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Shkruar nga Goffredo Buccini
The autocrat is a product of Europe itself...
On June 16, 1989, in Heroes’ Square in Budapest, Viktor Orbán gave a grand speech as a liberal as he was at the time. The Iron Curtain was crumbling, but the Soviet puppet regime was teetering between openness and repression. At the memorial to Imre Nagy, the prime minister of the 1956 revolution crushed by Moscow, many people were still afraid to speak out. He was not. The author of the book Tainted Democracy, Zsuzsanna Szelény, then his ally and now his opponent, recalls that the brave boy simply gave the Russians notice to leave Hungary.
"We can end the communist dictatorship," he declared forcefully, calling for free elections. Intellectuals from half of Europe embraced this "enfant prodige."
A quarter of a century later, with Hungary now in the European Union, the former young liberal, weighed down in body and soul, buried with another famous speech all the ideals thanks to which he had united his peers in the democratic alliance of Fidesz: “The Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals, it is a community that must be strengthened: that is why we are building an illiberal state in Hungary.”
Individual freedoms would be replaced by government intervention, while citizens would be “taken care of” by public paternalism. Orbán changed course, and Fidesz with him: Putin’s Russia and a grim pre-Enlightenment conservatism became the guiding principles. The oxymoron of “illiberal democracy” quickly became a brand among sovereignists of every latitude. Friend Viktor was called “one of the greatest moral leaders in the world,” according to strategist Steve Bannon.
On April 12, the prime minister of Budapest, in power without interruption for sixteen years, will seek re-election for a fifth consecutive term, despite growing discontent and promising polls for his rival, Péter Magyar. There is a lot at stake in these elections, and therefore a lot is happening around them. Influence maneuvers from Moscow, interference from the Trump-linked American (JD Vance is expected to arrive on Tuesday), coordinated attacks against Magyar, vote buying, redrawing electoral districts to favor the government, even a Russian plot to stage a fake assassination to strengthen Orbán's position: these and other schemes are being reported by the international press, NGOs and the few domestic media outlets that still maintain their independence.
There are also fears of serious consequences in a country where the prime minister has changed the constitution, subjugated the judiciary, restricted the media and created a clientelistic economic network with family and close friends. According to statistics, Hungary is the most corrupt and among the poorest country in the European Union. Few countries show so clearly how opponents of the rule of law collaborate from the White House to the Kremlin. An analysis by Dataroom, by Milena Gabanelli and Maria Serena Natale, explains how the Hungarian autocrat has become in three decades a challenge to liberal democracies, a symbol of sovereign populism and a reliable ally of Putin: by decisively using his veto right within the EU and the European funds received (about 60 billion in 13 years), he has built a competitive autocracy where voting exists, but the control mechanisms have been significantly weakened, making it very difficult to change power.
However, the essential question is: why? Why did this young liberal turn into an opponent of the ideas he once represented? The most straightforward explanation is opportunism: Orbán saw on the right spaces that he could not find elsewhere for his great ambition. But another question arises: why were these spaces created outside the nascent liberal system? Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, in their book The Antiliberal Revolt, emphasize the pressure to imitate Western models on a society frozen by decades of state rule, as well as the combination of emulation and disillusionment that followed. They point to a community reduced to a network of producers and consumers, without the dimension of spiritual values, as well as privatizations often controlled by former members of the communist regime.
In this context, Orbán managed to interpret and exploit a world prone to “retrotopia,” that is, nostalgia for an idealized and often unrealistic past. He expressed dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy of Brussels and promoted the idea of a strong leader who eases the burden of decision-making for citizens. Economic liberalism does not always produce political liberalism; when left unchecked, it can generate adverse reactions.
In this sense, the Budapest autocrat is a product of Europe itself and the weaknesses that accompanied its enlargement after the Treaty of Nice in 2000. The issue is not just about Hungary, but about the future of the whole of Europe. However, it also shows the limitations of the European project in its current form. Orbán can block vital funds for Ukraine, present Kiev as an enemy in the campaign, and obstruct important EU decisions without direct consequences. In the event of his re-election, the European Union is considering measures such as freezing funds or suspending voting rights, although these processes are complicated.
At a time when Donald Trump is showing skepticism towards NATO, the EU cannot afford the presence of a Kremlin ally within its structures. The image of the Foreign Minister of a member state informing his Russian counterpart about confidential discussions in the European Council and greeting him with the words "always at your service" is not only an ethical problem, but a strategic mistake./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Corriere della Sera"
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