Orban’s Hungary is a warning to the US – don’t take democracy for granted

The US presidential election has echoes of Viktor Orban’s election defeat in Hungary 18 years ago. His response to his own narrow loss was to come back for a second and third term

The question “Will he concede or not?” is now receding as Donald Trump grudgingly allows the wheels of transition to turn. But there is a far more important question. Even when President Biden is safely installed, has Trump irrevocably damaged the foundations of US democracy?

By attempting to void the votes of millions of Americans, Trump has put the US on a dangerous course. It is a country divided, and one where the rule of law is frayed and under threat. It’s a scenario that feels akin to Viktor Orban’s election defeat in Hungary 18 years ago. Orban’s response to his own narrow loss was to come back for a second and third term. Defenders of US democracy would do well to study how Orban succeeded in capturing the Hungarian state.

Back then, Orban asked his supporters to collect electoral irregularities and report them to the hastily established “Democracy Line”. He declaimed: “We can’t be in opposition as the nation cannot be in opposition!” And, based on hundreds of allegations of fraud, his party, Fidesz, set out to challenge the results of the country’s parliamentary elections.

Orban eventually conceded and left office without meeting his successor. However, he rallied his followers and telegraphed his nationalistic, hegemonic aspirations, suggesting that his political rivals were under foreign influence, and only he represented true Hungarians.

This stirring of frustration saw Fidesz become a more united movement. So-called “civic circles” were formed all over the country linking hundreds of patriotic, church-bound, cultural, and local level political groups and many small scale businesses, which, whether out of self-interest, ideological sympathy or both, aligned with Orban. The frustration of the 2002 election defeat bonded Orban’s camp, and in a few years, he successfully consolidated his leadership on the right.  

Orban was defeated again in 2006 when, although he had the best-organised voting base, his radicalism and divisive personality prevented Fidesz from gaining a majority. Though the party’s elite started to seek a more moderate leader, Orban clung on. Six months after the elections, a closed-door speech of the newly elected Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany was leaked, in which he admitted to his party activists that they withheld the real state of the economy from the voters during the election campaign, saying that “we were lying morning, night and evening”.

Orban snatched this opportunity to reveal “election fraud” and question the legitimacy of the elections. Orban moved his stage from parliament to the streets. For several months, Fidesz obstructed the work of the parliament wherever they could – including removing a protective cordon to allow demonstrators closer to the building. The protracted disorder corroded the legitimacy of the Socialist-led government and, when the financial crisis hit in 2008, the ruling coalition was pushed to the brink. All Fidesz had to do was wait – and, in 2010, with a supermajority, the party was swept back into office. As Orban said, privately, “we need to win only once, but we need to win big”.

Over the last 10 years, Orban and his one party government have changed the constitution, and electoral law. This month, a new law was proposed to make it harder for opposition parties to collaborate on an anti-Orban platform. Government media advertising has been used to reward outlets loyal to the government. Orban has packed the democratic institutions with his friends, and built up a sophisticated system of corruption, with allegations that his circle are offered favourable terms during the awarding of public tenders.

Like other parties of the right, Fidesz have shifted position in the past decade or so. They are establishing support not through optimism, but through rage, greed, and grievances. Rationality and compromise are now more and more difficult to find on both sides of the Atlantic.  

The United States has traditionally had a strong and positive influence on global political culture. However, Trumpism and the 2020 presidential election, has undermined this claim. Democratic institutions, and checks and balances, have been trashed, and the consequences could be far reaching.

In Hungary, questioning elections without proof would have once dealt a fatal blow to a politician’s reputation. However, the sophisticated digitalised political infrastructure and state of permanent campaign that Fidesz introduced has allowed Orban to evade accountability, despite further enriching his friends. This comes at the same time as cracks are emerging in the country’s health system.

Orban – like Trump – requires opponents to demonise. Whether it’s the international philanthropist George Soros, the country’s Roma population, or the EU, there is always a scapegoat for the prime minister’s failings. This was evidenced just this week when Orban levelled charges of "corruption” at EU leaders and Soros, and threatened to veto the EU’s Recovery Fund in protest at that notion that EU subsidies would be linked to how far member states were willing to uphold the rule of law.  

Whether Hungarians can now dispatch Fidesz from power, peacefully, is questionable. To have reached this point, within a decade, shows how easy it is to sleepwalk into autocracy. Hopefully, Trump’s behaviour – and that of Orban in Europe – will be an eye-opening moment for democrats, and persuade those both on the left and the right to face down the challenge of autocratic politicians.  

Democracy is at stake in the US and Europe alike. Politicians, independent media, and citizens’ movements must realise that, in this era of polarisation, democratic institutions, checks and balances, and the rule of law will all wither unless we are willing to join together to protect them.  

Zsuzsanna Szelenyi is a former Hungarian politician and expert in foreign policy. She started her career in the Fidesz party, which she represented in parliament from 1990 to 1994. She is currently a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy