Heather Cox Richardson on Orbanism (and Tuckerism)

This is a good brief description of how "Orbanism" works in Hungary from the historian Heather Cox Richardson (Facebook 08/02/2021). As she indicates, Viktor Orbán's government maintains the formal trappings of democracy but not the substance:

Hungary is a country in central Europe of about 10 million people who have, in the decade since Orbán took power for the second time, watched their democracy erode. On paper, Hungary is a democracy in that it still holds elections, but it is, in fact, a one-party state overseen by the prime minister.

Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy, replacing it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” with “the Christian family model.”

No matter what he calls it, Orbán’s model is not democracy at all. As soon as he retook office in 2010, he began to establish control over the media, cracking down on those critical of his party, Fidesz, and rewarding those who toed the party line. In 2012, his supporters rewrote the country’s constitution to strengthen his hand, and extreme gerrymandering gave his party more power while changes to election rules benefited his campaigns. Increasingly, he used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists. While Hungary still has elections, state control of the media and the apparatus of voting means that it is impossible for Orbán’s opponents to take power. [my emphasis]

Orbán's government isn't kidnapping dissidents or arresting political opponents or hijacking planes like Belarus has taken to doing. Orbán's party relies heavily on the "extreme gerrymandering" Richardson mentions and putting major media into the hands of friendly private oligarchs. (Richardson's reference to "state control of the media" is a bit vague in this context.) But at this point, Hungary wouldn't meet the minimum democracy and rule-of-law criteria for becoming a member of the EU. The EU is taking some formal measures against Hungary's violations of its standards. But EU law is far more effective and focused when it comes to commercial issues than it is when trying to deal with democratic backsliding by member states.

And as she mentions, Tucker Carlson will be broadcasting his White Power Hour show, the most popular program on FOX News, from Hungary this week. Maybe he will surprise us all and spend all week denouncing Hungarian authoritarianism. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that option, though.

Carlson, heir to the Swanson fortune, will also be speaking at an Orbanist political conference in Hungary: Nick Visser, Tucker Carlson To Speak At Hungarian Far-Right Conference Huffpost 08/03/2021.