Hungary's 'Orbanization' Is Worrying Europe

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 May 2013

Arrow Cross President Camacho Thomas777 Roland Ferdinand

The World Jewish Congress comes to Budapest

THIS was not how the Hungarian government wanted the week to start. Ferenc Orosz, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg Association, was watching a football match in a stadium with his family when nearby spectators started chanting ‘Mussolini’ and ‘ Sieg Heil ’.

Mr Orosz asked them to stop. He was threatened and called a ‘Jewish Communist’. When he tried to leave the stadium, two men blocked his way. One hit him in the face and broke his nose. Mr Orosz discharged himself from hospital to recount the details of his assault at a conference on hate speech on April 29th.

The attack comes at a particularly sensitive time. This weekend Budapest will host the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which represents Jewish communities around the world. The congress usually meets in Jerusalem, but has chosen to gather in Budapest to show solidarity with the Hungarian Jewish community after a series of anti-Semitic incidents that have caused alarm both in Hungary and abroad. “Anti-Semitism in Hungary is on the rise and we have also witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of attacks on other minorities such as the Roma,” Ronald Lauder, president of the WJC, told Reuters, a news agency.

A new report compiled by the Anti-Semitism Research Group, detailing anti-Semitic incidents in Hungary in 2012, will be distributed to WJC delegates. The report, a copy of which has been obtained by The Economist , makes depressing reading: cemeteries desecrated; pigs trotters draped over a statue of Raoul Wallenberg; Nazi graffiti, verbal abuse, intimidation at football matches, sporadic physical attacks and Menorahs on display in public being kicked over.

The rise in anti-Semitism results from a number of factors. Certainly the gloomy state of the Hungarian economy is fuelling prejudice, not just against Jews but also against the Roma. The rise of the far-right Jobbik, the third-largest party in Parliament, has encouraged extremists. Jobbik denies it is anti-Semitic but Marton Gyöngyösi, a Jobbik MP, caused outrage last November when he called for Hungarian authorities to compile a list of Hungarian Jews for posing what he called “a national-security risk”. He later issued a qualified apology. Jobbik, its supporters, and groups even further to the right have a tightly organised presence on the internet, which is a major recruiting ground for extremism.

The government has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, expressed its solidarity with the Jewish community and assured Hungarian Jews of their safety and security. When József Schweitzer, the former Chief Rabbi, was insulted in the street, János Áder, the president of Hungary, quickly paid a personal call to show his solidarity. Viktor Orbán (picture above), the Hungarian prime minister, will speak at the WJC congress on Sunday to reinforce this message. A new government-sponsored committee is planning nationwide commemoration events for 2014, the seventieth anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust. Far-right demonstrations, including one called ‘Give Gas’, have been arbitrarily banned, incidentally raising concerns about civil liberties. Extremists mock the ruling Fidesz party as ‘Zsidesz’ a play on the Hungarian word ‘ zsidó , meaning Jew.

It can sometimes seem that the government sends out different messages for different audiences. Ministers have stayed largely silent over the growing cult of Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader from 1920 to 1944, after several streets and squares were renamed in his honour.

Horthy was a staunch ally of Hitler and passed several anti-Semitic laws but refused to deport Hungarian Jews. However, after the Nazis invaded in March 1944, he stood by when Hungarian Gendarmes rounded more than 500,000 Jews and sent them to their deaths. In March the government triggered an outcry when it gave a prestigious award to several far-right wingers, including Ferenc Szaniszlo, a journalist prone to conspiracy theories. The government asked him to return the prize.

Despite the rise in anti-Semitism, it would be a mistake for the WJC to focus solely on the negative. Hungary is home to the third-largest Jewish community in Europe, between 80,000 and 100,000 strong. Jewish life here is enjoying a vibrant new renaissance. Budapest has numerous functioning synagogues , Jewish schools, restaurants and a community centre .
Each year the Jewish Summer Festival , which is heavily publicised across the city, brings tens of thousands of visitors to enjoy concerts, culinary and cultural events.

Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, the site of the former wartime ghetto, is now the liveliest part of town, with a buzzing nightlife to rival any European capital. For a real sense of Jewish life in Hungary, WJC delegates should leave their hotels and take a walk down Kazinczy street, where Hasidim and hipsters live congenially side by side.

