Hungary: Orbán defeated — An autopsy of sixteen years of illiberalism
First published in French on Marx21.ch. Translated by Adam Novak for Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.
The Hungarian legislative elections of 12 April 2026 brought to an end sixteen years of uninterrupted rule by Viktor Orbán. Péter Magyar’s Tisza (Respect and Freedom [Tisztelet és Szabadság]) party won a super-majority of 138 seats out of 199, inflicting on Fidesz a defeat explained by judicial scandals, saturation of the identitarian discourse, a generational fracture, and the concrete effects of the freeze on European funds.
Adam Novak analyses the structural dynamics of the Orbán regime in this interview conducted by Stéfanie Prezioso. His reading draws on the concept of the post-communist mafia state, forged by former liberal minister Bálint Magyar: not ordinary corruption coexisting with a degraded rule of law, but the criminalisation of the state itself, carried out through parliamentary means thanks to the two-thirds majority obtained in 2010. He analyses Hungary’s function as a “proof of concept” for the global nationalist right — and assesses the asymmetric effects of Orbán’s defeat on Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, European far-right parties, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The interview addresses equally what the Tisza victory does not represent. Péter Magyar does not carry an alternative project for social organisation: his party voted against arms deliveries to Ukraine in the European Parliament and did not respond to pre-electoral trade union demands. The electoral left is absent from the new parliament. The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), long dominant, paid for its neoliberal conversion with the organic rupture of its working-class base. The social demand that fuelled Orbánism for sixteen years — described here as anti-Westernism rather than pro-Russianism — is not resolved by the change of government.
How would you describe the system of power that Orbán put in place over these sixteen years? Some speak of a mafia capitalism, others of a kind of “neo-royalism” to account for a system that has profited outrageously from the presidential clan?
Former liberal minister Bálint Magyar1 describes it as a post-communist mafia state. This is not ordinary corruption coexisting with a degraded rule of law, but the criminalisation of the state itself. Public resources, public procurement, the media, and judicial institutions are systematically leveraged for the benefit of a network of clans organised around the Prime Minister. Between 3.2 and 5.5 billion euros of European funds have benefited a narrow circle linked to the regime, led above all by the companies of Lőrinc Mészáros2, Orbán’s closest oligarch.
Illiberal democracy is the term Orbán himself claimed from 2014, before preferring the formula Christian democracy. Freedom House3 classified Hungary as only partly free. What is specific to the Hungarian model is its method: the capture of institutions was achieved through parliamentary means, thanks to the two-thirds majority obtained in 2010, without a coup d’état. This is precisely what made it an exportable model — but also one perfectly serviceable for the muscular liberals of the new government.
How did Orbán manage to rise to the level of an indispensable reference figure for the global far right, from the United States to Italy? What might be the impact of his electoral failure on his Russian, European, and American “friends”? What might be its direct impact on Robert Fico’s Slovak far right?
The most accurate formulation is that proposed by Czech journalist Jan Bělíček:4 what Pinochet was for the neoliberals, Orbán was for the Christian nationalists — a proof of concept. Pinochet demonstrated that the neoliberal programme could be applied against democratic resistance before becoming electorally viable elsewhere. Orbán demonstrated that a liberal democratic system can be hollowed out from within, without a coup d’état, whilst maintaining the electoral facade, and simultaneously neutralising the press, the judiciary, the universities, and the rules of the electoral game.
What the American ultra-conservatives admired in Orbán’s Hungary was the relentless war against progressive thought, the capture of the state apparatus, the dismantling of judicial power, and the creation of a political environment in which the opposition has practically no chance. This is precisely what they would like to reproduce at home.
Orbán’s defeat has asymmetric effects depending on the actor. For Trump and Vance, it is the loss of the most useful ally within the European Council — the one who blocked collective decisions on Ukraine, including the 90-billion-euro loan to Kyiv that Orbán had vetoed. For Putin, it is the loss of the most accommodating European government on energy and sanctions. For European far-right parties, it is the signal that the model is not election-proof.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico does not rejoice at Orbán’s defeat. But Fico did not build his political survival on direct reference to the Hungarian model: his red-brown electoral base rests on other foundations, notably what I analyse in my article on Slovakia5 as an anti-Western posture rather than a pro-Russian one.
After sixteen years in power, Viktor Orbán appears weakened in certain working-class regions such as Dunaújváros. Why is his party, Fidesz, experiencing an erosion of its popular base?
Working-class towns such as Dunaújváros6 do not constitute the core of Orbán’s electoral base. Dunaújváros is a steel-industry town, built under the name Sztálinváros in the Soviet era, historically left-leaning. Its shift towards Fidesz is relatively recent and represents an electoral acquisition, not a historical stronghold. The heartland of the Fidesz vote remains rural Hungary, the small towns and villages of the east and south of the country. The erosion of the Orbán vote in Dunaújváros signalled that working-class voters converted by Orbán were beginning to leave him.
This erosion stems from several factors. First, economic deterioration: persistent inflation, stagnant real wages, and a near-freeze of EU transfers — nearly 20 billion euros blocked — translating concretely into postponed infrastructure projects. Second, scandal saturation: the presidential pardon granted in 2023 to a person convicted in a paedophilia case, and the documentary La Dynastie,7 viewed three million times in ten days on YouTube, which documented the enrichment of the Orbán clan.
Is the deterioration of living standards the principal cause of the shift in the electoral balance of power against Orbán’s party? Does the Fidesz nationalist-identitarian discourse still play as significant a role within Hungarian public opinion, notably against the EU but also against Ukraine? Can growing tensions with Ukraine play in his favour?
Both factors coexisted, but their relative weight was shifting. Initially, the nationalist-identitarian discourse functioned as a substitute for material improvement during the years when economic growth — fed in part by European transfers — made it possible to mask inequalities. The strategy of confrontation with Brussels ultimately backfired against the regime: the delays linked to the fund freeze became visible --- postponed projects, scarcer subsidies.
A functioning identitarian mechanism nonetheless remained: the Ukrainian question. Orbán’s policy of “pragmatic non-alignment”, analysed in detail by Bálint Demers on ESSF. The tensions around the Druzhba pipeline,8 weaponised during the election campaign, were part of this logic. Orbán even used the discovery of explosives near the TurkStream9 pipeline in Serbia on 6 April to attempt to blame Ukraine; Serbian intelligence services quickly denied this. But, as Dávid Csillik10 noted on the Hungarian progressive site Mérce, neither Orbán nor Magyar responded to the pre-electoral package of demands from the Hungarian Trade Union Federation — the identitarian discourse masked the absence of a social programme.
Viktor Orbán is strongly supported by the United States of Donald Trump and JD Vance. The latter travelled to Hungary to support his election campaign. Is this really an asset for him, when the European far right seems increasingly embarrassed by Washington’s hostility towards the EU and, more recently, by the consequences of the war in Iran? After Meloni’s failed referendum on Italian justice, could Orbán not be the first victim of this political conjuncture?
On Vance’s visit: Jan Bělíček, in his article on ESSF,11 identifies several ironies. Vance delivered a speech on Christ and the Christian foundations of European civilisation before a comparatively secular Hungarian audience. He invoked workers’ rights without saying a word about the tech billionaires enriched under Trump. And he denounced Brussels bureaucrats for “making millions” whilst saying nothing of the oligarchy that Orbán himself built. The electoral effect of the visit is close to zero: Vance is little known in Hungary, and it was not Trump who came. But consider the concrete cost: in exchange for the visit, Hungarian oil company MOL12 committed to purchasing 500 million dollars (approximately 460 million euros) of American oil, and the Hungarian army 700 million dollars (approximately 645 million euros) of HIMARS13 systems — 1.2 billion dollars (approximately 1.1 billion euros) at the expense of the Hungarian taxpayer, in direct contradiction with the rhetoric of national sovereignty.
Is Orbán not severely handicapped by his close collusion with Putin’s Russia and the corruption affairs that accompany it?
Orbán’s relationship with Russia is not primarily ideological but structural and economic, centred on cheap Russian gas and the construction of the PAKS-II14 reactors by Rosatom.
At the level of popular voting for politicians like Orbán and Fico, as I developed in my article on Slovakia,15 this phenomenon does not reflect pro-Russianism in the strict sense, but anti-Westernism. The populations that support these postures do not want more Russia in their lives — they want less of the West. And “less of the West” means for them a less cruel economic system, stronger rights for the majority, more comprehensible political decision-making, and a more communal way of life. This real demand is captured and distorted by Orbán to the benefit of energy vassalage to Moscow. Magyar’s victory does not resolve this demand.
Péter Magyar is Orbán’s principal rival. He is given as the winner by opinion polls, although the outcome was not certain. Yet he comes from the same political milieu, which he broke with in 2024. On what points does he differ from his rival? On what themes can he win a majority of the electorate? If he were defeated, could Orbán contest the election results in the manner of Trump?
