Hungary offers American conservatives a model of an ethno-nationalist state with limited checks and balances, where one party always wins
electoral laws grossly in his favour. Having packed the courts and the media with his allies, he controls Hungary’s institutions. That has cemented his power and eliminated an effective opposition. He has put swathes of the economy in the hands of cronies; his friends and family have grown rich. Much of that appeals to the American right.
Mr Orban has been able to do this because his party, Fidesz, won the popular vote in 2010, landing his alliance a supermajority in parliament. He wooed voters with a culture-war narrative that exploited their fears. He makes much of Hungary’s Christian identity . Mr Orban also paints his country as a perpetual victim, emphasising its loss of territory after the first world war and its decades of suffering under the yoke of the Soviet Union. He now casts the as an existential threat.
Hungary provides American conservatives with a model of a Christian, ethno-nationalist state with limited checks and balances, where one party always wins, but which still appears to observe the rituals of democratic governance. It also shows how successful populist fear-mongering can prove with voters. In this year’s election Fidesz triumphed against a muddled left-wing alliance of socialists, liberals and nationalists.
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