Hungarian Politics

[Josquius]

So no learnings from Poland for the opposition?
Hungary destined to just keep spiralling ever downwards?

[Tamas]

So no learnings from Poland for the opposition?
Hungary destined to just keep spiralling ever downwards?

It's different. Poland was still a proto-Hungary when the opposition managed to (at least temporarily) halt the process.

I'd argue the last chance in Hungary for an election victory over Orban was in 2014. It was already hard because of the massive gerrymandering (to put mildly the election rules hand-crafted to keep Orban in power) but there was still a semblance of a public space not controlled by Orban.

At this stage the best that can be achieved, I think, is good enough election results to force blatant cheating on the regime. I just cannot fathom Orban and his band accepting a defeat and stepping down. The only way that'll happen if Orban will have found a way to save/transfer his de facto power to whatever new setup will emerge. So, the best we can hope for, imho, is getting to the point where Belarus-style obvious cheatings must be enacted, to escalate things to the inevitable next stage.

[Tonitrus]

Sounds like a Beet Revolution is necessary. 

[Tamas]

 

[HVC]

Sounds like a Beet Revolution is necessary. 

  Option 2 is give control back to Austria

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Sounds like a Beet Revolution is necessary. 

  Option 2 is give control back to Austria

Also a bit much in the pocket of russia apparently...

[Sheilbh]

Yes. I've read a fair few articles sourced from different European countries/intelligence agencies but all basically saying the Austrian state is riddled with Russian influence. And the focus is always on the politicians but the sense fromm those articles was that it's much more pervasive and is about actual civil servants, diplomats etc.

[Josquius]

Listened to a podcast about the ancient world lately and it got my mind drifting back to an old topic- how bloody weird nationalism is and how the natural outlook of humans has usually been city-centric.
Budapest is well known for being a primate city of Hungary, completely outsized in every way for the country (ah Trianon).
And all vibes from there, and a brief visit, do suggest its a really nice forward looking place with lots of decent people. A quick google does indeed show this is reflected in votes.
And...I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Budapest is 1/3 of Hungary which is big but still a minority.
How's conflict between different levels of government? I guess a lot of propaganda is shitting on the capital?

[Tamas]

Yes, Budapest is the last (and by size big) liberal stronghold, within the context of the country at least. Particular district councils can see Fidesz majorities but as a whole it's not a Fidesz city. Mayoral elections are coming back and essentially Orban folded it already giving the candidacy to a former press woman of his. The only real attempt they are making is running an "independent" third candidate to potentially divide non-Fidesz votes.

And as a result of course yes "Budapest elites" vs. rural common people is a returning trope although not a centerpiece of hate-mongering such as against Brussels or gay people.

[Tamas]

Also I don't have an English-language source but Le Monde, a Portugese paper, and a Hungarian investigative journalism site collaborated in revealing how the fairly recent acquisition of Euronews by some Portugese friend of Orban actually has been mostly funded by Hungarian taxpayers and various human wallets of Orban.

Goes to show that EU grants have been pumped into Orban's coffers for 14 years now and this has created a problem that's well on its way of pouring out of the country's borders. The EU has literally financed the creation of a mini-Putin within its borders.

[Duque de Bragança]

The Portuguese article from Expresso is paywalled, same goes for Le Monde.

[Sheilbh]

Listened to a podcast about the ancient world lately and it got my mind drifting back to an old topic- how bloody weird nationalism is and how the natural outlook of humans has usually been city-centric.
Budapest is well known for being a primate city of Hungary, completely outsized in every way for the country (ah Trianon).
And all vibes from there, and a brief visit, do suggest its a really nice forward looking place with lots of decent people. A quick google does indeed show this is reflected in votes.
And...I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Budapest is 1/3 of Hungary which is big but still a minority.
How's conflict between different levels of government? I guess a lot of propaganda is shitting on the capital?

This feels very, very based on a Classical Euro-centric view of humans' "natural outlook".

But nationalism is new historically and disruptive. I mention it a lot but I am basically on board with Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities that nationalism is a product of print capitalism. The emergence of printed books in a vernacular language with the economic structures for wide dissemination is key. It creates a common "imaginative" framework - you're reading the same paper or pamphlet in Perpignan that you are in Lille. There is a common collective conversation. It also involves "the people" as opposed to varying legal obligations and rights of often transnational figures or institutions - the Church, a nobleman or king who also has lands or properties or rights in another polity. And there is an exclusionary element to it as the language that conversation is happening in "corrects" regional variations/dialects but also excludes other language: suddenly the language of France is French not Langue d'Oc or Breton.

I think the city v country thing is kind of consistent across lots of countries at different points. But I also think there are different versions of nationalism which engage with that divide in different ways. For example, you think about the Jacobin nationalist tradition in France which is very much on Paris as the nation versus language and folklore movements in the 19th century (Ukraine, for example) which situated the nation in the countryside. I might be wrong but I feel like the city-nationalism is maybe more of a metropolitan thing, while the country-nationalism is maybe more peripheral/imperial subect thing? (And Hungary is possibly both? )

One other thought I've been wondering about for a while is that in Marxist terms nationalism is normally seen as part of the bourgeois revolution. It's the declaration of the sovereignty of the nation, of a people with a state against the patchwork quilt of feudal obligations and rights and duties. Obviously it's always subject to the difficult questions of who is or isn't in "the nation" and where the boundaries are (I think similarly you could argue that the most vexing questions for the EU have always been: who is in Europe? Turkey? Ukraine? Russia? Georgia? Morocco?). But I think it's sort of interesting that there's lots of analysis at the minute of the 21st century as neo-feudalist or techno-feudalist (and there's positives and negatives to that) - but it seems striking that there's also a resurgence of nationalism and interests (again positive and negative) in the sovereignty of the nation. Don't know which is right - or if this is true or just nonsense - but seemed interesting to me

[Syt]

 

[Tamas]

https://lansinginstitute.org/2024/05/14/hungary-is-setting-closer-cooperation-with-russia/

It was weird a few months ago to read Hungary was working on a military mission in Chad. It became news because despite trying to hide it, Orbans son was busted as being part of the delegation there.

Then not long ago I read that Russia has been expanding its influence there and it suddenly made a lot of sense.

[Tamas]

More importantly there's something that should collapse any government but unlikely that the Hungarian populace will care:

During the campaign of 2022 news surfaced that the Russians hacked the foreign office in a massive way. I don't remember the details but it was considered evident that it was true but government officials denied it and called it a "campaign lie".

Yesterday one of the independent news sites got hold of some internal documents confirming the hack and it's massive scale. They confronted the country's so called Foreign Minister (Russian Asset Hanging out of Orban's Ass would be a more apt title) who became very threatening after seeing the doc, so it must be true.

Apparently, in late 2021, the intelligence services reported on massive damages. User accounts with the highest admin privileges were compromised, due to this they had to consider more than 4000 workstation and 930 servers as unreliable and unsecure. They concluded that the entire infrastructure must be assumed to be unsecure. They also reported they have evidence that the hacking was done by the 3 Russian secret services.


In other words the government knew that their entire infrastructure, or at the very least the Foreign Ministry's was wide open (may still be wide open) for Russian intelligence services but not only denied this, but Orban continued to play the lapdog friend for Putin.


I do very much hope, as much as that pains me, that all NATO states treat the Hungarian government as hostile agents and keep classified stuff well away from them, because clearly they must assume that anything the Hungarian government reads the Russians are reading as well.