Magyar was not a leading political operator within Fidesz, but was embedded in the party’s social milieu through his marriage to former Justice Minister Judit Varga.16 His break in February 2024 was triggered by that scandal: President Katalin Novák17 had pardoned a convicted person, Varga had countersigned. He founded the Tisza party (Respect and Freedom [Tisztelet és Szabadság]) and obtained 29.6% at the European elections of June 2024. He positions himself as an anti-corruption technocrat and promises to unblock the billions in frozen European funds.
As András Borbély explains on Mérce, Magyar does not carry an alternative proposal for social organisation. The two major parties of 2026 did not campaign on two different social projects, but on the interests of two competing power structures. On Ukraine, Tisza supported Orbán’s position in the European Parliament by voting against the sending of arms or troops.
The real question is not whether Orbán will contest the results — he did not — but whether Tisza’s super-majority (138 seats out of 199, i.e. the two-thirds required to amend the constitution) will be sufficient to dismantle the institutional network built over sixteen years: appointments to the Constitutional Court, the public prosecutor’s office, regulatory authorities, which extend well beyond a single term in office. Perhaps Tisza will prefer to make use of the post-communist mafia state rather than reform it according to Brussels’ preferences.
Orbán endlessly criticises Brussels whilst benefiting from European funding. Over the past sixteen years, Hungary has received tens of billions of euros in EU transfers, representing 4 to 5% of its GDP and, according to estimates from the Corruption Research Center in Budapest, 3.2 to 5.5 billion euros would have benefited a narrow circle of actors linked to the regime. Beyond the anti-EU discourse, how has Europe served as a lever for his regime? Does this anti-EU discourse remain effective with his electoral base when corruption extends to all spheres of the regime?
The mechanism is simple: European funds arrive in Budapest; the government chooses the beneficiaries; companies linked to the Orbán network sweep up the contracts. The government can simultaneously attack the EU rhetorically and depend on it structurally — because the rural electoral base does not see the redistribution mechanism, and because the media controlled by Fidesz ensure that scandals do not break through. The documentary La Dynastie, viewed three million times in ten days, signalled that this firewall was beginning to crack.
During his pre-electoral visit to Budapest, Vance denounced Brussels bureaucrats for making millions, whilst saying nothing about the tech billionaires enriched under Trump — exactly the same rhetorical structure that Orbán employs to designate Brussels as the external enemy and conceal the domestic oligarchy. The progressive freeze on funds since 2022 — nearly 20 billion blocked according to Chatham House18 — ultimately made the confrontation strategy costly in concrete terms. Tisza’s victory should enable their unblocking, which represents for Brussels a powerful incentive to cooperate with the new government.
The generational fracture appears to be a key aspect of Orbán’s decline in voting intentions. For what reasons are young people, particularly in urban areas, rejecting his authoritarian ultra-conservative rule with increasing force?
Age was, according to polls analysed by Euronews,19 the primary determining factor in voting intentions: only 10 to 12% of young voters supported Fidesz, compared to approximately 60% for Tisza. Several mechanisms explain this fracture. First, emigration: hundreds of thousands of young qualified Hungarians have left the country, attracted by higher wages in Western Europe. Second, the capture of higher education: the fate of Central European University (CEU),20 forced to leave Budapest under the Lex CEU law of 2017 and relocate to Vienna, is symbolic. Third, cultural questions: anti-LGBT legislation and state-imposed conservatism contradict the norms of a generation socialised in an open European space.
Vance delivered his speech on Christ and the Christian foundations of European civilisation before a comparatively secular Hungarian audience. The junction between American Christian nationalism and Hungarian youth could not work — and it did not work.
The young vote for Tisza is a vote against Orbán more than a vote for an alternative social project. The unsatisfied social demand that fuelled Orbánism for sixteen years does not disappear with him.
The electoral left is entirely absent from the new Hungarian parliament. What happened?
The collapse of the Hungarian electoral left is not a campaign accident: it is structurally determined by the very conditions of the post-communist transition and by the strategic choices of the past two decades.
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP)21 governed Hungary for much of the 1990s and 2000s. But it is the direction it chose once in government that sealed its fate. The MSZP gradually transformed itself into a protest party whose only political programme became “drive Orbán from power and prevent him from returning”. The European socialist path was replaced by what might be called cut-price Atlanticism — the conviction that the values of “Brussels” are automatically the values of the party.
In doing so, the MSZP abandoned its working-class base. In the 1990s, a third of the electorate voted for it. This support rested on an organic relationship with trade unions and industrial communities. The party’s conversion to neoliberalism — the Hungarian socialists were often more ardent defenders of market policies than their conservative opponents — severed this link. Where Fidesz captured working-class frustration through economic nationalism and clientelism, the MSZP offered nothing.
The decline does not result solely from poor decisions but from broader historical processes. The familiar form of social democracy will not be what gives voice to the accumulated anger of the coming period. As Gábor Scheiring22 notes in his article on Mérce, illiberalism emerged as a response to a triple devaluation: the material security, cultural status, and political voice of the working classes simultaneously declined — and centre-left parties failed to respond.
The opposition space has thus restructured itself around Tisza — a moderate right-wing anti-corruption party — and around the Our Homeland Movement23 (Mi Hazánk), the sole far-right party to have obtained seats. The electoral left, in the programmatic sense of the term, is absent from parliament. Tisza does not fill this void: it did not respond to trade union demands and proposes no alternative social programme.
What is the impact of the Hungarian elections on European politics?
Tisza’s victory constitutes a blow to the European radical right at several levels. Hungary has just overturned the oldest and most consolidated illiberal regime in Europe. Orbán demonstrated that the model can hold for sixteen years; his defeat demonstrates the inverse — that deliberately skewed systems can nonetheless produce changes of government when electoral pressure is sufficiently massive.
For the institutional European Union, Magyar’s victory immediately removes several blockages. The 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine, vetoed by Orbán, should be able to be unblocked.24 Frozen European funds will be progressively released as the new government demonstrates credible institutional reforms.
On the relationship with Moscow and the Ukrainian question, the break will be real but partial. Hungary remains structurally dependent on Russian gas and Russian financing for PAKS-II — diversification takes years. The new government will continue to demand that European aid to Ukraine be conditional on the resumption of oil and gas deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline, a position on which Tisza supported Orbán in the European Parliament. It will not provide bilateral military or civilian aid to Ukraine, but will be markedly less inclined to veto collective European initiatives — which in itself represents a substantial change.
On Ukrainian EU membership: Tisza remains vocally opposed to accelerated accession. This is a position that corresponds in any case to that of many member states who support accession in principle whilst deferring it in practice. The promise of a fast-track for Ukraine is more rhetorical than programmatic. On this point, the change of government in Budapest will not substantially modify the European dynamic.
Adam Novak is an editor of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, based in Bratislava. He has been published in Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Devoir, and Viento Sur.
- 1
Bálint Magyar (born 1952) is a Hungarian politician and academic, former Minister of Education in the socialist-liberal coalition governments (1996—1998 and 2002—2006). His work Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary (Central European University Press, 2016) constitutes the principal systematic analysis of the Orbán regime. Not to be confused with Péter Magyar, founder of the Tisza party and Orbán’s principal rival in the 12 April 2026 legislative elections.
- 2
Lőrinc Mészáros (born 1966), Orbán’s childhood friend and football companion, became one of Hungary’s leading fortunes between 2010 and 2026 through public contracts and European funds awarded to his companies in the construction, energy, and media sectors.
- 3
Freedom House is an American non-governmental organisation that publishes an annual global index of political and civil liberties. Its “partly free” classification for Hungary signifies that the country presents significant deficits relative to the criteria of a consolidated democracy, whilst maintaining an electoral facade.
- 4
Jan Bělíček, “Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept”, ESSF, 8 April 2026. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 5
Adam Novak, “Slovakia’s Paradoxical Foreign Policy Stance”, ESSF, 3 April 2025. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 6
Dunaújváros is an industrial town in central Hungary, formerly known as Sztálinváros (“Stalin’s City”) during the Soviet era. Built from scratch in the 1950s around a steel complex, it was historically one of the bastions of the Hungarian working-class left.
- 7
La Dynastie (A dinasztia in Hungarian) is an investigative documentary published on YouTube tracing the accumulation of wealth by the Orbán clan through public contracts and European funds. It constituted one of the turning points in the dynamics of the 2026 election campaign.
- 8
The Druzhba (“Friendship” in Russian) pipeline is the longest oil pipeline network in the world, carrying Russian oil to Central and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. Hungary is structurally dependent on it for its oil supply.
- 9
TurkStream is an underwater gas pipeline linking Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine. An incident involving the discovery of explosives near its Serbian section was reported on 6 April 2026.
- 10
Dávid Csillik is a journalist and political analyst. Mérce (merce.hu) is a Hungarian progressive online information platform, founded in 2016, which publishes left-wing political analysis, reporting, and commentary.
