Caffeinated Politics

I spent some time this afternoon upstairs looking for a column in a back issue of Foreign Affairs. I knew it contained the essence of what I wanted to stress in this column. That followed the most welcome news that Peter Magyar’s center-right Tisza party was projected to win Hungary’s parliamentary election, bringing an end to 16 years of illiberal actions and authoritarian rule under Viktor Orban, a far-right ally of both Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We witnessed last week the truly shameful behavior of J.D. Vance when he urged his “Hungarian friends” to go out and vote, “and stand with Viktor Orbán because he is on your side.” Following Vance’s unseemly display in Hungary, it is clear his tie is now on the same par as Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. Don’t fear, Tucker Carlson has some soiled clothes, too. History will record, with much-justified revulsion, how the right wing in the United States carried water and cottoned to the opponents of democracy.

For the past twenty years, I have watched with many around the globe as the advancement of leaders with illiberal values increased. It was astounding for those who grew up with concrete knowledge of how democratic values transformed the world after WWII (my dad served in the war) to then see it being so easily and willfully undermined. One of the continuing themes I followed with interest was how this was accomplished.

If anyone wishes to know one of the root causes of how illiberal values were instituted, they only need to look at how efforts succeeded at delegitimizing the participation of non-government voices in public affairs. Orban used the crazy fallacy that only those who have been elected by a majority, in other words, the government, are entitled to speak about issues of public interest. All others, including human rights groups, pro-gay rights groups, journalists, and eventually opposition politicians, had no legitimate role. At the extreme, this majoritarian winner-takes-all type of politics prepares the ground for one-party rule. Authoritarianism. The stuff that Trump and Vance pathetically embraced with Orban.

After locating the issue of Foreign Affairs, I pulled the column up on the internet. This is the summation that needs to be included in this column.

When Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party returned to power in 2010 with a parliamentary supermajority, they set about destroying the constitutional pillars of liberal democracy. First, Orban packed Hungary’s Constitutional Court with political loyalists. He did the same with the National Election Commission and the Media Council, a newly created watchdog group. Fidesz then rammed an entirely new constitution through parliament, clipping the authority of the Constitutional Court and politicizing the judiciary more broadly and extending party control over such crucial accountability agencies as the State Audit Office and the central bank. Orban also purged state-owned radio and television stations and made them mouthpieces to justify his creeping authoritarianism. He pressured critical media outlets, which saw their advertising revenues plunge, and harassed civil society organizations that received international assistance.

By the 2014 elections, Orban had rigged the system. Yes, multiparty elections continued, but his systematic degradation of constitutional checks and balances so tilted the playing field that he was able to renew his two-thirds majority in parliament with less than a majority of the popular vote (and did so again in 2018). The repeated resort to xenophobic and anti-Semitic prejudice (directed not only at George Soros) cannot alter the facts. Orban has transformed Hungary into not an illiberal democracy but a pseudo-democracy.

Finally, one of the most offensive actions taken by Orban (and there is a long list from which to choose) was the dangerous creation of the commission that could fine journalists and media outlets nearly $1 million for unspecified assaults on “human dignity.” (For instance, no reporter could talk about their leader wearing a dirty diaper during a cabinet meeting.) The white nationalist concepts pushed by the Orban government were to use journalists to drive home “national sovereignty” and the “unity of the Hungarian nation”. What was rejected was content that did not align with the government’s nationalist agenda. One only needs to go back to 1930s Germany to see the danger of such a policy. Or hear Orban’s words from less than a month ago, when he alarmingly referred to journalists, politicians, and judges who oppose him as “insects” that had “survived the winter.”

The world approves and applauds the utter rejection in the voting booth of the authoritarian Orban. Europe is stronger, and Hungary is more linked with democracy as a result. This evening, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote that “Hungary has chosen Europe“. While there will be many miles to travel and loyalists to Orban to place at the curb, the removal of this man is a decisive step in the proper direction for an important nation in regional affairs.