If anybody still entertains any doubts about the extremely worrying authoritarian ambitions of former U.S. president Donald Trump, then it is important to consider what he said on the evening of Friday, 8th March, 2024.
Holding a meeting and concert at his luxury residence at Mar-a-Lago, where he played host to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (pictured), Trump was full of praise for his guest: ‘There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban… He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, “This is the way it’s going to be”, and that’s the end of it… He’s the boss’. Trump also called Orban a ‘fantastic’ leader.
To critics, the event was reminiscent of a reunion of two Mafia Dons, and Trump once again seemed in complete awe of a leader who he clearly feels can get things done because he is not held back by that annoying thing known as democracy. Trump explained that, since he had left the White House in 2021, he had kept in touch with Orban. One can only imagine what kind of conversations the two men have had, but in his 2024 campaign for the Republican nomination and re-election as president, Trump has name-checked Orban on a number of occasions in his rally speeches, admiring the Hungarian leader’s ‘strong’ Christian values and firm stance on immigration.
Orban seems to have first captured Trump’s close attention not long after ‘The Donald’ became American president in 2017. Hungary held a General Election on 8th April, 2018, which saw Prime Minister Viktor Orban win a landslide victory, giving him his third consecutive term in office. It was a major, but also very disturbing, achievement, which also created all sorts of difficulties for the European Union (Hungary has been a member of the EU since May, 2004) and how they should respond to Orban’s government.
Moreover, international observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had pointed to the ‘intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric’ and ‘media bias’ seen during the 2018 election campaign.
Despite facing a six-party opposition alliance in 2021-22, Orban and his Fidesz party won another landslide victory in the April, 2022, General Election, giving him his fourth consecutive term in office, and the now ex-President Trump was quick to congratulate him, undoubtedly impressed with Orban’s political longevity. Tellingly, Trump has hinted in recent speeches that he would like to revise the two-term restriction on holders of the U.S. presidency.
Although the Clean Vote Coalition (a group of four Hungarian NGOs) said it received numerous complaints of vote irregularities in Hungary’s 2022 election, including electors being bribed for their vote, this was predictably ignored by Orban. Indeed, flushed with victory, Orban proclaimed that: ‘The whole world can see that our brand of Christian democratic, conservative patriotic politics has won’. The victory had been achieved, claimed Orban, despite opposition from the ‘Left at home, the international Left, the bureaucrats in Brussels, the money of the Soros Empire, the international media and the Ukrainian president’.
This kind of nationalist rhetoric could have come straight out of Trump’s songbook and, significantly, there have been regular visits by members of the Republican party to Hungary, eager to absorb ‘lessons’ from Orban’s ideology, tactics and exercise of power.
A Historian’s Perspective
As a historian with a research interest in all forms of authoritarianism, dictatorship and the far right, I have watched Orban’s political rise over the years with grim fascination. It came as no surprise to see, for example, that populist and far right leaders from across western Europe queued up to warmly congratulate Orban on his re-election victory in 2018. Thus, Gert Wilders, leader of the anti-Muslim ‘Party for Freedom’ in the Netherlands, tweeted his congratulations to Orban on ‘this excellent result’. Similarly, Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National (now ‘National Rally’) in France, expressed her satisfaction at the success of Orban and his Fidesz party. Le Pen tweeted: ‘The inversion of values and the mass immigration that is propagated by the EU has been rejected once again’.
Furthermore, extreme right activists on social media forums in Britain, Italy and Germany also proclaimed their delight at both the Hungarian 2018 result and the 2022 victory, and still see Orban today as a ‘heroic’ figure. This is an assessment also shared by leading bloggers for the ‘alt.right’ and those who inhabit the ‘grey zone’ between the far and mainstream right. Moreover, the last few years have also seen positive appraisals of Orban and his ideas from ‘mainstream’ western politicians who have blatantly used or flirted with populist ideas. In late 2018, for example, Steve Bannon, the former political strategist for Donald Trump, revealed that he had been to Budapest to speak to Orban and his aides to find ‘common cause’ against liberalism. Similarly, just a month after the 2022 election triumph of the Fidesz party, Republicans flocked to Budapest for a meeting of the U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The conference saw Orban deliver a key speech in which he outlined a 12-point plan that, he claimed, would enable fellow rightwingers across the globe to gain and retain power. Revealingly, the 12 points included ‘playing by our own rules’ and also establishing their ‘own media’.
Critics of Orban have regularly highlighted the way he has undermined or manipulated the constitution and rule of law in Hungary, assaulting or watering down judicial checks and balances, or creating laws that seek to quash civil liberties or dissent. A whole range of groups, including LGBTQ+ activists, have been classed as ‘unpatriotic’ and the playthings of external ‘enemies’. The media and journalists have been especially targeted during Orban’s time in power. The Hungarian state, for example, has deployed some of the world’s most invasive spyware against independent investigative journalists, and has sought to engage in its own version of a cultural war against the free media.