- 11
Jan Bělíček, “Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept”, ESSF, 8 April 2026. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 12
MOL (Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyilvánosan Működő Részvénytársaság, Hungarian Oil and Gas Public Limited Company) is Hungary’s principal oil and gas group, listed on the stock exchange, in which the Hungarian state is the reference shareholder.
- 13
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) are high-mobility rocket launchers produced by Lockheed Martin, widely used notably by Ukraine in the ongoing war.
- 14
PAKS-II is an expansion project for the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary, financed by a ten-billion-euro Russian loan and built by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear operator. Signed in 2014, the contract is at the heart of Hungary’s structural energy dependence on Moscow.
- 15
Adam Novak, “Slovakia’s Paradoxical Foreign Policy Stance”, ESSF, 3 April 2025. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 16
Judit Varga (born 1982) is a Hungarian jurist and politician, member of Fidesz. She served as Minister of Justice from 2018 to 2024. She resigned following the presidential pardon scandal in a paedophilia case, which she had countersigned in her capacity as minister.
- 17
Katalin Novák (born 1977), former State Secretary for Family Policies (2020—2021), then President of the Republic of Hungary (2022—2024). She resigned in February 2024 after granting a controversial presidential pardon in a paedophilia case.
- 18
Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) is an international affairs research centre based in London. Its reports on the EU’s conditionality mechanism documented the scale of European funds blocked from reaching Hungary from 2022 onwards.
- 19
Euronews is a continuous news television network based in Lyon, broadcasting in several languages to a European audience.
- 20
The Central European University (CEU) is a higher education institution founded in Budapest in 1991 by George Soros. The so-called Lex CEU law adopted by the Orbán government in 2017 imposed deliberately unworkable administrative requirements, forcing the university to transfer its principal academic activities to Vienna in 2019. On the Hungarian anti-LGBT legislation and its effects, see: Budapest Pride showed the only effective strategy for confronting restrictions on freedom, ESSF.
- 21
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP, Magyar Szocialista Párt) emerged from the transformation, in 1989, of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt), itself heir to the Communist Party in power under the Soviet regime. It governed Hungary for much of the 1990s and 2000s in coalition with the liberals of the Alliance of Free Democrats (Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, SZDSZ).
- 22
Gábor Scheiring is a Hungarian political scientist and political economist, author of reference works on the emergence of illiberalism in Central Europe through dynamics of class and social declassification. He publishes regularly on Mérce.
- 23
Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk Mozgalom) is a far-right nationalist party founded in 2018 by László Toroczkai following his expulsion from the Jobbik party, which had embarked on a moderate turn. Mi Hazánk positions itself to the right of Fidesz on identity and migration issues.
- 24
On Hungarian positions towards Ukraine and its EU accession, see: Across Central Europe, anti-immigration rhetoric targets Ukrainians, ESSF.
First published in French on Marx21.ch. Translated by Adam Novak for Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.
The Hungarian legislative elections of 12 April 2026 brought to an end sixteen years of uninterrupted rule by Viktor Orbán. Péter Magyar’s Tisza (Respect and Freedom [Tisztelet és Szabadság]) party won a super-majority of 138 seats out of 199, inflicting on Fidesz a defeat explained by judicial scandals, saturation of the identitarian discourse, a generational fracture, and the concrete effects of the freeze on European funds.
Adam Novak analyses the structural dynamics of the Orbán regime in this interview conducted by Stéfanie Prezioso. His reading draws on the concept of the post-communist mafia state, forged by former liberal minister Bálint Magyar: not ordinary corruption coexisting with a degraded rule of law, but the criminalisation of the state itself, carried out through parliamentary means thanks to the two-thirds majority obtained in 2010. He analyses Hungary’s function as a “proof of concept” for the global nationalist right — and assesses the asymmetric effects of Orbán’s defeat on Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, European far-right parties, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The interview addresses equally what the Tisza victory does not represent. Péter Magyar does not carry an alternative project for social organisation: his party voted against arms deliveries to Ukraine in the European Parliament and did not respond to pre-electoral trade union demands. The electoral left is absent from the new parliament. The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), long dominant, paid for its neoliberal conversion with the organic rupture of its working-class base. The social demand that fuelled Orbánism for sixteen years — described here as anti-Westernism rather than pro-Russianism — is not resolved by the change of government.
How would you describe the system of power that Orbán put in place over these sixteen years? Some speak of a mafia capitalism, others of a kind of “neo-royalism” to account for a system that has profited outrageously from the presidential clan?
Former liberal minister Bálint Magyar1 describes it as a post-communist mafia state. This is not ordinary corruption coexisting with a degraded rule of law, but the criminalisation of the state itself. Public resources, public procurement, the media, and judicial institutions are systematically leveraged for the benefit of a network of clans organised around the Prime Minister. Between 3.2 and 5.5 billion euros of European funds have benefited a narrow circle linked to the regime, led above all by the companies of Lőrinc Mészáros2, Orbán’s closest oligarch.
Illiberal democracy is the term Orbán himself claimed from 2014, before preferring the formula Christian democracy. Freedom House3 classified Hungary as only partly free. What is specific to the Hungarian model is its method: the capture of institutions was achieved through parliamentary means, thanks to the two-thirds majority obtained in 2010, without a coup d’état. This is precisely what made it an exportable model — but also one perfectly serviceable for the muscular liberals of the new government.
How did Orbán manage to rise to the level of an indispensable reference figure for the global far right, from the United States to Italy? What might be the impact of his electoral failure on his Russian, European, and American “friends”? What might be its direct impact on Robert Fico’s Slovak far right?
The most accurate formulation is that proposed by Czech journalist Jan Bělíček:4 what Pinochet was for the neoliberals, Orbán was for the Christian nationalists — a proof of concept. Pinochet demonstrated that the neoliberal programme could be applied against democratic resistance before becoming electorally viable elsewhere. Orbán demonstrated that a liberal democratic system can be hollowed out from within, without a coup d’état, whilst maintaining the electoral facade, and simultaneously neutralising the press, the judiciary, the universities, and the rules of the electoral game.
What the American ultra-conservatives admired in Orbán’s Hungary was the relentless war against progressive thought, the capture of the state apparatus, the dismantling of judicial power, and the creation of a political environment in which the opposition has practically no chance. This is precisely what they would like to reproduce at home.
Orbán’s defeat has asymmetric effects depending on the actor. For Trump and Vance, it is the loss of the most useful ally within the European Council — the one who blocked collective decisions on Ukraine, including the 90-billion-euro loan to Kyiv that Orbán had vetoed. For Putin, it is the loss of the most accommodating European government on energy and sanctions. For European far-right parties, it is the signal that the model is not election-proof.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico does not rejoice at Orbán’s defeat. But Fico did not build his political survival on direct reference to the Hungarian model: his red-brown electoral base rests on other foundations, notably what I analyse in my article on Slovakia5 as an anti-Western posture rather than a pro-Russian one.
After sixteen years in power, Viktor Orbán appears weakened in certain working-class regions such as Dunaújváros. Why is his party, Fidesz, experiencing an erosion of its popular base?
Working-class towns such as Dunaújváros6 do not constitute the core of Orbán’s electoral base. Dunaújváros is a steel-industry town, built under the name Sztálinváros in the Soviet era, historically left-leaning. Its shift towards Fidesz is relatively recent and represents an electoral acquisition, not a historical stronghold. The heartland of the Fidesz vote remains rural Hungary, the small towns and villages of the east and south of the country. The erosion of the Orbán vote in Dunaújváros signalled that working-class voters converted by Orbán were beginning to leave him.
This erosion stems from several factors. First, economic deterioration: persistent inflation, stagnant real wages, and a near-freeze of EU transfers — nearly 20 billion euros blocked — translating concretely into postponed infrastructure projects. Second, scandal saturation: the presidential pardon granted in 2023 to a person convicted in a paedophilia case, and the documentary La Dynastie,7 viewed three million times in ten days on YouTube, which documented the enrichment of the Orbán clan.
Is the deterioration of living standards the principal cause of the shift in the electoral balance of power against Orbán’s party? Does the Fidesz nationalist-identitarian discourse still play as significant a role within Hungarian public opinion, notably against the EU but also against Ukraine? Can growing tensions with Ukraine play in his favour?
Both factors coexisted, but their relative weight was shifting. Initially, the nationalist-identitarian discourse functioned as a substitute for material improvement during the years when economic growth — fed in part by European transfers — made it possible to mask inequalities. The strategy of confrontation with Brussels ultimately backfired against the regime: the delays linked to the fund freeze became visible --- postponed projects, scarcer subsidies.
A functioning identitarian mechanism nonetheless remained: the Ukrainian question. Orbán’s policy of “pragmatic non-alignment”, analysed in detail by Bálint Demers on ESSF. The tensions around the Druzhba pipeline,8 weaponised during the election campaign, were part of this logic. Orbán even used the discovery of explosives near the TurkStream9 pipeline in Serbia on 6 April to attempt to blame Ukraine; Serbian intelligence services quickly denied this. But, as Dávid Csillik10 noted on the Hungarian progressive site Mérce, neither Orbán nor Magyar responded to the pre-electoral package of demands from the Hungarian Trade Union Federation — the identitarian discourse masked the absence of a social programme.
