Orban Going, But Orbanism Coming To Europe

Bad Economy, Corruption Cost Him His Job. But This No Victory For Euro-Liberalism

Götterdämmerung for Akos, The Most Orbanist Dude In Hungary

See that guy above? His name is Akos, and I’ve been seeing him around ever since I moved to Hungary. Big man with a big heart, loves Orban. There he was last night at the Fidesz Party’s election gathering, bathed in orange light (orange is the party color), waiting for the first election results to come in.

He did not have to wait long. Everyone gathered in the ballroom was tense from the beginning of the evening. Most of the polling prior to the election showed a big win for Tisza, the anti-Orban party, but then, polling is generally unreliable in Hungary. The Fidesz faithful were counting on that. Whatever “whistling past the graveyard” is in Hungarian, that’s what they were doing. That, and drinking. Cash bar. I had vodka.

The polls closed at 7, and before long, everyone’s eyes turned to the large TV screens over the stage, where the national broadcaster was reporting the results. A cry of triumph erupted from a scrum of young men in business suits. Fidesz had won a rural district! The countryside has always been Orban’s firewall, as he is unpopular in Budapest, the liberal city, where much of the population lives.

That win in an early skirmish was the only good news of the night. County after county turned blue (the color of Tisza) with each passing minute. The rural firewall crumbled. In the end, Magyar’s party won a landslide. It was over before most people had finished their second drink:

Viktor Orban appeared onstage and made a graceful concession statement. You have been told that Orban is a tyrant who would never give up power. It was never true. Whatever his flaws, the man is, and always was, a small-d democrat, and is going to exit office in an orderly way.

On the way out the building, I ran into a scrum of my Fidesz friends, who were, as you might imagine, disconsolate. I was sad too, but for me, if I lose my gig at the Danube Institute think tank, I can easily move and live off Substack and book sales. These people are going to lose their jobs. None of them are corrupt, none of them have gotten rich from Fidesz rule. But as they work in government offices, or for institutions connected to the government, they’ll almost certainly be out of work.

We planned to meet up later to cry into our beer, but I came home and fell asleep. Just had no heart to drink, even at a wake.

This morning, I went out to the neighborhood bakery for fresh bread. The young women behind the counter had long faces. This was surprising. Polls showed young voters were overwhelmingly behind Tisza. Not these girls.

“I love my country, but I don’t recognize it anymore,” said the young woman behind the cash register. She said she had no idea what was going to happen now.

Walking back to my building, I ran into a Fidesz-voting friend. Oh boy, did he have a lot to say. Please forgive the profanity, but I think it’s important to quote him verbatim, so you can have a real sense of the anger from some Fidesz loyalists.

“Fucking Fidesz,” he growled. “It’s on them. They protected the fucking pedophile. And they didn’t stop the kids of all their rich friends from flaunting their wealth. Did they not think people could see this? Hungary is not a big country; you can’t hide that shit. Fuck them, they fucked the country over.”

He talked about the son of one Fidesz big motoring around the countryside in a Bentley, and the girlfriend of the son of another posting Instagram snaps of her partying in Dubai.

This friend had warned me earlier that if Fidesz loses, it’s going to be because people were fed up with its high tolerance for corruption. He didn’t like it either, but said (as many people I had spoken to throughout the campaign did) that when the economy is good, most people don’t care. After all, corruption is common throughout the postcommunist countries of Europe.

But the economy is not good. It has been stagnant for most of Orban’s fourth term, which began in 2022. Given that, said my friend on the street, Orban should have been especially aware of the need to rein in the ostentation of Fidesz elites. He didn’t, and now he’s gone.

My friend said that fuel prices will go through the roof now, as Orban had managed to keep Russian energy flowing into the landlocked country. Ukraine, he predicted, will get into the EU, and boy, just wait until EU money starts flowing into the pockets of Zelensky’s oligarchs. God only knows what this will mean for Hungary and the Russia-Ukraine war. We parted with a plan to meet on Wednesday for a drink.

In talking with angry Fidesz voters these past few weeks, I’ve been surprised how much this pedophile thing has come up. Pedophilia is, and rightly so, a third rail in Hungary. But then I remembered that it was the event that gave Peter Magyar his entrée into politics.

In 2019, a man named Endre Konya was sentenced to prison for his role in a pedophile scandal. Konya was not the pedophile — it was his boss, director of a state-run orphanage, who was convicted of abusing boys. Konya went to jail for attempting to coerce victims to drop their accusations. Actually, he did not go to jail at all; he was sentenced to house arrest, a pretty cushy form of punishment.