But none of this has really bothered Trump and his close inner circle of GOP supporters. It is worth remembering that when Orban was welcomed to the White House by the then U.S. President Trump in May, 2019 (see photo), the President, when asked if he had any concerns about ‘democratic backsliding’ in Orban’s country, drew much criticism when he said of the Hungarian leader: ‘People have a lot of respect for this prime minister, he is a respected man. I know he is a tough man but he is a respected man and he has done the right thing according to many people on immigration’. The President seemed especially impressed with Orban’s hard-line immigration policies, and praised the ‘tremendous job’ made by the Hungarian PM in defence of ‘Christian communities’.
Since (reluctantly) leaving office in 2021, Trump has very much doubled-down on his own version of ‘strong’ politics, clearly likes the idea of playing by his own rules, and – in order to counter what he sees as the dominance of the ‘liberal’ mainstream media – has gone all out to bypass such hindrances by seeking to directly communicate with the public via tools such as ‘Truth Social’, his alt-tech social media platform.
Fellow-Travellers
As those with an interest in history will know, there have often been those on the political Left and Right who have been in thrall to authoritarian dictators in the past or have admired aspects of autocratic rule. The concept of ‘Fellow-Travellers’ has been a useful way of describing past apologists for dictatorship or, indeed, more recent defenders of authoritarian regimes.
Not only has the Hungarian PM seen quite a fan club for him develop in the USA, Orban has certainly had fans and admirers in Britain. In February, 2020, for example, when Daniel Kawczynski, the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury (pictured), spoke at the ‘National Conservatism’ conference in Rome, an event which brought together Viktor Orban, the Italian League leader Matteo Salvini and assorted other populist and far right leaders from across Europe. Kawczynski tried to justify this by claiming that Orban represented ‘serious ideas and concerns, some of which are shared by many citizens of the UK’.
Writing in the Spectator, he also called critics of such people as Orban and Salvini ‘offence archaeologists’ who had ‘done a thorough job in finding historic remarks from some of the participants that jar with the liberal world view’.
But what is it about Viktor Orban and his approach to power that so pleases Conservative MPs, like-minded populists, Donald Trump, rightwing extremists and other elements of the right in western Europe and across the globe? A brief (‘archaeological’!) exploration of Orban’s key governing ideas and policies can perhaps offer some important clues.
Orban’s Rise
When he studied law and political science as a student at University in Budapest in the early 1980s, Orban could plausibly be described at that stage as a liberal who merely wanted free elections and to see Soviet troops leave his beloved country. Over the years, however, he has increasingly moved further and further to the right, has become markedly nationalist and extremely Eurosceptic in the process, and some commentators now suspect him of having worryingly autocratic inclinations.
In fact, Viktor Orban appears to be the latest example of a new type of populist ‘semi-dictator’ in central and eastern Europe who have emerged since the collapse of communism in 1989-91, pugnacious figures who present themselves both as ‘strongmen’ and dedicated patriots (Vladimir Putin in Russia, pictured, is something of a role model for them here). They are mainly nationalist politicians who have often exploited an ill-defined notion that their country is somehow being ‘short-changed’ and treated unfairly; often, this grievance translates into a form of conservative, anti-immigrant populism – a xenophobic form of politics which flirts dangerously with fascist-style ideas but, at the same time, retains a surface image of democratic legitimacy, with plenty of references to ‘the people’ and the will of the ‘majority’.
Such leaders present historians with a major challenge: how should we label and categorize this new autocratic brand of populist politician? These men are not straightforward ‘fascist’ dictators as such, but neither can they be seen as ‘democratic’ in the usual and conventional meaning of the term. Orban himself has referred to his approach as ‘illiberal democracy’. A parliamentary institutional framework, plurality, opposition parties and the trappings of a constitution are all retained in Hungary but, at the same time, signs of authoritarian behaviour by the Prime Minister and his government can clearly be detected.
Signs of Dictatorship?
Much of Hungary’s public media, for example, has in recent years come under the direct control of Orban’s government, while what is left of Hungary’s free media, especially any independent newspapers, have been subjected to harassment campaigns, intimidation, and other hostile pressures from the ruling party. Independent institutions and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) in civil society have been targeted and seriously devalued.
Indeed, from 2010 onwards, Orban persuaded the Hungarian parliament to accept a new constitution, which he said would be based on Christian Conservatism and give priority to ‘family’ and ‘nation’. The new arrangements arguably weakened the country’s Constitutional Court and its ability to check the government’s growing powers, and serious questions have been asked by commentators about the rule of law and whether Hungary today still has a genuinely free judiciary. Human rights have also been denigrated as ‘liberal’ and a tool of outsiders.