Viktor Orbán is strongly supported by the United States of Donald Trump and JD Vance. The latter travelled to Hungary to support his election campaign. Is this really an asset for him, when the European far right seems increasingly embarrassed by Washington’s hostility towards the EU and, more recently, by the consequences of the war in Iran? After Meloni’s failed referendum on Italian justice, could Orbán not be the first victim of this political conjuncture?
On Vance’s visit: Jan Bělíček, in his article on ESSF,11 identifies several ironies. Vance delivered a speech on Christ and the Christian foundations of European civilisation before a comparatively secular Hungarian audience. He invoked workers’ rights without saying a word about the tech billionaires enriched under Trump. And he denounced Brussels bureaucrats for “making millions” whilst saying nothing of the oligarchy that Orbán himself built. The electoral effect of the visit is close to zero: Vance is little known in Hungary, and it was not Trump who came. But consider the concrete cost: in exchange for the visit, Hungarian oil company MOL12 committed to purchasing 500 million dollars (approximately 460 million euros) of American oil, and the Hungarian army 700 million dollars (approximately 645 million euros) of HIMARS13 systems — 1.2 billion dollars (approximately 1.1 billion euros) at the expense of the Hungarian taxpayer, in direct contradiction with the rhetoric of national sovereignty.
Is Orbán not severely handicapped by his close collusion with Putin’s Russia and the corruption affairs that accompany it?
Orbán’s relationship with Russia is not primarily ideological but structural and economic, centred on cheap Russian gas and the construction of the PAKS-II14 reactors by Rosatom.
At the level of popular voting for politicians like Orbán and Fico, as I developed in my article on Slovakia,15 this phenomenon does not reflect pro-Russianism in the strict sense, but anti-Westernism. The populations that support these postures do not want more Russia in their lives — they want less of the West. And “less of the West” means for them a less cruel economic system, stronger rights for the majority, more comprehensible political decision-making, and a more communal way of life. This real demand is captured and distorted by Orbán to the benefit of energy vassalage to Moscow. Magyar’s victory does not resolve this demand.
Péter Magyar is Orbán’s principal rival. He is given as the winner by opinion polls, although the outcome was not certain. Yet he comes from the same political milieu, which he broke with in 2024. On what points does he differ from his rival? On what themes can he win a majority of the electorate? If he were defeated, could Orbán contest the election results in the manner of Trump?
Magyar was not a leading political operator within Fidesz, but was embedded in the party’s social milieu through his marriage to former Justice Minister Judit Varga.16 His break in February 2024 was triggered by that scandal: President Katalin Novák17 had pardoned a convicted person, Varga had countersigned. He founded the Tisza party (Respect and Freedom [Tisztelet és Szabadság]) and obtained 29.6% at the European elections of June 2024. He positions himself as an anti-corruption technocrat and promises to unblock the billions in frozen European funds.
As András Borbély explains on Mérce, Magyar does not carry an alternative proposal for social organisation. The two major parties of 2026 did not campaign on two different social projects, but on the interests of two competing power structures. On Ukraine, Tisza supported Orbán’s position in the European Parliament by voting against the sending of arms or troops.
The real question is not whether Orbán will contest the results — he did not — but whether Tisza’s super-majority (138 seats out of 199, i.e. the two-thirds required to amend the constitution) will be sufficient to dismantle the institutional network built over sixteen years: appointments to the Constitutional Court, the public prosecutor’s office, regulatory authorities, which extend well beyond a single term in office. Perhaps Tisza will prefer to make use of the post-communist mafia state rather than reform it according to Brussels’ preferences.
Orbán endlessly criticises Brussels whilst benefiting from European funding. Over the past sixteen years, Hungary has received tens of billions of euros in EU transfers, representing 4 to 5% of its GDP and, according to estimates from the Corruption Research Center in Budapest, 3.2 to 5.5 billion euros would have benefited a narrow circle of actors linked to the regime. Beyond the anti-EU discourse, how has Europe served as a lever for his regime? Does this anti-EU discourse remain effective with his electoral base when corruption extends to all spheres of the regime?
The mechanism is simple: European funds arrive in Budapest; the government chooses the beneficiaries; companies linked to the Orbán network sweep up the contracts. The government can simultaneously attack the EU rhetorically and depend on it structurally — because the rural electoral base does not see the redistribution mechanism, and because the media controlled by Fidesz ensure that scandals do not break through. The documentary La Dynastie, viewed three million times in ten days, signalled that this firewall was beginning to crack.
During his pre-electoral visit to Budapest, Vance denounced Brussels bureaucrats for making millions, whilst saying nothing about the tech billionaires enriched under Trump — exactly the same rhetorical structure that Orbán employs to designate Brussels as the external enemy and conceal the domestic oligarchy. The progressive freeze on funds since 2022 — nearly 20 billion blocked according to Chatham House18 — ultimately made the confrontation strategy costly in concrete terms. Tisza’s victory should enable their unblocking, which represents for Brussels a powerful incentive to cooperate with the new government.
The generational fracture appears to be a key aspect of Orbán’s decline in voting intentions. For what reasons are young people, particularly in urban areas, rejecting his authoritarian ultra-conservative rule with increasing force?
Age was, according to polls analysed by Euronews,19 the primary determining factor in voting intentions: only 10 to 12% of young voters supported Fidesz, compared to approximately 60% for Tisza. Several mechanisms explain this fracture. First, emigration: hundreds of thousands of young qualified Hungarians have left the country, attracted by higher wages in Western Europe. Second, the capture of higher education: the fate of Central European University (CEU),20 forced to leave Budapest under the Lex CEU law of 2017 and relocate to Vienna, is symbolic. Third, cultural questions: anti-LGBT legislation and state-imposed conservatism contradict the norms of a generation socialised in an open European space.
Vance delivered his speech on Christ and the Christian foundations of European civilisation before a comparatively secular Hungarian audience. The junction between American Christian nationalism and Hungarian youth could not work — and it did not work.
The young vote for Tisza is a vote against Orbán more than a vote for an alternative social project. The unsatisfied social demand that fuelled Orbánism for sixteen years does not disappear with him.
The electoral left is entirely absent from the new Hungarian parliament. What happened?
The collapse of the Hungarian electoral left is not a campaign accident: it is structurally determined by the very conditions of the post-communist transition and by the strategic choices of the past two decades.
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP)21 governed Hungary for much of the 1990s and 2000s. But it is the direction it chose once in government that sealed its fate. The MSZP gradually transformed itself into a protest party whose only political programme became “drive Orbán from power and prevent him from returning”. The European socialist path was replaced by what might be called cut-price Atlanticism — the conviction that the values of “Brussels” are automatically the values of the party.
In doing so, the MSZP abandoned its working-class base. In the 1990s, a third of the electorate voted for it. This support rested on an organic relationship with trade unions and industrial communities. The party’s conversion to neoliberalism — the Hungarian socialists were often more ardent defenders of market policies than their conservative opponents — severed this link. Where Fidesz captured working-class frustration through economic nationalism and clientelism, the MSZP offered nothing.
The decline does not result solely from poor decisions but from broader historical processes. The familiar form of social democracy will not be what gives voice to the accumulated anger of the coming period. As Gábor Scheiring22 notes in his article on Mérce, illiberalism emerged as a response to a triple devaluation: the material security, cultural status, and political voice of the working classes simultaneously declined — and centre-left parties failed to respond.
The opposition space has thus restructured itself around Tisza — a moderate right-wing anti-corruption party — and around the Our Homeland Movement23 (Mi Hazánk), the sole far-right party to have obtained seats. The electoral left, in the programmatic sense of the term, is absent from parliament. Tisza does not fill this void: it did not respond to trade union demands and proposes no alternative social programme.
What is the impact of the Hungarian elections on European politics?
Tisza’s victory constitutes a blow to the European radical right at several levels. Hungary has just overturned the oldest and most consolidated illiberal regime in Europe. Orbán demonstrated that the model can hold for sixteen years; his defeat demonstrates the inverse — that deliberately skewed systems can nonetheless produce changes of government when electoral pressure is sufficiently massive.
For the institutional European Union, Magyar’s victory immediately removes several blockages. The 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine, vetoed by Orbán, should be able to be unblocked.24 Frozen European funds will be progressively released as the new government demonstrates credible institutional reforms.
On the relationship with Moscow and the Ukrainian question, the break will be real but partial. Hungary remains structurally dependent on Russian gas and Russian financing for PAKS-II — diversification takes years. The new government will continue to demand that European aid to Ukraine be conditional on the resumption of oil and gas deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline, a position on which Tisza supported Orbán in the European Parliament. It will not provide bilateral military or civilian aid to Ukraine, but will be markedly less inclined to veto collective European initiatives — which in itself represents a substantial change.