Konya comes from a well-connected Calvinist family. The family asked the Calvinist bishop to lean on Katalin Novak, the president of Hungary (that is, the head of state; the prime minister is the head of government), to pardon him. Konya only had nine months left to serve, but Konya’s family wanted his slate wiped clean. Novak was a political protegé of Zoltan Balog, the bishop, who had previously been a government minister. It is believed by many that she did this at Balog’s request, as a favor to him. She and Judit Varga, the Justice Minister, quietly pardoned Konya as part of a package of 22 clemency decisions made in honor of Pope Francis’s visit here in 2023.

A year or so later, a journalist from an anti-Orban news site found Konya’s name on the list, and blew it up. It was a huge scandal, particularly given Fidesz’s public reputation as pro-family, and anti-LGBT. Orban compelled Novak and Varga to resign. There was no evidence that Orban knew about the Konya pardon in advance, but somebody had to pay. Out went the two most high-profile Fidesz female leaders, both of whom had been touted as natural successors to Orban.

Peter Magyar, a Fidesz insider who had been married to Varga, publicly blasted Orban for allegedly scapegoating the women. He used the occasion to accuse Fidesz of cronyism — a charge that carried weight, given that he had long been part of the Fidesz elite. Orban’s party changed the Hungarian constitution to forbid any future pardons of people convicted of crimes against minors, but the damage was done. Fidesz’s moral credibility sustained a heavy blow.

Magyar started the Tisza party, and launched his political career. And now, despite widespread (and mostly credible) reporting that he is a hothead who beat his wife Varga — she has said so publicly; he also secretly recorded her while they were married, and used the tape to boost his entry into politics — he will be the next prime minister. Whoever this guy they’ve just elected is, he ain’t Mr. Clean.

The thing is, Magyar is not a figure of the political Left, which remains unpopular in Hungary. What he basically offered voters is “Orban, but without the corruption.” On the key issues that infuriate Brussels about Orban’s Hungary — his hardline on migrants and asylum seekers, and his adamant desire to keep Hungary out of the Ukraine war — there’s no difference between Orban and Magyar, except that Magyar might even be tougher than Orban on migration. When he takes power, Magyar is going to have to either disappoint his allies in the EU establishment, or disappoint millions of his voters. Personally, I expect him to be the cat’s paw of Brussels. For Hungary’s sake, I hope I’m wrong.

In talking last night to Fidesz people — nobody in the government, I hasten to say — I heard lots of fear that things are going to get very ugly, very fast. This is an extremely polarized country, and there is a lot of feeling on the Tisza side that Fidesz people who got rich in dodgy ways under Fidesz must be made to pay. I imagine a lot of Fidesz and Fidesz-connected bigs are lawyering up this morning. Even if they did nothing wrong, the incoming government is going to be coming after them, in the same way that Poland’s Donald Tusk went after Law & Justice Party insiders there, once he took over.

Tisza’s landslide gives it an absolute majority in Parliament, a result few people saw coming. This means Tisza has the power to change the constitution. My guess is they will use it to grant full same-sex marriage rights (for now, gays and lesbians can have civil partnerships), in line with European norms. It’s a relatively small thing, but massively symbolic of the new order.

If they can manage to change the constitution to make it unlikely, or even impossible, for a nationalist-sovereigntist party to rise, they will. Brussels will insist on it.

The change of regime will also likely mean that the EU will release billions in Covid-recovery funds for Hungary that it had withheld to punish Orban. That will help the economy, no doubt. Magyar promises to take Hungary into the euro, too.

But look, this result will be widely misinterpreted, or over-interpreted, in the West, by the Atlanticist types who will see this as a total rejection of Orban’s political vision. Don’t you believe it. If not for the stupid pedophile scandal, and Fidesz’s tolerance for corruption, Orban would probably have a fifth term.

Or maybe not: James Carville’s dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid,” is a strong law of politics. It is likely true that the Orban government mismanaged the economy, but it is also the case that Hungary’s economy is strongly tied to Germany’s; if the German economy is not doing well (and it’s not), then Hungary’s won’t be either. The EU’s decision to withhold Covid recovery funding from Hungary really hurt.

It also hurt that Fidesz did not invest enough in the wobbly public health care system, and kept public school teacher salaries abysmally low. That was a policy decision that proved unpopular.

But — and I can’t say this strongly enough — Hungarians do not support the EU’s policies toward Ukraine, and they all still back Orban’s hardline on keeping borders strong. Had Peter Magyar openly taken the EU line on either issue, he would probably not be the incoming prime minister. In fact, Magyar got to the right of Orban on migration, promising to cut off work visas for foreigners, that had been approved by Fidesz.