Arrow Cross Tuesday 4 Jun 2013

After the Chosen road show and mainstream traitor asslicking contest has finally ended in The Most Antisemitic Country of Europe , life is back to normal, that is, to Jewish mammoth-organizations barking their commands directly to the "maverick" Hungarian leadership. Much like the article has foreseen, the mayor of Budapest declared a revision of this dastardly plan to glorify hate the following day , swooping in to remain in the good graces of his masters as quickly as he could.

The President of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder issued a stern warning to the colony

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The President of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder issued a stern warning to the colony: don't even think about naming a street after that overtly anti-Semitic woman, meaning Hungarian writer Cécile Tormay.

Lauder expressed his shock over Budapest municipal council decision to name a street in Budapest second district after one of the greatest Hungarian writers Cécile Tormay.

One of the leading members of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Fidesz party Budapest Mayor István Tarlós calls into question the prime minister's promise he made to the Jewish community that Hungarian authorities will pursue a vigorous fight against antisemitism writes Lauder.

However, it seems that it is necessary to remind them that Cécile Tormay was not only Miklós Horthy's favorite writer, but a notorious antisemite writes the President of the WJC.

Lauder pointed out, that during the WJC Congress in Budapest in May, PM Viktor Orbán declared that "anti-Semitism is unacceptable and intolerable"; he also said that history has taught Hungarians that antisemitism must be exposed before it exploded into public view.

The President of the WJC expressed his hope that Budapest metropolitan government recognizes that Horthy and his disciples like the antisemite Cécile Tormay, and the political and intellectual atmosphere they have created were the forerunner of the deportation of hundreds of thousands Hungarian Jews into Nazi death camps.

We urge Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to talk to the mayor of Budapest, who is a member of his party, and convince him to withdraw the proposition concludes his letter Ronald S. Lauder.

(Notes: After such a letter, we can take it for granted that Budapest metropolitan council will back down and no street will bear the name of one of the greatest Hungarian writers Cécile Tormay anytime soon; but she will live on in the hearts and minds of the Hungarian people with many other great poets, writers and philosophers that the colonizers also blacklisted.)

Arrow Cross Tuesday 4 Jun 2013

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I personally have never heard of any government sinking this low, especially one that declares itself "conservative" and "national". However, it is an excellent opportunity for Jobbik and its allies to present a show of force as they mourn our greatest historical tragedy with the Rudelian spirit of "lost are only those who abandon themselves" .

Előd Novák: Celebrating the Treaty of Trianon is high treason

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According to Előd Novák, celebrating the single biggest tragedy in Hungarian history, the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920 is a high treason.

The second Orbán government sinks to the level of the "the Medgyessy Nastase pact" when the Romanian government brazenly planned to celebrate the Romanian National Holiday in the Hungarian National Theatre said Jobbik's vice president Előd Novák.

Novák recalled that the government's plan to hold celebrations and celebratory speeches in several locations around the country with the active participation of pro-government politicians is treasonous.

In addition, the government picked "a stupid song" as the official song of the Trianon Memorial Day, which the government renamed as the day of togetherness; this is an evidence that the government views the single biggest tragedy in our nation's history, the Treaty of Trianon an occasion for partying said Előd Novák.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/37JUDApcVVg

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 15 Jul 2013

Hungary Wants to Throw Out IMF

A long-running dispute between Hungary and the International Monetary Fund escalated on Monday when the head of the country's central bank called on the IMF to close its office in Budapest, saying it was no longer needed.

Relations between the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the International Monetary Fund have never been especially good. Now they have hit rock bottom.

Orbán's former economy minister and current central bank governor, Gyorgy Matolcsy, wrote a letter to IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Monday calling on the fund to close its representative office in Budapest as it was "not necessary to maintain" it any longer.

Hungary owes its economic survival to the IMF. When the country was caught up in the global financial crisis in 2008, the fund and the EU came to the rescue with a €20 billion ($26 billion) loan. At the time, Orbán's predecessor was in office.