On Ukrainian EU membership: Tisza remains vocally opposed to accelerated accession. This is a position that corresponds in any case to that of many member states who support accession in principle whilst deferring it in practice. The promise of a fast-track for Ukraine is more rhetorical than programmatic. On this point, the change of government in Budapest will not substantially modify the European dynamic.
Adam Novak is an editor of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, based in Bratislava. He has been published in Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Devoir, and Viento Sur.
- 1
Bálint Magyar (born 1952) is a Hungarian politician and academic, former Minister of Education in the socialist-liberal coalition governments (1996—1998 and 2002—2006). His work Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary (Central European University Press, 2016) constitutes the principal systematic analysis of the Orbán regime. Not to be confused with Péter Magyar, founder of the Tisza party and Orbán’s principal rival in the 12 April 2026 legislative elections.
- 2
Lőrinc Mészáros (born 1966), Orbán’s childhood friend and football companion, became one of Hungary’s leading fortunes between 2010 and 2026 through public contracts and European funds awarded to his companies in the construction, energy, and media sectors.
- 3
Freedom House is an American non-governmental organisation that publishes an annual global index of political and civil liberties. Its “partly free” classification for Hungary signifies that the country presents significant deficits relative to the criteria of a consolidated democracy, whilst maintaining an electoral facade.
- 4
Jan Bělíček, “Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept”, ESSF, 8 April 2026. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 5
Adam Novak, “Slovakia’s Paradoxical Foreign Policy Stance”, ESSF, 3 April 2025. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 6
Dunaújváros is an industrial town in central Hungary, formerly known as Sztálinváros (“Stalin’s City”) during the Soviet era. Built from scratch in the 1950s around a steel complex, it was historically one of the bastions of the Hungarian working-class left.
- 7
La Dynastie (A dinasztia in Hungarian) is an investigative documentary published on YouTube tracing the accumulation of wealth by the Orbán clan through public contracts and European funds. It constituted one of the turning points in the dynamics of the 2026 election campaign.
- 8
The Druzhba (“Friendship” in Russian) pipeline is the longest oil pipeline network in the world, carrying Russian oil to Central and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. Hungary is structurally dependent on it for its oil supply.
- 9
TurkStream is an underwater gas pipeline linking Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine. An incident involving the discovery of explosives near its Serbian section was reported on 6 April 2026.
- 10
Dávid Csillik is a journalist and political analyst. Mérce (merce.hu) is a Hungarian progressive online information platform, founded in 2016, which publishes left-wing political analysis, reporting, and commentary.
- 11
Jan Bělíček, “Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept”, ESSF, 8 April 2026. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 12
MOL (Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyilvánosan Működő Részvénytársaság, Hungarian Oil and Gas Public Limited Company) is Hungary’s principal oil and gas group, listed on the stock exchange, in which the Hungarian state is the reference shareholder.
- 13
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) are high-mobility rocket launchers produced by Lockheed Martin, widely used notably by Ukraine in the ongoing war.
- 14
PAKS-II is an expansion project for the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary, financed by a ten-billion-euro Russian loan and built by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear operator. Signed in 2014, the contract is at the heart of Hungary’s structural energy dependence on Moscow.
- 15
Adam Novak, “Slovakia’s Paradoxical Foreign Policy Stance”, ESSF, 3 April 2025. Available at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
- 16
Judit Varga (born 1982) is a Hungarian jurist and politician, member of Fidesz. She served as Minister of Justice from 2018 to 2024. She resigned following the presidential pardon scandal in a paedophilia case, which she had countersigned in her capacity as minister.
- 17
Katalin Novák (born 1977), former State Secretary for Family Policies (2020—2021), then President of the Republic of Hungary (2022—2024). She resigned in February 2024 after granting a controversial presidential pardon in a paedophilia case.
- 18
Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) is an international affairs research centre based in London. Its reports on the EU’s conditionality mechanism documented the scale of European funds blocked from reaching Hungary from 2022 onwards.
- 19
Euronews is a continuous news television network based in Lyon, broadcasting in several languages to a European audience.
- 20
The Central European University (CEU) is a higher education institution founded in Budapest in 1991 by George Soros. The so-called Lex CEU law adopted by the Orbán government in 2017 imposed deliberately unworkable administrative requirements, forcing the university to transfer its principal academic activities to Vienna in 2019. On the Hungarian anti-LGBT legislation and its effects, see: Budapest Pride showed the only effective strategy for confronting restrictions on freedom, ESSF.
- 21
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP, Magyar Szocialista Párt) emerged from the transformation, in 1989, of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt), itself heir to the Communist Party in power under the Soviet regime. It governed Hungary for much of the 1990s and 2000s in coalition with the liberals of the Alliance of Free Democrats (Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, SZDSZ).
- 22
Gábor Scheiring is a Hungarian political scientist and political economist, author of reference works on the emergence of illiberalism in Central Europe through dynamics of class and social declassification. He publishes regularly on Mérce.
- 23
Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk Mozgalom) is a far-right nationalist party founded in 2018 by László Toroczkai following his expulsion from the Jobbik party, which had embarked on a moderate turn. Mi Hazánk positions itself to the right of Fidesz on identity and migration issues.
- 24
On Hungarian positions towards Ukraine and its EU accession, see: Across Central Europe, anti-immigration rhetoric targets Ukrainians, ESSF.
For us fighting democratic backsliding, this is exceedingly consequential. Orbán wrote the authoritarian playbook now being used by Donald Trump; the people’s playbook used to oust him is a critical case study to learn from.
A devastated election poster with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen at a bus stop at the parliamentary election day in Budapest, Hungary on April 12, 2026.
(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Daniel Hunter
Apr 16, 2026
On Sunday night, the streets of Budapest were filled. Tens of thousands of Hungarians poured into the streets along the Danube River, singing folk songs and waving flags celebrating the end of Viktor Orbán’s rule. A young man named Mark Szekeres, his face painted with the colors of the Hungarian flag, told CBC News: “This election was about a clash of civilizations. Either you belong in a Western-type democracy or an Eastern-type dictatorship.”
For 16 years, Orbán controlled the country as the classic strongman. Orbán’s electoral defeat was sound—so much so that he conceded defeat before all the votes were counted. Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party captured more than 53% of the vote and approximately 136 of 199 parliamentary seats, a supermajority decisive enough to undo the constitution and other laws that Orbán rewrote. The turnout alone was a verdict: nearly 80% of all eligible voters.
For us fighting democratic backsliding, this is exceedingly consequential. Orbán wrote the authoritarian playbook now being used by Donald Trump and actively exported his approach, even giving Hungarian tax dollars to fund the Conservative Political Action Conference. The people’s playbook used to oust him is a critical case study to learn from—from how the opposition party organized in Orbán’s strongholds, to how they made repression backfire when he overreached, and more.
Informed by talking with people on the ground, I’m writing an outside take of lessons gleaned knowing we’ll need more analyses to make the most of our learning. Already D-HUB, a network of international anti-authoritarian activists, has vowed a more thorough case study after more study and reflection.
Authoritarians create four times as many economic crises—a threat very much in our sightlines in the US.
Orbán’s loss raises a question we all should learn from: How do you beat someone who has spent 16 years rigging the game?
To appreciate what happened Sunday, you have to understand just how thoroughly Orbán had slanted Hungarian political life toward authoritarian rule.
Within months of taking power in 2010, Orbán began systematically dismantling independent journalism. He encouraged his oligarch friends to buy media. He created a new state broadcaster, called MTVA, as a government mouthpiece. And his party created a Media Council—staffed by party loyalists—that issued crushing fines for “unbalanced” news that didn’t toe the party line.
By 2018, more than 470 pro-government outlets had been merged into a single conglomerate called KESMA—the Central European Press and Media Foundation—making the concentration of power official. Orbán’s party and friends eventually controlled roughly 80% of Hungary’s media landscape. “You can’t write anything bad about the government,” one anonymous Hungarian journalist told Al Jazeera.
Then the courts. Orbán passed a new constitution and forced 274 judges and prosecutors into early retirement in the first year alone. The judiciary became almost entirely a political instrument.
Then, most consequentially, he moved to rig elections: The maps were redrawn, and he gained control of independent institutions overseeing elections. Orbán shaped Hungary’s 106 electoral districts with no input from the opposition, concentrating urban voters into large districts while spreading out his rural voters into more districts. The results were staggering: In 2014, Orbán’s ruling party captured 45% of the vote—but 91% of the districts. “Free but not fair,” as the ever insightful John Oliver put it in his review of Orbán’s rule just ahead of the elections. “You are free to vote for anyone you want, whether it’s Orbán or whoever inevitably loses to him.”
Universities are often the birthplace of pro-democracy movements, and grinding them down was essential. The most famous casualty was Central European University, founded by George Soros, which was slandered and pushed out of the country. This was in line with right-wing and antisemitic attacks on anything Soros-related (even though Orbán had once received a Soros-funded scholarship).