I expect lots of ill-informed gloating in the days to come, such as:

Moron. Hungary was always a democracy. Just because Hungarians voted four times for a politician disliked by Hillary Clinton and the Atlanticist elites does not mean that it was not a democracy. How many autocrats voluntarily surrender power when they lose an election? Huh?

This kind of thing is par for the course with the Atlanticist crowd. Because Viktor Orban did not believe in globalism and all it entails (wokeness, mass migration, etc), they called him an “autocrat,” a “fascist,” and whatnot. The election results will be spun as a blow against populism, national conservatism, and so forth. Don’t you believe it.

It is undoubtedly true that populist, sovereigntists, and national conservatives have lost their most visible champion. But again, this result does not discredit the cause. Orban lost because the economy is poor and his party was far too tolerant of corruption. Hungarians are no more in favor of mass migration and European involvement in the Ukraine war today than they were yesterday. Read Aris Roussinos’s report in UnHerd for more. Peter Magyar is a right-wing nationalist to whom progressive voters flocked because he was their only chance at dislodging Orban.

In fact, Orban’s tragedy is that European voters are finally coming around to his point of view on the importance of strong borders. Note this post from a UK-based French geopolitics analyst that went out just before the election:

Orban may be going, but Orbanism is coming to western Europe. He was right long before others were. I’m just sorry that he’s not going to be around as a national leader to see vindication. But vindication is damn sure coming in elections over the coming years. You watch.

Note this too:

The EU loves to promote itself as “defending democracy,” but it’s very important for Americans to understand that “democracy” is when voters choose candidates with the EU stamp of approval. I can tell you for certain that the Orban government was prepared, in the event that they won, for “Euromaidan” style mass protests — a color revolution organized by the EU.

It has been key to the anti-Orban messaging over the years to frame him as an anti-democratic autocrat — which is what you get if you stand against the European Union and its globalist, socially liberal technocracy. What’s harder to understand is why silly Republicans like this cat fall for it:

Wicker has no idea what he’s talking about. I encourage you to read this thoughtful pre-election essay by Dr. Sumantra Maitra, who does a deep dive into Hungarian history, to explain the Hungarian mindset. If you think that Hungarians have all of a sudden turned into Magyar Dutchmen, you will not understand what has just happened here. Maitra talks about how the Hungarian mindset has been formed over the centuries by their geographical location, and their deep need to survive as a linguistically distinct nation. This, Maitra asserts, is why Hungary’s foreign policy is “realist” — that is, why Orban has pushed for peace between Russia and Ukraine, in defiance of EU policy. The standard line from the Atlanticists is “Orban is a Putin puppet” is a just-so story that ignores the true complexities of the situation. Excerpt:

Orbánism can be understood as a complex and somewhat paradoxical model, as a form of ‘reactionary vanguardism’, in which a disciplined governing elite uses modern state mechanisms to pursue goals associated with national conservatism. Unlike earlier vanguard models that aimed at progressive or universal transformation, this approach focuses on reinforcing sovereignty, cultural continuity and traditional social structures, and a commitment to socially conservative values such as border security, traditional definitions of marriage and the preservation of national culture. While Orbán continues to advocate reforming the European Union from within rather than leaving it, his government faces ongoing legal and financial pressures from EU institutions, including rule-of-law procedures and fines. As a result, Hungary represents a hybrid system that combines centralised governance with resistance to liberal international norms. Orbán’s earlier declarations about building an illiberal state is presented by supporters as an effort to organise society around national priorities rather than as a rejection of democracy.

There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Western media during the campaign about “Russian interference” in this election. While it would not surprise me at all if there had been, you should be well aware that there was also Ukrainian interference, and EU interference, on Magyar’s side. See, it’s okay when “our” side interferes, but a scandal when “their” side interferes. I refer you to the key role the Obama State Department played in organizing the Euromaidan protests in Kiev in 2014. When we do it, it’s Democracy™. At least Washington wasn’t involved this time.

People are asking me about JD Vance’s visit here last week, and if it helped or hurt Orban. Fidesz people believe it helped galvanize support. Maybe so, but I think it was likely the case that voters had already made up their minds by then, and anyway, all Europeans (including Hungarians) stand to suffer serious economic consequences from Trump’s Iran war. In the end, the JD Vance visit probably didn’t help Orban much, but it makes Vance look bad to Americans, in that it puts him in a loser’s light. This is not fair — again, this was a change election in which economically hard-pressed voters got fed up with the ruling party’s corruption — but it is what it is.