Ever since Orbán became prime minister in 2010, Hungary has had trouble with international institutions. His government pushed through a new constitution and many laws that curtailed democracy, the powers of the constitutional court, the justice system and press freedoms. The EU responded by launching several proceedings against Hungary for breaching EU treaties.

In early July, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on Hungary to repeal the "anti-democratic changes." Orbán angrily dismissed the demands as "Soviet-style" meddling.

Hungary Says Will Repay IMF Loan This Year
Under Orbán, all negotiations with the IMF about fresh aid have failed. On Monday, central bank chief Matolcsy said the country didn't need the IMF's money and that Hungary would repay the 2008 loan in full by the end of this year.

He said the government had succeeded in pushing its budget deficit below the EU ceiling of 3 percent of GDP and had reduced government debt.

Matolcsy is the architect of Orbán's unorthodox economic policy which is based on imposing heavy special taxes on large companies. He became central bank governor four months ago.

The Hungarian economy shrank by 1.7 percent last year. The EU Commission expects it to return to weak growth in 2013. The budget deficit is expected to rise again, back up to 3 percent of GDP.

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 1 Sep 2013

Arrow Cross

This article is in Croatian and is about Gabor Vona of Jobbik proposing a Polish-Magyar-Croat alliance that would be allied to Russia and outside of the EU.

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Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 Oct 2014

Time to update this thread.

CLAMOR Asterion Endicott Peabody

'Hungary’s Mussolini' Vows to Make the EU Member an 'Illiberal State'

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has prompted outrage from liberal and left leaning opposition after he announced his intention over the weekend to follow in Russia and China’s footsteps to create an 'illiberal state' in Hungary.

“We want to build a workfare society... which is willing to bear the odium to declare that it is not liberal in character,” Orban said.

Orban cited economic unfeasibility as the main fault of liberalism and applauded the political models of countries such as Russia, Turkey and China, speaking at the 25th Balvanyos summer university and student camp.

“The Hungarian nation is not a mere pile of individuals but a community which needs to be organized, strengthened and built,” he said.

Opposition Party leaders Gergely Karacsony and Viktor Szigetvari have appealed to the EU in response to Orban’s speech, alarmed by what they call the “Putinisation of Hungary”.

Szigetvari called for “serious and active means” to be put in place to halt the “constantly deteriorating quality of Hungarian democracy”, especially with regard to freedom of the press and NGOs, the Associated Press reported.

Hungarian left-leaning newspaper Népszabadság compared the implications of Orban’s speech to the authoritarianism of an inter-war Mussolini.

Hungarian Weekly magazine Heti Világgazdaság warned that Orban’s claims were part of a wider programme to abolish public services which would eventually turn the country into a “third world” economy.

European Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said today that Brussels had no comment concerning Orban’s speech.

“The speech has caused uproar on the left and among the opposition, but in fact there is little new that Orban has not said in some form before,” said Newsweek correspondent in Budapest Adam LeBor.

“He has long spoken admiringly of what he calls the 'wind from the east'. The fact that Hungary is an EU member helps ensure that it will remain a democracy, but the question is what kind?”

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 Oct 2014

This is a typical hit piece by Foreign Policy, so I'll just link it for anyone interested. It's from August of this year.

The Autocrat Inside the EU

Bronze Age Pervert Saturday 11 Oct 2014

Note that Orban recently caused uproar on the internet WN-sphere because of this,
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/0...rence-organized-by-us-radical-group-national/
And because Hungarian police detained activisms expert Richard Spencer.
Endicott Peabody put it well...Hungarians hate the Jews, but they hate WN more. WN is American-Irish export ideology.

This comes just as Nuland attaqed Orban,
http://euobserver.com/foreign/125881

Niccolo and Donkey Tuesday 21 Oct 2014

Bronze Age Pervert Asterion

It just doesn't stop. Let in Ebola-ridden Africans and whatever-else-disease-ridden Latin Americans, but these guys can't enter!

U.S. calls ban on entry by six Hungarians a warning to clean up

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday six Hungarians had been banned from entering the U.S. as a warning to Budapest to reverse policies that threatened to undermine democratic values.

An American diplomat in Budapest said on Monday the individuals were public servants or people with government connections. Their banning last week came after a long series of warnings from Washington, the embassy said.

