The book The Hungarian Patient was published in 2015. The volume included important analyses concerning the essence, the ideas and the policies of the Orbán government.
During the roughly two years since the volume was published, many symptoms of the “Hungarian Patient” have changed, perhaps with the exception of the situation of women and the Roma population, which remain roughly the same. In what follows I will discuss these changes. Yet I need also to clarify my own understanding and judgment regarding the Orbán project, without relying on other publications.
Since Viktor Orbán declared his project to establish a “central force field” (központi erötér) there could have been no misunderstanding about his major motivation and goal. His slight reformulation of the old Leninist slogan of “democratic centralism” was exactly as declared: the maximizing of power of a government, of the party that owns the government, and of the person who owns the party. Since power can never achieve a “maximum,” escalation was expected right from the beginning.
The first step in the process of escalation was to forge a constitution by the governing/ruling party, with a preamble that re-wrote Hungarian history in order to legitimize Fidesz, as the party which alone embodies and represents the Hungarian nation and its authentic traditions. This was the first step in a series of “memory politics” maneuvers. Those who do not hail Fidesz, who do not accept the “official” version of Hungarian history, are therefore not-Hungarian at all; they are communists, foreign agents, enemies of the nation.
Already at the beginning of its rule, Orbán presented his government as a “revolutionary” government, in a state of permanent revolution, always surrounded by enemies. To point at “enemies” who are the enemies not of the government, but of “the Hungarian people” in general, served them well. They invented always newer and newer enemies, knowing that people can be bored by fighting constantly against the same specters. The “enemies” were internal or external ones, sometime both, yet always a fight against at least one central enemy was kept on the agenda. The government was to be hailed as the power which “protects” the people against its enemies, which fights against them and against all the obstacles placed in their way by the evil opposition. In 2016 the government chose migrants—identified a terrorists and Muslim fundamentalists—as enemy number one, and “Brüssels,” the defender of migrants against nation states, as enemy number two. The hate campaign against migrants mobilized Orbán’s constituency, since nationalism and fear of the stranger are the kind of emotions politicians can always rely upon. Still, the referendum called by the government in support of their migrant-issue failed for lack of sufficient participation. Since there are no more migrants in view, new enemies were needed. The civil-society institutions critical of the government became the next target. In addition, a so-called “leftist conspiracy” was placed on the enemies list. Fidesz will never fall short of tips.
Several analysts describe FIDESZ as a conservative party, others as a right-wing party, yet it is neither of them. Orbán has no ideology at all, he has no other project than to maximize his own power, whatever it requires. He is no anti-Semite, no racist, no democrat, no confessing Christian, not even a nationalist at all. He simply uses any of these ideas, as he needs them, in order to maximize his power. If he does not need them, he will not use them.
Orbán does not distinguish lie from truth, or good from evil, because he is not interested in those distinctions. Yet he distinguishes useful from harmful, and successful from not successful, because these distinctions are essential for him.
However, when the essence of his rule is concerned, he does not lie. To the contrary, he is outspoken and candid. I already mentioned the term “central force field,” as the project description, and he himself described Hungary ruled by his government as “illiberal democracy.” No one can define the present political status of Hungary better.
The term “illiberal” is not new; Mussolini described his project with the same word, adding to it, at the beginning of the twentieth century, that liberalism is out of fashion, and is dead. Despite the similarity to anti-liberalism, I would not call Orbán “fascist” as many do, because I think that such labeling prevents analysis; besides, “illiberalism” itself can take several forms. I do not want to deny that liberalism, not democracy, is enemy number one for all totalitarian regimes, since liberalism means decentralization of power, checks and balances, and all the political liberties—first and foremost freedom of speech, freedom of the press, independence of legislative power, rule of law and much else—everything that totalitarianism excludes. The statement that all totalitarian regimes are anti-liberal can, however, not be reversed: not all anti-liberal states are totalitarian.
When I mentioned the “escalation” of the Orbán regime, I meant actions taken towards achieving the maximum (for them the optimum) of illiberalism. By now the control of the media has become almost total. The publication of the traditionally oppositional newspaper Népszabadság was stopped and almost all local newspapers are now controlled by one of the Orbán-created oligarchs. All the so-called “public” television stations and one of the two most popular commercial stations are spreading government propaganda. With the exception of Budapest, people are informed—that is, misinformed—constantly and exclusively by the government propaganda machine. Yet, the escalation of illiberalism still has limits within the European Union. Totalitarianism is off limits.
