One summer day in 1989, I saw an unshaven, long-haired young man approach a microphone to address 250,000 people in Budapest. They had gathered in Heroes’ Square for the ceremonial reburial of the leaders of a 1956 anti-communist uprising crushed by the Soviet army, and I was there reporting it live for television. The unknown speaker was a 26-year-old representing a tiny youth group called Fidesz and, with a speech lasting six-and-half minutes, he roused the crowd in the square and viewers at home, calling for free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Almost overnight, he became famous in Hungary and abroad.
That young man was Viktor Orbán. Now the prime minister—a position he has held since 2010, as well as from 1998 to 2002—he is up for reelection on April 8. And he is expected to win. Under his right-wing, populist leadership, Hungary has seen the return of many past demons, including ethnic nationalism and deep-rooted corruption. Orbán has embarked on a sweeping concentration of power, eliminating constitutional safeguards, successfully reshaping the state in his own image, and posing a potential threat to even the future of the European Union. A multimillionaire, he’s presented himself as the standard-bearer for Hungary’s Christian identity and an architect of what he describes as an “illiberal democracy.”
It’s a remarkable metamorphosis for a man who was once a student champion of democracy, a fiery left-wing atheist, and a youth so poor he says he was 15 years old before he turned on a tap and enjoyed warm water for the first time. How did he change, and change his country, so drastically? And why is the leader of a small landlocked Danubian country now being described, to quote the chairman of the European Stability Initiative think tank Gerald Knaus, as the “most dangerous man in the European Union”?
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.
Under Orbán, Fidesz suffered two surprising consecutive electoral defeats, in 2002 and 2006. But it went on to score two epochal triumphs in 2010 and 2014, winning a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Faced with a divided and discredited opposition, Orbán proceeded to fill all positions of state power with trusted supporters.
Between June and September 2015, Fidesz’s poll ratings and Orbán’s popularity rose sharply. He achieved international notoriety as a sort of trailblazer and role model for nationalists. Even critics of the government’s harsh treatment of asylum seekers admitted that Orbán saw earlier than most of his EU colleagues that borders had to be controlled before a relocation plan for migrants could be agreed upon. The left-leaning German weekly Der Spiegel declared him “the political victor of the refugee crisis.” It was the failure of European leaders to adequately deal with the refugee crisis (as well as the Eurozone crisis) that arguably enabled Orbán’s success and, more broadly, the rise of populist and nationalist parties across Europe.
Some observers have dismissed as absurd the idea that Orbán, the ferociously nationalistic leader of a landlocked country with a population of less than 10 million, could reshape European politics and seriously challenge German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dominant position on the continent. Although Orbán has avoided openly attacking Merkel, his speeches and interviews, riddled with sarcasm, have often contained venomous references to her. One of the many examples was reported in Weltwoche, a Swiss weekly, in 2015: “To put it bluntly, what dominates in European public life is liberal blah blah about nice, but second-rank issues,” Orbán said. “Germany is the key. If tomorrow the Germans were to say ‘We are full up, it’s over,’ then the flood would immediately ebb away. It is so simple, just a single sentence from Angela Merkel.”
Yet the effects of Orbán’s rabble-rousing in Central and Eastern Europe should not be underestimated. It’s primarily due to his influence that the four post-communist EU states (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) have emerged as a nationalistic group, blocking European integration, and thereby also assisting Russia’s expansive strategy. Meanwhile, in Western Europe, Orbán boasts numerous admirers in Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands.
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.
Nearly three decades after I first saw him galvanize a crowd in Budapest, Orbán remains a fighter who thrives on confrontation. Now, neither the weak and split opposition nor the warnings of the EU and human-rights organizations threaten his grip on power. On the eve of the general elections on April 8, the odds are still in his favor.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/viktor-orban-hungary/557246/
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