The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (4/4/22) called attention to the “use of antisemitic dog whistles as Orbán declared victory for “Christian democratic politics” in Hungary.”
Viktor Orbán has been re-elected the Hungarian prime minister, a win for the global far-right movement. Now the European Union’s longest-lasting leader, he has served as prime minister since 2010.
Orbán’s rule in Hungary—a member of both the EU and NATO—has drawn scorn from the international community for its hostility toward the LGBT community (Reuters, 12/13/21), dismantling of press freedom (Politico, 7/5/21) and criminalization of citizens helping immigrants (BBC, 12/21/21). The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (4/4/22) noted that in addition to excoriating the “international left,” Orbán, upon reelection, turned his ire to “George Soros, the Hungarian-American liberal billionaire, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky”—singling out Jewish enemies in a way that bolstered concerns that his regime is antisemitic (Politico, 5/13/19; Deutsche Welle, 12/17/20).
In fact, the hopelessness of Jewish Hungarians was felt during the election, as the main opposition coalition to Orbán included a party even further to the right than Orbán’s Fidesz, Jobbik, considered by many to be neo-Nazi (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 4/1/22). Hungary’s journalists believe that an emboldened Orbán will mean press freedom in the country is set to receive further blows in the near future (Committee to Protect Journalists, 4/5/22).
In the right-wing US press, however, Orbán’s re-election is portrayed as a victory against secularism and wokeness.
‘An example for the Western world’
Fox News (4/5/22): “Tucker Carlson highlighted the similarities between Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and Sunday’s reelection of President Orbán in Hungary.”
The Wall Street Journal (4/4/22) gave Orbán’s win cautious support, bragging that “his conservative views on sexual ethics may be closer to the European mainstream than his critics elsewhere in the European Union care to admit.” While admitting Hungary’s coziness with Russia was “cringe-worthy,” the Journal said the “EU and NATO will have to make some accommodation to Mr. Orbán’s government, however distasteful that may be.”
Tucker Carlson of Fox News, who has been notorious booster of Orbán and his far-right policies (FAIR.org, 8/3/21), “highlighted the similarities between Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and Sunday’s reelection of President Orbán in Hungary,” Fox‘s website (4/5/22) reported. Carlson interviewed right-wing Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who said, “Orbán has won, but [the left will] just ramp up the hate campaign, because they are terrified that this sets an example for the rest of the Western world.” The left, she said, fears a course where “we can reject globalism and a country can embrace national values.”
Newsmax (4/4/22) downplayed the warm relations between Budapest and Moscow, portraying Orbán as neutral during the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Hungary has “taken in refugees, but has not offered to assist Ukraine’s military resistance.” The far-right outlet cited an “economic growth rate at 7.1% in 2021 and unemployment at roughly 3%” and a “pro-family policy” as explanations for Orbán’s success. (The US had 5.7% growth in 2021, and unemployment is now 3.6%, but it’s unlikely that Newsmax would encourage readers to draw conclusions about Joe Biden’s political fortunes from that.)
‘Restore Christian cultures’
New York Post (10/2/19): “That liberal opinion would stigmatize Hungary for honoring the Continent’s Christian patrimony only underscores liberal elites’ extreme secularist cast of mind.”
The right-wing press in the United States has been cheerleading Orbán for a while. The New York Post (10/2/19) scoffed at criticism of Hungary’s restrictions on press and academic freedom, saying that Hungary’s leaders “are determined to promote the economic well-being of their people, reverse demographic decline and restore Christian cultures badly damaged by a century of war and totalitarianism.” Orbán, the Post (1/3/22) noted, had the enthusiastic backing of former President Donald Trump. As war ravaged Ukraine, the Post (3/13/22) saw Hungary as the real victim of the hour, noting that the “EU is trying to force Hungary to overturn laws passed by its parliament that ban the indoctrination of children in the finer points of gender fluidity.”
The National Review (4/5/22), perhaps the most established publication of the US right, justified Orbán’s win in part because of the opposition was worse—yet it didn’t name Jobbik, the neo-Nazi party, as the problem. Rather, the issue was that the opposition was “linked with Ferenc Gyurcsány, a former Communist Party apparatchik who morphed into Hungary’s socialist prime minister from 2004 to 2009.”
In defending Orbán, the Federalist (8/9/21) said he “is not even right-wing in the American parlance,” because instead he’s a “statist Christian nationalist who uses the state power to impose (or roll back, depending on which side of the spectrum you are) a certain set of values.” (The Federalist here is imagining a world in which the US right does not seek to impose its values through state power.)
‘Envy and inspiration’
UnHerd (4/4/22): “Where conservatives in Britain and America can win elections but find their governance impeded by a liberal powerbase in the media, NGOs and the judiciary…in Orbán’s Hungary the liberal intelligentsia’s political powerbase has been dismantled and replaced with a confident new conservative elite.”
The conservative British website UnHerd (4/4/22) depicted Hungary as a sort of Shangri-La for Western conservatives, an illiberal regime when it comes to the rights of gays and immigrants that doesn’t have to contend with the nuisances of opposition media and think tanks. The right wing in the US and Britain, it reported, sees today’s Hungary as “an object of both envy and inspiration.” It’s not surprising, then, that the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is taking place this year in Budapest (Reuters, 4/5/22).
New Yorker commentator Masha Gessen (3/2/21) has been one of the most prominent observers warning that Orbán is seen as a model by the Trumpist right. The outpouring of celebration by the US right-wing press over Orbán’s victory is indicative of how important his disruption of European political order is as a blueprint for a cultural counter-revolution in the United States.
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