A 2004 Presidential proclamation allows the U.S. government to ban foreign nationals whose corrupt conduct hurts U.S. interests, without providing proof of the charges.

Corruption was one symptom of Hungary's weakening democratic institutions, U.S. Chargé d'Affaires André Goodfriend said.

"At a certain point, the situation, if it continues this way, will deteriorate to the extent where it is impossible to work together as an ally," Goodfriend told reporters at a briefing on Monday.

"That's what we want to avoid, because we are allies, we are friends, we are strong NATO partners, and we want to try to help Hungary avoid this downward trend in its own society, and this obstacle to good relations with us and with others."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, re-elected for another four-year term in April, said in a speech in July that he aimed to build an "illiberal state" in Hungary, citing Russia, China and Turkey among successful models.

"We have spoken about this for so long that at a certain point you have to decide if you believe these things, if they are more than words, what is the action you take?" Goodfriend said.
Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, told the Hungarian parliament's national security committee the government was not privy to the details of the cases.

"The government of Hungary is somewhat baffled at the events that have unfolded because this is not the way friends deal with issues," Lazar told the committee.

"If you say you have credible information on something and then talk about government officials, then you help Hungary only if you provide us whatever credible information you have," Lazar said.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto is due in Washington on Tuesday, where he is will meet Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, partly to talk about the issue .

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 2 Nov 2014

Bronze Age Pervert Endicott Peabody CLAMOR perkunos Asterion Slavoj Zizek

This one gets posted in full as it's a total hit piece on Orban, 100% aligned with US State Department policy.

Budapest autumn: hollowing out democracy on the edge of Europe

On the Hungarian plain south-west of Budapest, the rich, dark soil of Kishantos presents the saddest of sights. As far as the eye can see, a cornucopia of organic wheat, cereals, sunflowers, pulses and legumes has been turned into a vista of emptiness.

In what appears to be an extraordinary act of vindictive destruction, a lifetime’s work in Hungary has been destroyed in only a few months.

Eva Acs, an agronomist who has run the thriving organic farm for 22 years, is at her wits’ end. “The state just took the farm away. We were absolutely punished and rubbed out. Then the private security firms came in and closed down the roads and blocked the tractors. The new owners destroyed all our plants and crops. Just to bankrupt us and hurt us.”

Since the 90s, Acs has overseen one of Europe’s biggest organic farms, earning international plaudits and coveted Swiss “bio-certificates” for pioneering work on a vast scale, covering 452 hectares (1,116 acres) of rolling fields, land that was leased from the Hungarian state. Last year, the government cancelled the contracts and sold all but nine hectares to oligarchs and businessmen, who ordered the destruction of the organic bounty.

Three weeks ago, they dealt the final blow, spraying the area with glyphosate weedkiller and instantly terminating the farm’s organic status.

In the handsome 19th-century manor house at the centre of the estate, surrounded by sacks of drying red peppers, Acs has no doubt about who to blame for her heartbreak: the all-powerful conservative government in Budapest under Viktor Orbán, the prime minister.

“You can’t imagine how high the pressure is now. We’re living in fear. We have to protect one another. This couldn’t happen in a normal country. It’s incredible the things that are happening in this country.”

For the liberal middle classes of Budapest, the latest outrage in Orbán’s Hungary is the world’s first internet tax, a gigabyte levy denounced at home and abroad as an assault on free speech while shoring up the budget.

On Tuesday tens of thousands of protesters commanded bridges over the Danube in central Budapest in the biggest challenge to the prime minister since he returned to power in 2010. The demonstrators likened Orbán to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and flew the EU flag, which Orban regularly denounces.

Bernadett Szél, MP and co-leader of a small Green liberal party, cites the events in Kishantos and Budapest as a prime example of the “endless cynicism” of the prime minister and his party, Fidesz, whose actions and policies set him apart in the European Union, and are setting off alarm bells in Brussels and Washington. “Kishantos is a symbol of what Orbán is doing. It’s pure power and pure destruction. Fidesz is the state. The party is the state. We don’t know how to end that.”

