This is Hungary. And there's something puzzling about this small, central European country. The leader is this guy, Viktor Orban, and he's disliked by many in the West. Western media describes him as Europe's new dictator, accuses him of racism, and depicts him as a James Bond villain. Orban is also constantly clashing with other members of the EU over his policies on migrants, LGBT issues, or his support for Putin.
I mean, look how the EU Commission President greeted him in the first place. in 2019. The dictator is coming. Dictator.
And yet, despite all this hostility, Orbán does seem to have some support in Hungary. The prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, has secured a fourth consecutive landslide election victory. In the 2022 election, even though six parties grouped together to oppose Orbán's party, the result wasn't even close. We wanted victory so badly that it even looks like the moon.
It was a landslide for Orbán. In fact, if you look at this results map, you'll see that apart from a small bit of support in the capital Budapest and a couple of other areas, Orbán's party won support all across the country. What's more, this was Orbán's fourth election victory in a row, meaning he's now been in power longer than any other EU leader.
As we'll explore in this video, Orbán used state power to his party's advantage, so elections are not exactly a fair fight. There is no democracy in Hungary, there's no free and fair elections, regardless of the result. And yet, election monitors admit Hungarian election procedures are overall reasonably free, and certainly not rigged in the way of countries like Russia or Belarus. And, as this critical article in Foreign Policy argues, it would be foolish to deny that Orbán enjoys genuine democratic popularity.
For those of you who haven't been to Hungary or spoken with his fans, this popularity is puzzling. And yet, it's also part of a trend from Poland to Italy to Turkey and even India. And it seems that all across the world, we're seeing a new formula.
Winning, keeping power, and many fear that the way Orban has won power in Hungary could be copied by others closer to home. So, what is the secret to Orban's success? What is his formula? And could what he's done in Hungary be copied in countries like the US?
To explain what's going on in Hungary, we should start with its unique history. For example, most languages in Europe are Indo-European. There's a Romance branch, Slavic, and Germanic. But Hungarian has a different root, and apart from Finnish and Estonian, appears completely unrelated to the other languages of Europe.
For example, look at this map of the word for wine across Europe, and you can see how Hungarian stands out. This is because Hungary's origins trace back to the arrival of a people from outside of Europe, known as the Magyars, which is the name that Hungarians still use for themselves. They arrive in this low-lying plain, which, surrounded by mountains, is distinct from the neighboring territory.
rather unlike some other countries that lack natural defences. The mountains kept the Magyars somewhat concentrated within this area. And this isn't just a history lesson, this is relevant to how Hungarian politics works today.
Hungary has a long Christian heritage, with a history of fighting against Muslim Ottoman expansion, something Orbán has referenced during the refugee crisis of the mid 2010s, describing Syrians as Muslim invaders. Orbán brings up more recent history too. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the losing side of the First World War, Hungary lost around 70% of its historical territory to other countries, a grievance Orbán's government talks about a lot.
For example, look at this tweet from Orbán's government in 2019 with its emotive depiction of the post-war treaty, or this monument the government commissioned in 2020 that bore the name of every settlement that belonged to Hungary before the 1920 treaty. This territory is known as Greater Hungary, which lays claim to territory within Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia, just to make sure that nobody in the neighbourhood feels left out. And in 2022, Orban wore a scarf featuring a Greater Hungary map at a football match.
That, as it seemed to suggest land from neighbouring countries belonged to Hungary, provoked international controversy. Orbán's emphasis on the Hungarian nation isn't just rhetoric, it's reflected in policy too. For example, in 2011, Orbán passed a law that granted almost 1 million Hungarians living outside the country citizenship. And in 2019, Hungary started a policy of giving mothers of four or more children lifetime exemption from income tax, aimed at reversing the country's demographic decline.