And finally, he created imagined enemies of the state. Like every authoritarian, Orbán used divide-and-rule to create people to fear and keep his own growing scandals and corruption off the front page. Like most authoritarians of late, he chose LGBTQ people and immigrants as his primary scapegoats. George Soros, the EU, and Ukrainians were added to the roster of villains.
When President Trump sent Vice President JD Vance to campaign for Orbán, Vance followed Orbán’s escalating attacks on EU bureaucrats, who had voiced concerns about how Orbán’s re-election would affect the future of the EU. With no sense of irony, at his campaign stop Vance called the EU bureaucrats “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen or ever even read about.”
So with that much control, how did Orbán lose? And so badly?
Tyranny Is Unstable
One reason dictatorships can be appealing, at least to some, is that they appear effective. To his supporters, Trump gets things done. While the democratic process is slow and grinding, the dictatorial one is about action. It breaks through red tape and fixes problems.
There’s truth in this, so far as democracy can be messy and dictatorships simple to understand. But it’s also mythical. Because a dictator doesn’t run a country—they order others to run a country.
Whereas power is traditionally seen as flowing downwards, in fact many pillars are required to hold it upright. These are groups and institutions—like media, religious institutions, the business community, civil servants, and security forces—that prop up the regime. In Thailand, where I first learned about this model of the “pillars of support,” it was drawn as an upside-down triangle.
A dictatorship is no exception. By keeping society functioning, these pillars support the regime, even if they may disagree with it in private.
It’s important to recognize that power is never as stable as it seems. It is not the natural state of humans to be dictated to.
As a parent of a 7-year-old, I can attest: Go to any playground and you will see a bunch of kids experimenting with ordering each other around. Kids don’t like being bossed around. So the wise ones learn how to ask, entice, convince. The bullies learn to just use fear.
The problem with ruling with fear is that it requires constant and ongoing pressure. It creates frustration from those who have been slighted, grudges get nursed and a level of control needs to be constantly applied.
Ahead of the election, many (but not all!) of the pillars propping up Orbán began to crack. The economy, the media stranglehold, and the manufactured fear—all began to crumble.
The Economy Was the Biggest Crack
Most activists I talked with described the Hungarian economy as Orbán’s primary vulnerability. Hungary has suffered the worst inflation of any EU country over the past 25 years. Prices rose 57% over that period—nearly double the EU average of 28%. The healthcare system deteriorated badly, with hospitals crumbling and doctors fleeing for better jobs. Hungary ranked last in the EU on household wealth in 2025.
This is common for authoritarians. We know instinctively that authoritarians do not take orders from polls or the number of people in the streets. As Rebecca Solnit beautifully put it, authoritarians view power as a “conquering army that would terrorize and intimidate the populace into subjugation”—as opposed to that of a flower, where “when you treat others well, when you meet their needs, you can enter into relationships that serve you as well as them.”
The outcome is that authoritarians ignore the pleas of the people. According to research from the Varieties of Democracy Institute, authoritarians create four times as many economic crises—a threat very much in our sightlines in the US. They spend 50% less on social protections like healthcare. Unresponsive to the needs of the people, they spend less on education, with students in school for fewer years, receiving lower quality instruction. All this adds up to life expectancies that are 12 years lower and infant mortality rates that are 62.5% higher. And, of course, corruption becomes the standard way of life.
As Hungarians struggled in all of these ways, Orbán’s friends grew rich. Video footage circulated of an estate owned by Orbán’s father with zebras grazing near it. It turned out that the zebras were from a nearby estate owned by Hungary’s richest man, who is also a close friend of Orbán—so they became a potent symbol of elite excess.
Stefania Kapronczay, a Hungarian human rights strategist, identified the core problem Fidesz faced: It thought it had a sales problem when it really had a problem with the product. “Instead of addressing [voters’] demands they resorted to creating enemies and being louder,” she explained. “The economy stalled in the past 4 years. The explanation that it’s somehow Brussels’ fault and soon there will be never-seen-before success rang empty. They also miscalculated how pro-European Hungarians are.”
Unable to campaign on any positive accomplishments, Orbán defaulted to fearmongering. As an analyst wrote in Foreign Policy, Orbán’s campaign was centered on “fantastical claims about Ukraine planning military actions against Hungary,” substituting conspiracy for governance. “After a while voters, especially moderates, become exhausted by constant messages of fear, hatred, and vituperation.”
But conditions alone do not dictate election outcomes. I’ve been running around the US telling the story of Zimbabwe. In the 2002 elections, President Robert Mugabe abducted activists and controlled elections. By the time the 2005 parliamentary election rolled around, a Zimbabwean colleague told me, “We’re already living in hell; it can’t get any worse.” The inflation rate had exceeded 100%. But Mugabe managed to buy and steal the election for his party again. By 2008 the economy had completely bottomed out with an unbelievable inflation rate: over 200 million percent. The colleague told me the same thing, “This time it can’t get any worse.” Still, Mugabe won—this time by attacking and torturing people so extensively that opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the race.
My point here is this: It can get a lot worse and that alone won’t change the electoral outcomes. Organizing, not conditions, is most important.
A Talented Candidate
The opposition party candidate who won the campaign, Péter Magyar, is not a left-wing hero. He was a loyal insider until 2024—an Orbán man through and through. He married a government minister.
His break came after a corruption scandal where—you guessed it—Orbán’s party pardoned a convicted accomplice in child sexual abuse.
Magyar went public on Partizán, an independent YouTube channel, revealing the rot at the center of Orbán’s “Christian nationalist” project. “For a long time I believed in an idea, the national, sovereign, civil Hungary,” he wrote. “Today, I had to realize that all of this is really just a political product, a frosting that serves only two purposes, covering up the operation of the power factory and acquiring enormous amounts of wealth.”
The lesson for Democrats—and for any opposition movement—is painfully direct: Running against the other side’s failures, without a clear and compelling alternative vision, leaves persuadable voters with nothing to vote toward.
His credibility as a defector—someone who had seen it from the inside—gave him a voice that no outside opposition figure could replicate.
He was also a masterful communicator. Unlike traditional politicians who attempt to govern at a distance, he regularly walked the country and held rallies in small towns that the opposition party had “sewn up.” For years, he went directly and repeatedly to Orbán strongholds. In the final weeks before the election, he was visiting up to six towns per day.
As Kapronczay observed: “Tisza won because they went all-in: did not stop campaigning, went around the country to meet people and with an amazing political talent reacted to all the mistakes of Fidesz.”
Magyar did not rely on an anti-Orbánism message. He talked regularly about corruption, healthcare, and everyday affordability—things people actually care about. Political analyst Zsuzsanna Végh of the German Marshall Fund described him as “focusing on policy responses, hitting a moderate tone, and giving back agency to voters to decide about their and their country’s future.” A regular campaign slogan was a call for a “humane Hungary.”
And while a bad dictator versus a strong candidate is a good combo, that alone would not suffice to win. Civil society had to play its role.
Tisza Islands: Organizing That Reached Everywhere
One of the most important tactical decisions of the opposition party, Tisza, was the creation of Tisza Szigetek, or “Tisza Islands.”
Beginning in mid-2024 after Magyar’s strong showing in European Parliament elections, the party began systematically building local chapters across the country—not just in Budapest’s liberal districts, but in the small towns and rural constituencies where Orbán’s party had historically been uncontested. By January 2025, social media analysis suggested there were 208 “islands” with over 20,000 members.
Inside the new chapters were a mix of brand new activists and experienced civic and political activists who had been working to reform Hungary for years. New and old, all were active supporters. They staffed campaign stalls. They distributed a volunteer-delivered newspaper called Tiszta Hang, or Clear Voice, launched in July 2025, specifically designed to reach rural voters who were only exposed to pro-Orbán media.
That last point matters. The Tisza Islands were not top-down campaign field offices. They functioned with genuine local autonomy. The party even held closed primaries for all 106 of its constituency candidates—an internal democratic process designed to give local members real ownership of who represented them.
Crucially, this meant that by election day, Tisza was able to deploy a breath-taking 50,000 activists as election monitors across the country’s polling stations. I’m hoping Hungarians will write more about this polling operation, to relay both how it was set up and its effectiveness in assuring a wary public that elections would hold. This was an historic, organized, and scaled effort of election protection.
One other piece multiple Hungarian activists have raised with me was the critical role of journalists.
Remember that Orbán controlled 80% of the country’s media. And yet, a handful of outlets—Partizán, Direkt36, Telex, 444, Magyar Hang—managed not only to survive but to land body blows in the final months of the campaign.
Partizán gave Magyar the interview that broke open the sexual abuse pardon scandal. Direkt36 broke the story of attempts by government-connected operatives to infiltrate Tisza’s digital infrastructure. Telex published an interview with a police whistleblower about the government’s attempt to send Hungarian troops to Chad. As Martón Kárpáti, the president of the board of Telex, described it: “This campaign showed the importance of the free media.”
