https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-hungarian-candidate
"On Sunday, the day after tomorrow, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections.
Ho-hum, you might think, a routine round of politics in a small central
European nation. But these elections loom large the world over.
Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, is a central figure in the
international far right, and indeed the man, more than any other, who created
the networks that normalized what he himself calls “illiberalism.” Should he
lose, as all signs indicate he will, this would be blow to far more familiar
figures such as JD Vance and Donald Trump, who are Orbán’s pupils. Americans
tend to think that history moves from us outward; but in the case of the new
oligarcho-fascism, we are the students rather than the masters. Much of what
seems American in Trump and Vance came from Hungary, or from Russia via
Hungary.
Orbán has been prime minister of Hungary for twenty years, the last sixteen
consecutively. He was in power long before Trump was president. He was prime
minister when Vance attended school in the Cincinnati exurbs. Beginning long
before either man won office, Orbán created a model of post-modern
authoritarianism. Inside Hungary he managed, largely by way of constitutional
changes, to create an apparently invincible strategic position for one-party
rule and his own personal power: the “illiberal state” which he then presented
to others as a model for emulation.
On the European scale, Orbán has done more than anyone else to generate
negative propaganda about the European Union, treating it as a hostile enemy
even as he personally exploited Hungary’s membership. He worked to normalize
his own anti-democratic, far right position within the EU parliament. He took
money directed by the EU to assist Hungary and used it to enrich his oligarch
friends. His government opened EU territory to Russian and Chinese intelligence
operations and indeed directly supplied Russia with confidential information
about EU meetings.
On the scale of Russia, Europe, and North America, Orbán has been a leader of
transnational efforts to pass dark money from country to country in support of
the far right. Budapest has become a hub in a system in which Russian oil money
is laundered to become support for far right figures and organizations in
Europe and the United States. Many institutions which we presume to be
American, such as the Heritage Foundation, are in fact part of this larger
international network. Many initiatives that we treat as American, such as
Project 2025, are based largely on Hungarian models. The same goes, for that
matter, for a number of American politicians. In our American provincialism we
often fail to see that Trump and Vance have been involved in a certain kind of
international politics from the beginning; there was never a moment when their
terrain was purely American. Indeed, that has always been Orbán’s magic: to be
an essentially international player who claims to be protecting the little guy
at home."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
