Hungary

[Samof94]

Can this country re-democratize in the future??? It clearly has values that don’t fit the EU well and are very much pro-Putin.

[Red Velvet]

More likely for them to leave or be expelled from the EU or something lol

[Omega21]

More likely for them to leave or be expelled from the EU or something lol

Can't be expelled. You can be stripped of voting power, but not expelled. And no, they ain't leaving either.

Otherwise, the "pro-Putin" thing is a non-issue. We buy gas and trade with Russia and get called out by the US, while the US is buying SA oil and selling them depleted-uranium bombs to drop on Yemen. Once that stops, we can talk about morals in trade.

As for democracy, Hungary is actually not that bad in terms of opposition. Budapest is opposition-held, and the opposition parties are forming a big-tent for the next national election.

[Alcibiades]

More likely for them to leave or be expelled from the EU or something lol

Can't be expelled. You can be stripped of voting power, but not expelled. And no, they ain't leaving either.

Otherwise, the "pro-Putin" thing is a non-issue. We buy gas and trade with Russia and get called out by the US, while the US is buying SA oil and selling them depleted-uranium bombs to drop on Yemen. Once that stops, we can talk about morals in trade.

As for democracy, Hungary is actually not that bad in terms of opposition. Budapest is opposition-held, and the opposition parties are forming a big-tent for the next national election.

It is pretty bad in terms of the government taking over the independent media and trying to destroy civil society, though.

[Velasco]

I'll have to ask this question to a friend of mine who teaches Spanish in Budapest, but the prospective doesn't look promising

[Estrella]

It's difficult to say where things will be going from here. Assuming the opposition parties really do form an alliance for the 2022 election, they will almost certainly deprive Fidesz of its two-thirds majority and perhaps break the sense of inevitability about Fidesz staying in power indefinitely. The problem is that Fidesz and Fidesz-adjacent people control all the media, either directly (public TV and radio) or indirectly (hostile takeovers of private media) and don't shy away from using it to their benefit. For years, the M1 evening newscast has been a stream of propaganda about the good work the government does, the perfidies of oposition, the evils of migration, Soros and EU etc etc. Granted, Hungary is not alone in this, TVP is basically the same these days. Lengyel, Magyar, két jó barát, in all the wrong ways. Hungary, however, is unique in that there are almost no neutral or opposition media left.

Some people - not just Orbán apologists - like to talk about he's popular not because of his stranglehold over the media and scaremongering, but because his government is actually good. Bullshxt. I could go over a litany of what Fidesz is doing wrong, but here are just two examples:
- the aptly named "slave law", a 2019 labour law reform that, among other significant changes, increased maximum yearly hours of overtime from 250 to 400 ("hurr durr economically leftist far right!")
- Pancho Aréna, a €10 million stadium built in Felcsút, a small village... that also happens to be the place where Orbán lived as a kid. It's something unbelievable; a stadium for thousands of people and the only access road is literally a village residential street, there are no facilities anywhere and the most interesting attraction in the surroundings is a railway to nowhere. Fortunately, the structure is built of wood - if there is a God, that thing will burn down to cinders at some point.

Any change will have to come from within, though. Even if EU had the balls to discipline Hungary (assuming that it wouldn't just backfire and make Orbán more popular), they'd be stopped by the V4. If Orbán tried to do the things he is doing now during his first term in the late 90s, Hungary wouldn't come anywhere close near EU and all surrounding countries would condemn him - but that's not happening now. Orbánism used to be based on Hungarian irredentism towards neighbouring countries, but today it uses modern far-right tropes about transnational elites. 2021 Orbán doesn't hate nationalists from the rest of V4 and they don't hate him. They might not be as shamelessly anti-democratic, but fundamentally they see him as "one of us". They would never allow EU to actually punish him.

As I once put it in a rant on AAD,

He doesn't care that much about Trianon either. Even the farthest far-right doesn't, beyond occasional grumbling - just like far-right in neighbouring countries.

It's all about Brussels, Muslims and (((Soros))) now. Which is certainly worse* - you used to have Hungarian idiot nationalists yelling about retaking Felvidék and Erdély and Slovak/Romanian/whatever idiot nationalists yelling about fifth columnists. Annoying, but because this isn't Yugoslavia, turning those ideologies into reality was beyong the pale. Now they are all on the same side, fighting together against the same enemies and what's worse, they have allies in mainstream politics and in government. Man, V4 sucks.

* and I'm saying this despite being glad that I'm too young to remember most of Slota's alcoholic rants about getting into tanks and razing Budapest. It's much better for me not to have to listen to the leader of a governing part talk about how I'm half-"ugly mongoloid type with crooked legs that arrived on a hairy, even uglier pony".

[Estrella]

Anyway, the best international journalist covering the decay of democracy in Hungary (and Poland) is the Dutch version of John Oliver, of all people.

You can turn on English subs.

[CumbrianLefty]

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism, Hungary actually appeared to adapt to democracy better than some of its counterparts.

What has happened there since is both deeply disappointing, and a warning.

[CumbrianLefty]

More likely for them to leave or be expelled from the EU or something lol

Can't be expelled. You can be stripped of voting power, but not expelled. And no, they ain't leaving either.

Otherwise, the "pro-Putin" thing is a non-issue. We buy gas and trade with Russia and get called out by the US, while the US is buying SA oil and selling them depleted-uranium bombs to drop on Yemen. Once that stops, we can talk about morals in trade.

As for democracy, Hungary is actually not that bad in terms of opposition. Budapest is opposition-held, and the opposition parties are forming a big-tent for the next national election.

It is pretty bad in terms of the government taking over the independent media and trying to destroy civil society, though.

Yes, and his behaviour here has been an "inspiration" to much of the right across the world.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1389231887697293312?s=19

Not exactly surprising, I suppose.

[Estrella]

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1389231887697293312?s=19

Not exactly surprising, I suppose.

Viktor has an excuse for everything.

Hungary: Government uses vaccine campaign to lash out at political opponents

In early January, government-friendly media outlets in Hungary accused renowned political scientist Peter Kreko, executive director of the think tank Political Capital Institute, of urging the opposition to encourage people not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 so that as many people as possible would die. The opposition could then blame Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the number of victims and bring about his election defeat. Orban even made a personal statement about the allegations, saying that evil had no bounds.