown to accept Fidesz’s fictive political narrative. As Balogh noted recently in Hungarian Spectrum, although opposition parties took most of the seats in Budapest, „[t]he inhabitants of villages, in fact, the poorest villages, voted in droves for Fidesz. They are under-educated, ill-informed, and brainwashed.” [...]

Strikingly, many educated younger Hungarians I encounter – most of whom have had little or no direct involvement in politics – no longer see a meaningful future for themselves in a Fidesz-dominated Hungary, where corruption and nepotism – as well as the continuing assault on civil liberties – are becoming the norm. Since 8 April, the talk amongst customers in the café where I often take breakfast has been almost entirely of emigration. Fidesz may have won the recent parliamentary elections but it’s Hungary, not only the country’s hopelessly divided and ineffectual opposition parties, that has lost.

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Jacobin Magazine: Fidesz’s Two-Thirds

The plan had been brewing for some time. Various political and civil organizations, united under the umbrella of “Country for All Movement,” ran a series of surveys to determine the strongest anti-Fidesz candidate in the most competitive districts; the weaker candidates were then supposed to step aside. This call for tactical voting sparked much discussion both inside and outside the country, with liberal editorialists like Cas Mudde even suggesting that in order to overcome the Orbán regime, the liberal opposition should join forces with the Jobbik party, an extreme-right formation that has tried, like Marine Le Pen in France, to clean up its image and present itself as more moderate. [...]

Aside from anti-corruption rhetoric, opposition parties offered nothing new to voters. The election program of the ostensibly socialist party — as well as that of its liberal spin-off, Democratic Coalition — contained little progressive content. Discredited due to past betrayals, lacking a strategy to expand beyond partisan die hards, these parties failed to offer voters a credible left-wing alternative. Their opposition was stylistic, rather than substantive. [...]

Orbán is a liberal at his core, topped off with some colorful nationalism and racism. The same could be said of Italy’s Berlusconi or France’s Sarkozy or, more recently, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz. Has Western Europe already forgotten Italy’s anti-immigrant Bossi Fini law, or France’s ban on face-covering (which Kurz is now considering implementing)? Do we really have to remind aghast liberals that Switzerland voted for a constitutional amendment, proposed by the far-right Swiss People’s Party, to ban the building of minarets?  

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