We will no doubt see lots of Atlanticists saying the Orban loss is a big blow to the Trump model of nationalist populism. Well, no, not really. What it is, is a loss to the idea that you can govern as a populist with three years of no economic growth, and with indifference to insiders connected to you getting rich off of cronyism. I remind you: Fidesz is no more or no less corrupt than it ever was, but the economy had been doing well in past Orban terms. When all boats cease to rise, all eyes turn to the yachts.

Still, there’s no question but that nationalist-sovereigntist, Christian conservatives like me have lost a big one here. If you haven’t seen Miriam Cates’s English-language interview with Orban, please do watch it. He’s not only intelligent and articulate, but has a lot of common sense:

If only he had been a lot more attentive to the corruption, he’d still be around to lead Hungary in a fifth term. But that’s in the past now. Orban’s vision for Europe, as a continent of sovereign nations with strong borders, that has meaningfully returned to the Christian faith, is still the correct one. I am grateful that he has been such a strong champion of it, and can only regret that he was brought low because the corruption he tolerated gave his enemies a chance to take him down. He fought a good fight, and a courageous one, when he was fighting almost alone, for years. I am grateful for him, and proud to have championed him to my American conservative friends. We Americans still have a lot to learn about politics from Viktor Orban; unfortunately, one of them is now that you need less tolerance for cronyism and insider dealing.

As a Christian who desperately wants to see Europe return to the faith, I am pretty discouraged about last night’s result. I’ve been writing here for years that Hungary has a pro-Christian government, but even Orban knows that you can’t make a country Christian by passing laws and implementing policies. All you can do is make it easier for churches and religious organizations to do what they’re supposed to do. For whatever reasons, this has not happened during Orban’s 16-year tenure. Hungarians may be culturally conservative, in general, but they are not churchgoers. Hungary may never again have as pro-Christian a government as the one they just voted out. In fact, here are some lines from the Fundamental Law, the Hungarian constitution passed by the Fidesz-dominated parliament in 2011 (to replace the 1949 Communist constitution):

We are proud that our king Saint Stephen built the Hungarian State on solid ground and made our country a part of Christian Europe one thousand years ago. …We recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood. We value the various religious traditions of our country. We promise to preserve our nation’s intellectual and spiritual unity, torn apart in the storms of the last century.

The primary drafter of that constitution was József Szájer, a founder of Fidesz. Szájer, publicly a Christian conservative, was caught in 2020 escaping a gay orgy in Brussels that was being raided by police as a violation of Covid lockdown rules. He left Fidesz in disgrace, but this was a blow to the party’s image. It didn’t hurt them in the 2022 election, facing a weak left-wing opponent.

But a pedophile scandal, plus a bad economy, plus a strong right-wing opponent, was too much in 2026. Sic transit gloria Orbanismi.

I think that Hungarians will come to miss him in time. I know I will, because he believed, and fought for, the right things. It is a tragedy — a real tragedy — that he was far too tolerant of cronyism. It turns out that you can’t just profess the right things, you have to act righteously, or at least righteously enough not to lose the confidence of the electorate.

As for me? I’ll be moving to Vienna soon. As I mentioned over the weekend, the Ben Sasse interview really landed with me, and made me want to spend more time with my son Matt, who lives there and will be working there after he finishes grad school this spring. It is also possible that the incoming government will shutter the think tank where I work. I think this would be a mistake, because the Danube Institute does a lot of very good non-political work, and has built lots of contacts with the Trump administration (which PM Peter Magyar will have to work with, like it or not). But like I said, the spirit of vengeance is very strong in this country, so nobody really knows what is coming next.

Last word: there will be in the US an insatiable hunger from Trump critics to see the Orban defeat as a bellwether for Trump. On one level, it’s silly; as I’ve emphasized here, Orban lost for reasons specific to Hungary’s situation. You can’t plausibly read a broad international message out of this result. Parties aligned with Orban’s vision will continue to grow in popularity here in Europe, because people are increasingly fed up with mass migration. See the chart above.

On the other hand, it ought to be a lesson to Trump about what corruption can do to undermine your political legitimacy. Every single Fidesz voter I’ve talked to over the course of the campaign has expressed deep anger over its corruption. In fact, the friend I met on the street this morning said that he knows four conservatives who did not vote yesterday, out of disgust with what they perceive as Fidesz corruption. If the GOP loses the presidency in 2028, it will likely be because of the Iran war’s fallout, and perhaps the economy. But the fact that Trump tolerates open corruption, and has a habit of promoting and protecting people who are loyal but not necessarily competent, will not help him. If the economy is good, most Americans won’t care. If not, they will. Boy, will they ever.