A few people acting courageously opens the doors for more.
A key documentary—A Szavazat Ára, or The Price of the Vote—was released on March 26 by the investigative team at DE! Akcióközösség. Based on a six-month investigation, the film documented Orbán’s party’s systematic operation of vote buying and voter intimidation and coercion in impoverished rural communities. It showed that Orbán’s mayors controlled who got food, housing, and even drugs. Within days, the documentary had been watched 1.3 million times.
This weakened the intimidation network. For the first time, government loyalists felt that they might be exposed. As political scientist Gábor Toka noted, “Intermediaries are [now] far less confident that illegal activities won’t be investigated and punished.”
Ahead of the election, this led Euractic to conclude in a headline: “Hungary’s Independent Media Has Already Won the Election.”
The Public Shakes Off Fear
The June 2025 Budapest Pride parade was a classic backfire moment. Orbán had been escalating his war against LGBTQ folks for sometime. LGBTQ rights activists had been pushing back for years. But last summer his party took an extreme step and all but banned the Budapest Pride parade. His party enacted extremely tight rules on when and where and how the parade could proceed, wild police oversight, further restrictions under the pretense of “child protection,” and encouraged local authorities to deny event approvals entirely. It was an overreach, and the Pride parade swelled to massive numbers, with people clearly having fun and boldly proclaiming they would not let the government scare them off.
“The unsuccessful ban on the Pride parade was a clear sign of Fidesz’s inability to regain the political initiative,” wrote Hungarian journalist Pal Daniel Rényi. Ahead of the elections, the people had signaled that they were not going to be cowed. The massive parades exposed the government as out of ideas and increasingly disconnected from the public mood.
This kind of moment has been described by Turkish-American economist and political scientist Timur Kuran as an “unanticipated revolution”—a moment when an otherwise powerful political leader who seems to have full support suddenly has it evaporate.
Backfire happens when the public shakes off its fear, and the rift between the people and the authoritarian is revealed.
What Activists Should Take From This
Here, then, are eight points about what the defeat of Viktor Orbán offers to people doing the long, unglamorous, essential work of democracy defense.
1. You have to meet people where they actually live. The Tisza Islands model is a direct rebuke to opposition campaigns that organize from the cities outward or from the top downwards. Magyar’s team built physical, relational infrastructure in communities that had been written off—not because they expected to win every seat, but because showing up is the message. The act of going to rural Hungary, of knocking on doors in Fidesz strongholds, communicated something no television ad could: that people in those communities were worth fighting for. Any opposition movement that limits itself to mobilizing its existing base is already half-defeated.
2. Anti is not enough—you need a proposition. Magyar ran on corruption, yes, but he ran for something: affordability, public healthcare, housing, a “humane Hungary.” He hammered relentlessly on what Orbán’s rule had cost ordinary people in their daily lives. The lesson for Democrats—and for any opposition movement—is painfully direct: Running against the other side’s failures, without a clear and compelling alternative vision, leaves persuadable voters with nothing to vote toward.
3. Build for the long game, but deploy at election time. The underground LGBTQ organizing work and the Tisza Islands didn’t spring up in campaign season. They were built over many years, quietly, in communities across the country. Civil society organizations spent that same period building nonpartisan mobilization infrastructure, producing online videos, and recruiting election monitors. The 50,000 activists who showed up as poll watchers on election day didn’t materialize from nowhere—they were organized, trained, and ready. Democracy defense isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon that occasionally demands a sprint.
4. Investigative journalism is infrastructure. This is perhaps the most striking lesson for movements in countries where independent media has been similarly squeezed. In a media environment where 80% of outlets are government-aligned, a handful of scrappy independent outlets broke stories that changed the trajectory of an election. The lesson isn’t just to support independent journalism (though that matters). It’s that, when coordinated with civil society organizing and election protection, investigative journalism creates a kind of immune system for democracy. When those functions work together, they become more than the sum of their parts.
5. Election protection is a form of power. Hungary’s activists understood something that is increasingly essential in systems where the electoral rules are rigged: You cannot simply outperform the fraud margin and hope for the best. You have to actively contest it. The 50,000 election monitors Tisza deployed were not passive observers—they reduced fear and combated intimidation. The documentary released weeks before the election served a similar function, activating public consciousness about what was happening in those rural constituencies. This combination—exposing the system, then flooding it with watchers—helped neutralize what had historically been a decisive advantage for Fidesz.
6. Plan for backfire. Yes, some moments just arise—in Hungary, wearing zebra costumes; in the US, frog costumes. But other moments are organized, such as the surge of people at the Budapest Pride parade. The folks at HOPE have created a curriculum to learn more about the dynamics of backfire. A key insight: Backfire isn’t automatic. Repression only sparks outrage when it’s seen, understood, and emotionally felt, which means movements have to actively expose injustice, frame it clearly, and help people connect the dots so what power tries to hide becomes impossible to ignore.
7. If you can only do one thing: Act courageously. Much of Orbán’s rule was marked by people publicly kowtowing. Timothy Kuran wrote a book called Private Truths, Public Lies about “preference falsification”—the idea that people fabricate their public preferences to match social pressure. When there’s enough social pressure, people conform—even if privately they disagree. This can generate a collective illusion that the authoritarian has broad support even when he doesn’t—until a sudden tipping point is reached and the whole facade collapses rapidly. Before that tipping point is reached, however, some individuals have to be very brave: acting noncooperatively, voicing dissent, organizing marches and protests, taking public stances, and going into strongholds to convince people they are being cheated. A few people acting courageously opens the doors for more.
8. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the winnable. Magyar is not a folk hero. He’s a politician who is, for now, best suited to dismantle Orbán’s authoritarian state. Magyar’s party does promote greater inclusion of women and Romani people in its platform. However, he remains socially conservative, and his history as an Orbán loyalist is more than cause for concern. But after left-wing parties failed to meet the moment, the people saw him as their best chance to defeat Orbán. Movements fighting authoritarianism will always face the tension between holding out for the ideal candidate and unifying behind the one who can actually win.
The Work Continues
As with any electoral win, the work is only started. Orbán still controls Hungary’s media. He packed the Constitutional Court. He built an economy of patronage and dependency that reaches into every village. Magyar’s supermajority gives them the constitutional power to undo much of what was done—but the institutions, the oligarchic networks, the culture of intimidation, will not dissolve the day Magyar is inaugurated.
For organizers, this is the sobering coda: Electoral victory is a door, not a destination. But on a Sunday night in Budapest, they earned a moment to celebrate. And we should take a lot of hope from that, too. As US organizer Ash-Lee Henderson noted in her response to Orbán’s loss: “I’m not trying to tell you that Hungary is America. It’s not. I’m telling you, though, that the math is similar everywhere. There are always more of us than there are of them. The question is never whether the people have the power. The question is whether we build something worth moving for.”
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Daniel Hunter
Daniel Hunter coaches and trains movements across the globe and is a founder of Choose Democracy. He has trained extensively with ethnic minorities in Burma, pastors in Sierra Leone, and independence activists in northeast India. He has written multiple books, including "What Will You Do If Trump Wins,” "Climate Resistance Handbook," and "Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow."
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Orbán Scowls, Academia Smiles
April 17, 2026
Image: Wikipedia.
Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary since 2010, suffered a humiliating defeat (April 12th) after a record turnout of roughly 77.8 percent. His challenger, the center-right candidate Péter Magyar and his Tisza party, won 136 of 199 seats in Hungary’s parliament, or about 68 percent.
Hungarian and American academics, especially scientists in pursuit of truth, popped open bottles of champagne, spraying rooms across the land like baseball players winning the World Series. After all, Trump and his MAGA followers idolized Viktor Orbán. His record of achievement served as a template, but it’s gone down in flames. This is a stab in the heart of the nationalist right.
According to a BBC headline, “Péter Magyar’s historic win offers peace for a country exhausted by the tensions of Viktor Orbán’s rule.”
Viktor Orbán was Trump’s personal coach in championing nationalistic grievances and attacking academic institutions. Orbán specialized in demonstrating how quickly democratic institutions can be dismantled and opposition voices silenced. He was the European leader with by far the closest ties to Trump’s MAGA movement, illustrated by Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Budapest to endorse his election, a big mistake that incentivized more disgruntled voters than ever before.
