Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won a smashing election victory in Hungary’s elections last weekend. Orban, who boasts of building an “illiberal democracy,” now controls two-thirds of the Hungarian Parliament, and will have license to change the country’s constitution. Orban’s rule has come under criticism from democracy advocates: Opposition media outlets have withered and NGOs have come under attack.
Orbán ran a campaign largely based on his pledge to “Stop Soros.” The prime minister has a fixation on the Hungarian-Jewish financier, who, ironically, once served as his patron: Orbán attended Oxford on a $10,000 Soros scholarship in 1989.
I spoke over email with Gabor Horvath about the elections, and the mechanics of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy.” Horvath (a friend), is one of Hungary’s leading journalists. For years he served as a foreign correspondent at Népszabadság, Hungary’s paper of record. That included a multi-year stint as Washington, D.C., bureau chief. Népszabadság was shuttered under dubious circumstances in 2016 (more on that below), and today Horvath is editor in chief of Népszava, the only remaining opposition newspaper.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of our chat.
Ethan Epstein: Judged from the outside, the Hungarian elections look clean, at least on the surface. The OSCE, for example, found no irregularities with the vote. Yet advocates say this was not a truly fair election. Who is right?
Gabor Horvath: For now, it needs to be clarified whether what took place was a centrally orchestrated, massive election fraud or only local mismanagement and minor cheating. Currently, election officials don’t seem to be forthcoming and cooperating with the media on transparency issues. For all we know, the newly purchased election software collapsed on election day and the National Election Bureau decided to return to the previous version with data not available for a few hours at the worst possible time on election night. Opposition parties presented partial evidence of hardly explicable local events, like having hundreds of votes for their individual candidates and zero on their party lists in certain precincts. We definitely need some clarity on technical and legal issues before we can accept the results. In all fairness, it would take an extraordinary level of manipulation and secrecy to commit a fraud with such overwhelming results.
The fairness of the political landscape and election campaign is a different thing. Just imagine what the U.S. would look like if all media —from NPR to practically all the newspapers, television and radio networks, major news sites like Politico and even the Associated Press—were run by people like Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, all of them owned by Jared Kushner-type figures, and only the New York Times, one of the big television networks and a handful of minor internet outlets remaining as independent news sources. In his eight years in office, Prime Minister Orbán’s constructed a well-disciplined, monolithic power structure, which used all available means to influence the elections. This includes illegal ones like hidden campaign financing and the coordination of party and government campaigns. The latter was obviously payed for by the taxpayers. Legal manipulations included one-time cash payments immediately before the elections to families using gas heating and pensioners.
EE: Why is the opposition so unable to mount a credible challenge to Orbán?
GH: As any good populist, Mr. Orbán keeps his fingertips on the public’s pulse. He leaves hardly any space uncovered. The originally far right Jobbik Party’s fate is a good example: No place to the right of Mr. Orban remained, so they were forced to move to the middle where they lacked the credibility with center-right and liberal voters. The laws regulating party and campaign financing work against alliances or deep coordination: Parties are rewarded for running individually. The left-leaning and liberal parties differ on some core issues like taxing the wealthy or maintaining voting rights of ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries. Some of them refuse to do anything with the Socialists due to the party’s roots in the Communist Party. Others blame former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány for previous failures and for famously lying to the people before the 2006 election. Age has become a divisive issue too: generations Y and Z refuse to support those they consider guilty of letting Orbán grab absolute power.
EE: It looks like Hungary has something like the red state/blue state split we have in the U.S. That is to say, Budapest does not like Orbán, but vast stretches of rural Hungary do. What can you attribute this to?
GH: Urban centers everywhere tend to be more liberal. The further a town is from manufacturing facilities and colleges, the more conservative it usually is. As I mentioned before, rural areas are left without independent news sources, people are overwhelmed with government propaganda. They sit in the local pub watching a soccer game on the state-run sports channel and at the half time break they see a minute-long news show consisting of four 15-second segments: The first three describe crimes committed by migrant terrorists and the last one is about the safety and financial prosperity of Hungary. Furthermore, Hungary lost about half a million young people during the last eight years: The best and brightest are in Western Europe now. Last year more Hungarian babies were born in other EU-countries than in Hungary itself. Those living abroad were able to vote at Hungarian embassies or consulates —in the U.K. only in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, in the U.S. in Washington DC., Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. Of them, hardly anyone voted for Mr. Orbán’s Fidesz Party. On the other hand, ethnic Hungarians with dual citizenship in Romania or Serbia were allowed to cast their vote by mail—95 percent of them supported Fidesz.
EE: What explains Orban’s fixation on George Soros?
GH: After breaking with liberalism in 1993-1994, Orbán quickly turned against his former friends and mentors. But he hardly ever mentioned Soros before befriending Vladimir Putin somewhere in 2009. After his election victory in 2014, he immediately attacked NGOs getting financial support from Norway. At that time it was issue No. 1 (Norway supports new EU-members in exchange for being in the common market without being an EU member itself.) Orbán “discovered” Soros around the start of the anti-migration campaign. He instantly realized how wonderful of an enemy he is: liberal, rich, American and Jewish. He doesn’t seem to forgive Soros’s essential support of Fidesz in 1989-1990 and the scholarship he personally enjoyed while learning English in Pembroke College, Oxford. His research topic was the history of British liberalism.
EE: Why are so many Hungarian media outlets shutting? (You know this from personal experience!) It’s not as simple as the government literally shuttering them. So what explains it?
First, the government does shutter them, as happened with my former newspaper, Népszabadság. Its Austrian owner got rid of the uncomfortably effective bunch of journalists two weeks before selling the remaining publications to Mr. Orbán’s childhood friend and the mayor of his native town, a former plumber, Lőrinc Mészáros. Three or four other persons, all closely connected to Orbán, now control some 80-85 percent of the Hungarian media. (One of them is the former Hollywood producer Andy Vajna, who returned to his native Hungary after some run-ins with the IRS.)
In Hungary, there is hardly a commercial ad market independent from the government, which is by far the largest advertiser. Even multinational giants are forcefully discouraged to place ads in independent newspapers or sites. Ad agencies are also dependent on government contracts, so most of them closely follow the “advice” given by the people in charge of the propaganda machine. Print circulations are down due to the switch to Internet and newly emerging websites, so even the powerhouses have low revenue levels. So everybody is vulnerable and subjected to pressure from the state.
EE: For opponents of Orbán, were there any helpful signs in the election?
The short answer is no; it’s a perfect storm. A somewhat longer one: A new opposition is going to emerge, resistance will be more present on the streets. Budapest stands as single bastion of democratic values—so it will inevitably become a target. A major battle for liberty is lost, but a long campaign starts right now. Free minds can’t be stopped and they will obviously prevail. Unfortunately too many young people are going to leave the country before that happens, lowering the chances of fast societal recovery and economic growth.