Also because of these limits set by Hungary’s membership in the Union, there are oppositional parties and oppositional movements in Hungary. Contrary to the constant escalation of the government, however, no escalation can be noticed by oppositional parties and movements. The oppositional parties are weak. All of them. Not just the Socialist party, split in two, sitting as impotent opposition in the Parliament, as well as the Green party (LMP) and the four small liberal parties. The attempt of some parties to join forces in 2014 failed miserably. At present all of them are aware of the impending danger—the possible demise of them all in 2018. Yet they still are unable to make up their mind whether they want to win the next elections, or want rather to sit in the parliament as lame ducks, or whether they want primaries or not, or whether they can agree on choosing a shadow prime minister. Thus, finally, they have not made up their mind about the main thing: what price are they ready to pay and for what? We shall see the result of the present confusion at the end of April.
In the case of civil movements, one can notice continuous ups and downs. Almost all movements discussed in The Hungarian Patient (Solidarity, HaHa) have disappeared. The organizer of the movement “One million for the Freedom of the Press” became one of the leaders of a liberal party (Együtt), yet his movement has disappeared. New movements have appeared, organized mainly by professional groups, like the movement of teachers and the movement of nurses. They are important since education and health care are in a tragic situation in Hungary. Yet none of these movements have achieved anything. As a result, fewer and fewer people participate in demonstrations. Apathy replaces willingness to act. In addition, people are more and more afraid that participating in a demonstration or any oppositional action will cost them their job. This fear is well founded. Still, new movements appear almost every day. This week, for example, a youth movement termed Momentum stepped on the scene.
There is a slight change in the ideology or rather the project of the movements. Previous movements underlined repeatedly that they are not parties, that they do not want to become parties, that they do not want parties to support them, and that parties should not even join their demonstrations—that they are simply civil movements and not political ones. This was self-delusion, for in a “central force field” every opposition is political by definition. Their fear to be identified with any party is understandable. Parties, especially parties once in power, have lost not just their reliability but also the minimal public trust in their sincerity. Yet the new movement I mentioned (Momentum) wants to become a party, and I think that other movements will follow. That means that the territory of the active, and continuous, oppositional forces will become broader, and the rainbow will have more colors. A naive person like me can thus still entertain some hope.
There is another shift in the Hungarian party system. Jobbik, which started its career as a radical rightist and even racist party, has begun to move towards the middle. It looks likely that they aspire to play the role of a Hungarian Christian Democratic Union. Why? Because this is the only “free” place left for them on the political field. They cannot any longer be more radically right than Fidesz, but they can occupy the territory evacuated by Fidesz, namely conservatism. Will they, given their past, really undergo this change? This remains to be seen.
Since The Hungarian Patient was published the international situation for the Hungarian liberal/left has worsened, beginning with the Polish election through Brexit and then the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Meanwhile the government of Turkey has moved from illiberalism towards open dictatorship. And everywhere, it seems, right-wing and even extreme right-wing parties have gathered a strong momentum.
These parties are all called “populists,” yet this is a mistake. Populism exists in class societies, e.g., still in a few states of Latin America. Yet all European countries, and also the United States, have become totally or at least almost (in the case of France, Germany, Spain) mass societies. In mass societies there is no “populism,” for all parties winning an election are populists by definition. They are not supported by a class, nor by certain social strata. They do not represent certain ideas, or world views, but anything that can attract voters. At the present, given the problematic economic situation, fears of terrorism, and distrust of traditional politics, the right-wing parties have a bigger arsenal of powerful slogans at their disposal in order to catch the numbers.
On the one hand, the international tendency is not favorable for the Hungarian opposition. On the other hand, there is now something more at stake than before. For there is now a certain kind of urgency. If the Hungarian opposition will be defeated in 2018, Russia will then be free to build a new nuclear power station (Paks2), and Hungary will thus be entirely dependent economically on Russia, politically on Putin, and will thus contribute actively to the destruction of the European Union.
People can console themselves with the old truism that nothing lasts forever. Yet a country can lose its soul for many decades. Hungary has already had two bad experiences that followed from relying on the truism that nothing lasts forever. The third is now pending.