Orbán talks openly about the importance of the Hungarian nation and its Christian heritage. We vote for Christianity in the middle. and modern ages and we fought for Christian democracy in the 20th century and continue to fight to this day. For critics this is all racist ethno-nationalism designed to exploit nationalist feeling merely to gain political support. But for supporters this is a genuine belief that has inspired conservative movements not only in Hungary but also in the United States and abroad.
So there's the first factor in understanding Orbán's support, his appeal to national identity. But Orbán is not the only politician trying this strategy. There are other nationalist parties in Hungary and in other countries that haven't been as successful. So what's his secret? From ABC, this is World News Tonight, reporting tonight from Berlin.
The moment Orbán first came to national consciousness was in 1989, at the end of the Cold War. After long years of Soviet control, Orbán, a young activist, gives a passionate speech in the capital. We believe that we are capable of taking the communist dictatorship under our own control.
If we are strong enough, we can force the ruling party to surrender to free elections. If we do not make mistakes, we can choose a form of ourselves, which will start immediately to fight for the rights of the European Union. This powerful, rousing speech would help Orbán win a seat in Hungary's first free election.
At this point, Orbán's party was liberal, even joining in 1992, the worldwide organisation of liberal political parties. But the following year, Orbán changed the party's name and moved its political position to the right. This move not only led many rivals to exit the party, but Orbán sensed a gap in the right of the political spectrum, as the Socialist Party, who admits the economic chaos of turning the country into a capitalist system, had become increasingly unpopular.
Whilst alienating some of his original supporters, he gained a whole new, now larger, demographic elsewhere. By the election of 1998, This series of maneuvers had paid off, and his party won the elections, making him the prime minister. This extraordinary rise from activist to leader in less than 10 years is a great example of the second factor in Orban's popularity, his political skill.
He combined a knack for communication with the ability to spot gaps in the political landscape and a ruthlessness for exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents. During his first time in office, much like the other country's leaders around him, focused his efforts on the economy, joining NATO, preparing the country to join the EU. But despite his relative success, in 2002, Orbán's party lost the election. In response, Orbán shifted political course again, this time in a more populist direction. He declared the elections rigged, hired American conservative electoral strategists, and honed his image as a man of the countryside, standing in opposition to those urban elites.
Eventually though, his party's luck changed, the socialist government was caught in a scandal, and with the country reeling from the recent economic crash, Orbán won the election. It was an unprecedented result and was testament to his unique talents as a politician. But the win here also opened the doors to another method of gaining power. Orbán didn't just win power in 2010, he won a two-thirds supermajority that allowed him to change the constitution.
He had just been handed the keys to the kingdom. And whilst most of the international headlines were about writing Christianity into law, back home, his constitutional changes also established a new electoral system that, along with extensive gerrymandering, made it much easier for his party to dominate parliament. Also, remember that 2011 policy that granted Hungarians living abroad citizenship?
Well, as these voters live outside the country, they tend to focus less on economy, labour rights and other areas Orbán was weak in, and more on issues like nationalism and religious areas, to which coincidentally, I'm sure, is the exact demographic that Orbán's message tends to resonate with. Making this constituency much more likely to be Orban voters than anything else. Following this, in 2012, he organised a takeover of the judiciary, forcing older judges to retire from Hungary's Supreme Court and replacing them with party loyalists, later introducing a parallel court to do his bidding. While gaining all his additional power, Orban has consistently sought to undermine any liberal checks and balances that stand in his way. But these moves have caused big clashes with the EU, with the international body threatening to withhold funding unless they are reversed.
But Orban has a technique for dealing with this, that he calls the Dance of the Peacock. Make progress with outrageous moves. Then, when faced with resistance, retreat on the flashy part while keeping the important but less eye-catching reforms in place. Okay, there's point three.
But whilst using the state to gather power has been effective for Orban, his desire to remove opposition hasn't stopped there. Next, we need to talk about how Orban wields the nation's press. You see, many newspapers around the world rely on government advertising and grants for their survival.