Tens of thousands of protesters march against the introduction of an internet tax in Budapest. Photograph: PuzzlePix/Rex

In a time of collapsing public confidence in the political classes across Europe, Orbán can claim to be unique – a gifted, popular strongman with the most formidable electoral mandate in the EU. Untroubled by a fragmented and morally bankrupt centre-left opposition, Orbán led his rightwing Fidesz to a landslide victory in 2010. He coasted to a second term last April, won the European elections in May and in October took control of virtually every town and city in Hungary in local elections.

Highly unusually, he has a two-thirds parliamentary majority, meaning that the vast Westminster lookalike on the banks of the Danube in Budapest is a rubber stamp. After his election hat-trick this year, he need not face the voters again until 2018. He shows every sign of using that time to reshape Hungary.

The only organised opposition are the neo-fascists of the Jobbik party on the far right, suggesting that the opposition on the streets this week might challenge Orbán but not really threaten him.

“Orbán divides and rules. All decisions are taken by him,” says a senior western diplomat in Budapest. “He’s very skilled. He has a political vision. You might not like it, but he has it. Control is the key word here.”

Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a liberal left MP and psychologist who has studied Orbán at close quarters as a colleague in the 1990s, describes him as restless and combative with leanings towards megalomania. “He’s a very strong character, he’s always talking of revolution. And a very polarising person. He needs enemies and is always creating them. That’s how he sees the world. He was always a destructive person.”

The number one item on Orbán’s destroy list appears to be the western democratic model. In an infamous speech to supporters in Romania in July, he declared the western model dead and cited the authoritarian regimes of Russia, China, Turkey and Singapore as the templates to follow. “We are parting ways with western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them,” he declared. “We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organising a society. The new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”

Protesters don masks during demonstrations against the proposed internet tax. Photograph: PuzzlePix/Rex

To his many critics in Budapest, this means hollowing out democracy, retaining a semblance of pluralism while controlling all the key levers. Orbán has used his power to rewrite the constitution and has appointed 11 of the 15 supreme court justices to guarantee himself a two-thirds majority on the constitutional court.

“The vast majority of the justices are not only politically loyal, but very strongly connected to the Fidesz party,” says Csaba Tordai, a constitutional lawyer.

Orbán has used new media laws to turn public television into a mouthpiece for his government, and used tax inspectors and advertising money to intimidate, impoverish and weaken critical media.

“Journalists don’t go to jail here. But he controls the media and there’s a lot of self-censorship,” said the senior diplomat. “When they want to intimidate they send in the tax inspectors. And you can always find something.”

He has launched a crackdown on opposition non-governmental organisations, accusing some of them, Putin-style, of being foreign agents. “During the day these guys are civil activists and during the night they’re political activists,” says a senior government official.

According to western and Hungarian diplomats in Budapest, Orbán is planning to purge the diplomatic service, culling up to three-quarters of Hungary’s ambassadors.

He wants the banking sector, which is dominated by Austrians and Italians, partly renationalised so that 50% is in Hungarian hands. He has also ordered land leased by foreigners over the past 20 years to be returned to its Hungarian owners, arguing that the natives have been swindled by wealthy westerners. Brussels is threatening legal action.

“China says it’s a democracy,” says the government spokesman, Zsoltan Kovacs, explaining the new policy. “By liberal, the prime minister means a rejection of everything before 2010.”

The radicalism of Orbán’s vision for Hungary has put him on a collision course with Brussels, although the EU is crucial to his plans as Hungary is to receive €34bn (£26.8bn) in European funds over the next four years. Defying EU policy, Orbán has cuddled up to Putin in Moscow at a time of the greatest tensions between Russia and the west since the 1980s. The result has been the strongest criticism from Washington of an EU member state.

In January, Orbán secretly went to Moscow, met Putin, and secured a $10bn (£6.2bn) credit in return for awarding nuclear power contracts to the Russians. In September, he met the boss of Gazprom, the giant Russian gas monopoly, and ditched EU policy on Russia and Ukraine by refusing to repump gas supplies back to Ukraine from Hungary, sabotaging EU attempts to safeguard Kiev’s energy requirements.

Barack Obama unusually bracketed Hungary, a Nato ally and EU member state, recently with Azerbaijan, Russia, Venezuela and Egypt in attacking Orbán’s attitude to fundamental freedoms.