Equally alarming, and this is what has probably been especially attractive to western far right leaders, Orban has also appropriated some of the language and ideas of the more explicit form of fascism found in Hungary’s ‘Jobbik’ movement (the ‘Movement for a Better Hungary’), the country’s main far right party. While this strategy has clearly undermined the growth and appeal of Jobbik, it has been a highly dangerous and risky move by the Prime Minister: it has brought some of Jobbik’s ideas very much into the mainstream of the nation’s politics and has, frankly, legitimised them. Thus, Orban has emphasised the need for a ‘Hungarian’ Hungary, and has vowed to defend the country and its core Christian values from (to use his words) the ‘threat’ of a ‘mixed population’ with no sense of ‘identity’.
Race and Identity
Especially disturbing has been Orban’s focus on ‘identity’ and ethnicity. He has regularly played the ‘race’ card, stating that he seeks to protect Hungary (and Europe more generally) from an ‘invasion’ of ‘Muslim immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’ (he has often conflated the two), and the only way to do this is to close borders and shut out ‘migrants’. The idea that Hungary is under ‘siege’ from ‘outsiders’ has evidently helped Orban create a sense of crisis in the nation, and enabled him to portray himself as a ‘strong’ and assertive leader who will steer his country through such an emergency situation.
As far as Orban is concerned, the EU itself has been too ‘soft’ on immigration, so he has been forced to seize the initiative and show other EU states what needs to be done. Significantly, the 2018 General Election saw Orban’s party make extensive use of giant billboards (see photo), with an eerily familiar image on an anti-immigration poster: a long and wide queue of migrants. This was a poster that was undoubtedly influenced by the now infamous and controversial ‘Breaking Point’ poster used by Britain’s eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) during the 2016 Brexit campaign. Much of this anti-migrant language was again very much in evidence during the 2022 General Election.
In addition, although he has denied this in interviews, Orban has resurrected a form of ugly racism which many commentators hoped had disappeared from modern Hungary: anti-Semitism. In 2017, the philanthropist George Soros became a particular target in Fidesz propaganda, and this was notably evident again in the 2018 and 2022 election campaigns. In 2018, for example, Soros was portrayed by Fidesz as a puppet-master, secretly pulling the strings of other people and organisations from behind the scenes (a classic anti-Semitic and conspiratorial idea).
Another manifestation of this racist theme in Orban’s 2018 campaign was to associate George Soros with a deliberate ‘plot’ to cut border fences and encourage more immigration into Hungary (see photo). There was also a sustained campaign by the government to de-legitimize the Central European University (CEU), an institution set up in Budapest in 1991, which partly benefited from finance provided by Soros.
Tellingly, within days of his 2018 re-election, an emboldened Orban announced that he would push through new ‘Stop Soros’ laws. This soon resulted in the Soros-affiliated CEU announcing that it would leave Budapest, and it has since found a new home in Vienna. It was a depressing sign that academic freedom in Hungary was being seriously undermined.
If anybody is in any doubt that Orban harbours anti-Semitic prejudices towards Soros and the liberal institutions he supports, one only has to take a careful look at some of Orban’s speeches he has made on the topic over the years, and the ‘coded’ (and not so coded) language he has often employed: ‘They do not fight directly, but by stealth’, he said in a speech in 2018: ‘They are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs. They are not generous, but vengeful, and always attack the heart – especially if it is red, white and green’ (i.e. the colours of the Hungarian national flag).
Viktator or Dictator?
Some commentators in recent years have taken to calling Viktor Orban ‘The Viktator’ and, despite his vigorous anti-Communism, he has been able to tap into a kind of nostalgia on the part of many Hungarians for the old pre-1989 Communist days of ‘social order’ and a strong dictatorial single-party state. It may even be the case that some of Orban’s older voters look back fondly to the days of Miklos Horthy (1868-1957), who adopted the title ‘Regent’ and ruled Hungary as a rightwing dictatorship from 1920-1944.
For Donald Trump, who has a highly selective reading of history, much of this is irrelevant. What he evidently admires most about Orban and his ‘illiberal democracy’ is the emphasis on ‘strongman’ politics – the combination of nationalism, family values, control of the media narrative, rejection of ‘outsiders’, and the reframing and ‘reinterpretation’ of the constitution, all things that Trump feels he can adopt for his own exercise of power if he is re-elected in 2024.
There is every indication that Viktor Orban himself will continue to be watched with utmost apprehension by other EU members, especially because he is viewed as sympathetic to Vladimir Putin and his so-called ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, but with evident relish by a whole range of extreme right movements, populists and assorted dictators across Europe and the globe. In particular, both Trump and the Russian president, Putin, have common interests in ensuring Orban remains in power in Hungary. For those ordinary Hungarians who still prize civil liberties, however, it is no exaggeration to say that the country faces some very dark days ahead.
Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics
(Photos: WikiMedia Commons)
Note: This is an updated version of a blog first published here in April, 2020
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