So now, with Orban in power, newspapers that support him continue to get these state grants and advertising contracts, as well as policy information before it went live to the public. Whilst on the other hand, if you wrote unflattering things about Orban, you would watch these government ads disappear, and your paper would be two days behind the ones with the political news stories, which, on news these days, is tantamount to a death sentence. So that today, an estimated 80% of media platforms are now controlled by Orban.
At the same time, Orban also went after state-funded broadcasters, putting cronies in charge of the public broadcaster and denying licenses to competitors. And these newspapers here in Hungary often have a much larger political impact than the average US or UK paper does. You see, as we pointed out earlier on, the Hungarian language is pretty unique, and a good percentage of the country's older populations only speak Hungarian.
So unlike the US where there are many international options for news, in Hungary, often the only source of news accessible to you will be these handful of Orbán affiliated papers. And if that's your only source of information, things are probably going to become somewhat distorted. Orbán has used this boosting of friends strategy in other sectors of the economy as well, to buy support, with allies getting government contracts and subsidies.
An example would be this guy, a friend of Orbán's who had a small business when Orbán entered power. but who in the space of seven years became the eighth richest man in Hungary. And when asked about his success, he credited God, Luck and Viktor Orbán. The state is also used to crush opponents.
When in 2015, a wealthy businessman and long-time ally turned on Orbán, the government targeted his companies. In the space of a few years, he'd moved into an isolated village in Western Hungary, his last remaining business interest being an agricultural farm owned by his wife. There we have four factors that help explain Orbán's support.
But to understand the whole picture, we need to examine one final factor, the part of his approach to politics that most alarms his critics. The moment when Orban really came to the world's attention was in 2015. With a fierce civil war in Syria, huge numbers of refugees made their way across Europe. But while some countries, for a time at least, opened their borders, Viktor Orban did the opposite. Police blocking refugees from boarding trains and putting up border fences.
And in the West, other conservative movements... were taking notes. We're going to build a wall. It's going to be built.
Whilst some attribute this tough policy to Orbán's belief in the Hungarian nation, it was also motivated by something all successful politicians do, identifying an enemy that would boost your support. In 2015, Orbán picked refugees as his enemy, calling them a Trojan horse for terrorism. Migration to the Trojan village of terrorism. Then later in the 2018 election, in addition to migrants.
he attacked the EU bureaucrats and, right on cue, George Soros, a Jewish-Hungarian-American financier, accusing him of secretly funding migration into Hungary as part of a plot to undermine Hungary's ancient Christian identity. The country was blanketed in posters saying things like Don't let Soros have the last laugh, which many critics saw as part of an anti-Semitic campaign. In 2018, Budapest Central European University, a widely respected liberal arts college founded by George Soros, was forced to leave the country altogether.
But with them gone, Orbán went in search of a new target, finding one in 2021. The Hungarian parliament has just passed a law in the past few minutes that bans what is described as the promotion and portrayal of homosexuality and gender reassignment among those under 18. Orbán has also banned same-sex marriage and same-sex couples from adopting children. So there we have the five factors that explain Orbán's electoral success. On one hand, he's reliant on old-fashioned autocratic methods of undermining the independent parts of the constitution, the media and other sources of opposition.
But he's also used a political agenda that resonates with many in the country, and an ability to find enemies to manufacture real levels of support amongst Hungarians. It's a powerful formula, one that you can see mirrored in the success of leaders like Erdogan in Turkey or Narendra Modi in India. However, it must be said that in Hungary, the restrictions on political freedom and the corruption of elections is not currently the same hardline levelers in countries like Russia or Belarus, and critics have called it a soft autocracy or soft fascism, but whilst also warning that the trendline in this one is also heading in the wrong direction. The overarching conundrum around Hungary though is what will happen if Hungary's government does, as is inevitable with all governments, finally lose all support from the people who live there.
Would Orban concede power if he loses an election, or is that the moment when the autocracy ceases to be soft?