Viktor Orban came late to Hungary’s dissident movement that overthrew authoritarian communism back in 1989. He made it just in time to give a stirring speech in Budapest’s Heroes Square calling for freedom and the withdrawal of Soviet troops, thus launching himself as a key figure in the political culture of post-communist Hungary. He has since changed his mind about both Russia and freedom, embarking on a programme to restrict the press, attack civil society and NGOs as ‘foreign agents’ and use the power of the state to tilt elections in the direction of his Fidesz party. The latter involved tactics such as manipulating electoral districts and campaign finance. He also destroyed checks on his power by dismissing heads of independent institutions like the Supreme Court.
His views on Russia, in particular, have changed; these days Putin’s autocratic ethnic nationalism has become a model for the politics of the Hungarian Right. Orban recently went a step further by calling for an illiberal, workfare society based on radical cuts in social services. He has taken to celebrating ‘the wind from the east’ blowing from ‘success stories’ like Putin’s Russia and Erdo˘gan’s Turkey as well China, of course. Like an ersatz political theorist, Orban has mounted an attack on the liberal societies of the West, claiming ‘the Hungarian nation is not a mere pile of individuals but a community which needs to be organized, strengthened and built.’ Sounds good – but this is no critique of neoliberalism. It’s simply a more authoritarian variant to be imposed from above rather than dictated through ‘market discipline’. And it’s accompanied by the usual moral rearmament nonsense of the populist Right: homophobia, restriction of abortions, calls for social discipline and scape-goating of ethnic and religious minorities. In the wings is the influential Hungarian neo-fascist party Jobbik, whose paramilitary thugs have an increasing influence on the direction of Fidesz. Gypsies and Jews, beware. Already in the northeastern city of Miskolc plans are afoot to demolish entire Roma neighbourhoods because they are hotbeds of ‘crime and disease’.