Victoria Nuland, the US assistant secretary of state for European affairs, then went further in a clear reference to Orban: “How can you sleep under your Nato blanket at night while pushing ‘illiberal democracy’ by day, whipping up nationalism, restricting free press, or demonising civil society?” The Americans then blacklisted 10 Hungarian officials, some of them said to be close to the prime minister, banning them from entering the US on the grounds of corruption and complaining about “kleptocracy”.

The Orbán government, prone to fanning paranoia and regularly conjuring conspiracy theories about foreign plots to undermine Hungary, insinuated the White House had been bribed. “We know the amount of money it cost to put Hungary’s name alongside Egypt’s,” said the senior government official. “It’s quite a lot of money. We know who’s funding it. It’s not easy with the Americans most of the time. It’s quite unfriendly.”

In April, around the same time as Acs’s organic crops were being pulverised, Budapest police raided the home of Vera Mora and took away her laptop. Mora runs the environmentalist non-governmental organisation Őkotárs in Budapest, which acts as the intermediary distributor of money from Norway’s generous aid programme for civil society projects in central and eastern Europe.

Norway is providing €153m to Hungary over five years, 10% of it to “independent” NGOs. Orbán’s government demanded control over how the money is spent. Oslo refused and suspended payments of €140m, while still distributing €13m through Őkotárs.

The government then raided the NGO’s offices and launched a corruption investigation. The investigators have said they are pressing charges “on suspicion of mismanagement, budget fraud, forgery of private documents and unauthorised financial activity.” Reviewing the police evidence, the news website index.hu said: “This is how a show trial looks in a history book.”

Viktor Orban takes his oath of office in parliament in 2010. He need not face the voters again until 2018. Photograph: Karoly Arvai /Reuters

The Norwegians are furious, demanding that Brussels take action. “We have this programme in 16 countries. The only place we have problems is Hungary,” said Tove Skarstein, the Norwegian ambassador in Budapest. “The fact that something like this is happening in the EU is quite shocking,” said Mora.

In his drive to create a new political system in Hungary, Orbán appears to view politics as a zero-sum game where the winner takes all in a fight between good and evil. In July, Orbán thanked the opposition for his landslide victories – “those who turned against us and provided the chance for good to win. Because if there is no bad, how could good get mastery over the bad?”

It is a binary, polarising outlook that recalls the tactics of another strongman leader, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. Both appear to believe democracy ends at the ballot box.

“Democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the majority,” said Marton Gulyas, director of Krétakőr, a political art and theatre group whose state funding has been reduced by the Hungarian government. “People were tired of the endless fighting and in 2010 they said we need one leader to put the country in order, to take it in one direction. We were in no-man’s land. Since then they’ve changed everything.”

Foreign ministers Gyula Horn, right, of Hungary and Alois Mock of Austria cutting the iron curtain between Hungary and Austria in 1989. Photograph: Karoly Matusz/EPA

In a detailed analysis of the clampdown on civil society, Heather Grabbe, director of EU affairs in Brussels for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, concluded Orbán was rolling back the democratic gains achieved in central Europe since the revolutions of 1989, which brought Orbán to national prominence as a student leader telling the Russians to go home.

“Hungary is quickly losing the defining features of a democracy under the rule of law,” Grabbe wrote. “Independent civil society organisations are the last remaining check on government power in Hungary. Since 2010 the government has enjoyed a parliamentary super-majority which it has used to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the power of the constitutional court and media freedom and pluralism, as well as to gain control over state institutions.”

But while Orbán has amassed formidable power, he is not omnipotent as the current wave of internet-fuelled protest shows. His vote is down considerably since 2010. He does not command a simple voters’ majority either in Budapest or nationwide. But he has used his powers to change laws and gerrymander constituencies to tilt the system, making it much harder to defeat Fidesz at the ballot box.
“Hungary is not an illiberal democracy yet,” said Szelényi. “But it’s obviously in danger.”

Viktor Orbán’s rightwing Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament in Budapest. Photograph: Alamy

Hungary's 'Orbanization' Is Worrying Europe

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