“Orban’s closeness to the MAGA movement is now seen as a double-edged sword by some far-right politicians, with Trump’s threats to seize Greenland and the war with Iran contributing to his unpopularity in Europe. Orban’s ‘ostentatious friendship’ with the current U.S. administration ‘hung like millstones around Orban’s neck,’ wrote Alternative for Germany lawmaker Matthias Moosdorf on X on Monday.” (Source: Orban’s Defeat Topples a Pillar of Europe’s Far Right, Prompts Scrutiny of MAGA Links, Reuters, April 14, 2026)
According to YouGov: How Popular is Donald Trump in Europe? March 2026:
UK – Trump favorable 14%, unfavorable 81%
France – Trump favorable 14%, unfavorable 78%
Germany – Trump favorable 10%, unfavorable 86%
Italy – Trump favorable 12%, unfavorable 80%
Spain – Trump favorable 15%, unfavorable 83%
Denmark – Trump favorable 3%, unfavorable 94%
According to a Gallup World Poll, US leadership approval has fallen to 31% while disapproval has skyrocketed to a new all-time high of 48%. China’s approval rating increased to 36%. (Gallup News, April 3, 2026)
“Over time, Orbán also became more than a Hungarian leader: He became a transnational symbol for the authoritarian and nationalist right. He cultivated close ties with President Trump, hosted CPAC in Budapest, and positioned Hungary as a model for right-wing populists across Europe and the United States. Trump repeatedly praised Orbán… Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary signals a repudiation of corrupt governance and a blow for the global authoritarian movement—including Trump.” (Orbán’s Defeat in the Hungarian Election Signals a Blow to the Global Authoritarian Movement, CAP, April 14, 2026)
Based upon events to-date in America, Trump and Orbán ostensibly show strikingly similar issues with the voting public: “Orbán entered this election facing public frustration over a stagnant economy and rising costs, all exacerbated by his party’s corruption that used public funds for personal gain,” Ibid. Corruption issues seem to stick with voters like Loctite Super Glue.
According to a highly respected STATNews’article: U.S. Universities Are Becoming Political Hostages in the Orbanization of Knowledge, d/d September 9, 2025: ”When an authoritarian sets out to dismantle a democracy, they rarely begin with tanks in the streets. They start with the institutions that shape how a nation understands itself — its universities, its research labs, its spaces for free inquiry. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán perfected this slow-motion coup against knowledge. Now, the same playbook is being followed here by the Trump administration and Project 2025.”
In Hungary, if scholars dissented, they found their funding eliminated or their departments shuttered. In America, funding was eliminated before scholars had an opportunity to dissent.
Yet, “When governments politicize science, the damage ripples outward — shrinking innovation capacity, degrading higher education quality, and eroding a country’s economic future. In both Hungary and the U.S., the sectors under attack are the same ones that generate the technologies, medicines, and trained minds that sustain national prosperity and well-being… Currently in the U.S., faculty coalitions and university alliances are warning that the political capture of education and science are a direct threat to the republic,” Ibid.
The results of Orbán’s policies have been a disaster for Hungary. Brain drain has accelerated with one-in-four researchers looking to leave the country The 37% population decline in Hungary over the past 10 years is due to emigration, especially the highly educated. Meantime, EU sanctions cut off access to Erasmus and Horizon Europe funding and severed international research partnerships. As a result, innovation has slowed and competitiveness is noticeably slipping.
Orbán has exposed the fragility of authoritarianism, especially when pissed off voters come out in numbers, nearly 80% of the voting public in Hungary. People still count. And it’s impossible to ignore or hide a 68% vote for democracy.
How did center-right candidate Péter Magyar and his Tisza party win 136 of 199 seats in Hungary’s parliament? He accomplished it with a pro-European message and with direct attacks on (1) corruption, (2) institutional decay, and (3) Orbán’s increasingly isolated foreign policy. Hmm.
Twilight of the Strongmen
April 17, 2026
Photograph Source: kremlin.ru – CC BY 4.0
“You should write about Viktor Orbán,” a close English friend told me before heading back to the Himalayas.
Orbán? I wondered. As leader, he has “ceased to be,” “expired,” and is “no more,” to borrow from Monty Python.
Then I saw his point. Orbán is not yesterday’s story so much as a figure already ripe for perspective. A proper valediction might do more than mark the end of one career. It could help frame the twilight of a political generation.
For Orbán belongs, perhaps, with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and even JD Vance—leaders whose instincts were formed in the late twentieth century, though they believe themselves to be the exact opposite and are now straining against the realities of the twenty-first.
The late E. J. Thribb, that indefatigable fictitious house elegist of Private Eye, would have marked the moment in his own way:
So, farewell then, Viktor Orbán
Many people said you were off
And now that you really are off
Only Keith’s Mum really likes you.
For such is the fate of strongmen once the spell breaks. When Viktor Orbán is no longer the victor, even old friends grow forgetful.
The Kremlin, with trained nonchalance, insisted it was never especially close to him—while expressing polite interest in engaging his successor, Péter Magyar.
There would, of course, be more talk of dialogue, of pragmatism, of water under both the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky and Széchenyi Chain bridges.
To Orbán’s credit, he took defeat far more gracefully than Donald Trump ever managed.
And if Orbán and Trump were tub-thumpingly close, Orbán’s deeper affinity lay eastwards. Besides, Trump is presently too busy contributing to global shortages in the coming weeks to be relevant here.
Orbán’s government cultivated an unusually easy intimacy with Vladimir Putin and the Russian state—political, economic, and diplomatic—each strand reinforcing the others. It was just a pity it was never a much larger bridge of peace.
This closeness was no accident of temperament but policy: the so-called “Eastern Opening,” a deliberate tilt towards Moscow, expressed most neatly in projects like the Russian-financed expansion of Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant.
Orbán also maintained a close and pragmatic partnership with China, promoting investment, trade, and political cooperation while often aligning Hungary more closely with Beijing than do other EU nations. Such arrangements always promised energy and investment—but at the price, critics argued, of a long, quiet dependency.
Was Orbán hooked?
Now, everyone wants to know what happens to Hungary’s relationship with a Vučić-led Serbia and with Slovakia’s Robert Fico, now that Orbán is no longer calling the shots.
The relationship with Moscow and Moscow-friendly states used to mean not only seeking to dilute EU sanctions on Russia—even after the invasion of Ukraine—but maintaining deep energy ties. As many people know, Russia supplied much of Hungary’s gas, oil, and nuclear fuel, sustained by a steady rhythm of high-level contact.
Orbán met frequently with Putin, travelling to Moscow in ways that diverged sharply from the wider EU consensus, whose commonly used labels for him included: Putin’s Trojan Horse, the EU’s enfant terrible, illiberal democrat, and mini-Putin. My favourite was probably Black Sheep of the EU.
This pro-Russian alignment inevitably extended into politics: resisting EU aid to Ukraine, calling for negotiation over military support, and echoing positions handy to Moscow.
In consequence, analysts and EU officials came to portray Hungary under Orbán as over-amplifying Russian influence within the EU—though such judgments reflected opinion more than evidence.
There were also unproven allegations of information-sharing or influence operations; these were persistent but never substantiated.
Orbán out—Trump next—then Putin: it has become a popular refrain, at least for the moment.
And this despite the occasional flicker of Orbánite sympathies even in the British press. Writing in the Telegraph before the recent election, novelist Tibor Fischer observed that ‘the word “authoritarian” is applied to Orbán frequently—chiefly by pundits who know little about Hungary or the meaning of the term.’
I met Fischer once, briefly, at the Union Club in London’s Soho. He struck me as perfectly pleasant. Still, his support for Orbán surprised me—though what do I really know about defeated right-wing autocrats other than the fact that they are defeated? “Success is precisely why Orbán’s so hated by the international Left,” he wrote.
The truth, however, is now simpler: Orbán was not successful in the end.
Even Trump, already on fresh manoeuvres, reportedly told Jonathan Karl that he reckoned Péter Magyar will be good.
Another factor in Orbán’s fall that should not be forgotten was JD Vance’s possibly ill-judged visit. He arrived in Budapest to “help” him win—praising his nationalism while attacking the EU for interference.
The intervention drew a noisy backlash across Europe, widely seen at the time as clumsy and counterproductive—even before Orbán lost.
While there, Vance pressed on regardless, even accusing Ukraine of attempting to influence Hungary’s election, though there was no widely accepted evidence for such claims. Most observers saw the tensions as those of diplomatic conflict rather than covert interference.
Orbán’s defeat is still positive for Ukraine. As Hungary’s longtime leader, Orbán had been one of Kyiv’s most vexing partners within the EU and NATO—slowing sanctions, opposing military aid, and maintaining that conspicuously pro-Russian stance.
A new Hungarian government is likely to be far less obstructive. It will not transform the war overnight, but it removes a persistent political roadblock within Europe.
Even Trump’s Project 2025 was said to have echoed Orbán’s model: expanding executive control, weakening institutional checks, reshaping the state in the image of the leader.
Well, it doesn’t now.
And perhaps that is the point.
For Orbán, like Trump, Putin, and Vance, belongs to a political ecology that is thinning out. Their instincts—centralised power, nationalist theatre, transactional alliances—were forged in a different age. They are not quite extinct. But they are starting to look like it. This is such breaking news that even they don’t realise it.
They are not predators of the present—but relics of a world that no longer quite exists.
Dinosaurs, blinking in the suddenly changed light. I wonder whether my friend can see them from the Himalayas.
