Viktor Orbán (1963- ) has been the prime minister of Hungary from 1998 to 2002 and from 2010 to the present (2021). Without firing a shot, he has turned Hungary, a “fully free democracy” in 2010 according to Freedom House, into a “hybrid regime”, one step up from authoritarian. The Economist, which called Hungary a “quasi-autocracy” in 2019, now calls it a “corrupt autocracy”.
All legal, all by the book – because Orban wrote the book. Or rewrote it:
Rewriting the book: In 2010, Fidesz, Orban’s party, won 53% of the vote. Thanks to quirks in the constitution, that turned into 68% of the seats in parliament.
With that supermajority Orban did six main things:
- Gerrymander – voting districts were gerrymandered so that Fidesz could maintain its supermajority. So, despite getting 45% of the vote in 2014 and 49% in 2018, it still held onto its two-thirds majority.
- Pack the courts – he added seats to the top court and lowered the retirement age, increasing the number of Fidesz judges. He also controlled who got promoted and which judge heard which cases. When, on occasion, the courts ruled against him, he used his supermajority to rewrite the law. Easy peasy.
- Control the media – he turned MTI, the public news agency, into a propaganda machine and charged nothing for its news. That drove other news agencies out of business. In addition, Orban uses government advertising dollars (well, forints) to bring rogue media to heel. By 2019, some 80% of Hungarians got their news from pro-government media. The independent press has been reduced to websites that few read outside Budapest’s liberal circles.
- Investigate and fine opposition parties – the State Audit Office investigates political parties for wrongdoing and fines them. Oddly it never finds Fidesz at fault.
- Claim emergency powers – Orban wasted no time in 2020 to use the pandemic to claim emergency powers and rule by decree without the interference of parliament. Parliament can in theory overrule him – but that is unlikely since his party has two-thirds of the seats!
- Control the universities – He more or less forced Central European University (CEU) to mostly decamp to Austria. He restructured the Hungarian Academy of Sciences giving government direct influence over scientists. And he set up and filled boards to control the 11 main state universities. Since the boards pick their own replacements and since Orban had all this written into the constitution, it will be hard for any future government overturn it.
Crony capitalism: The second richest man in the country always seems to be one of Orban’s friends. The economy is propped up by German car factories and billions from the European Union. Hungarians keep it all going by providing cheap labour – and their votes. In return they get an economy no better than its Eastern European neighbours.
Defending the faith: In 2015, during the Syrian refugee crisis, Orban built a razor-wire fence at the border:
“Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. … European identity is rooted in Christianity … Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders.”
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
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Abagond 
Looks like a step-by-step description of Pootin’s strategy.
And, yes, sorry to acknowledge this, but most of commenters – including Abagond himself – were right expecting most Russians identifying themselves with Whites and not Blacks regardless of slavery background shared by American Blacks and Russians.
However, I think these two things, the government propaganda and mass attitude regarding the BLM movement, are related.
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I find the apparent fascination with Black Lives Matter (BLM) by people from outside the US very curious.
What does BLM have to do with them? Why do they feel they have a “dog in the fight”? Why do they feel they have any standing to comment for or against BLM?
I see BLM as a natural response by Black people in the USA to unrelenting brutality by agents of the state, as well as, armed vigilantes against them.
Why the constant commentary about BLM by people who are not directly affected by White Supremacy?
Curious indeed.
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This is one of the monsters Tucker Carlson seems to idolize.
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It’s my belief this what the GOP/GQP aspires for the United States.
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@ Mary Burrell
“…the GOP/GQP aspires for the United States.”
They are halfway there. Tucker Carlson and his gang want to go the full Orban route.
Crazy gerrymandered districts.
Passing voter supression laws. Claiming there is massive voter fraud with absolutely no proof.
Packing the Federal and Supreme courts.
The Repubs with the worked with the Dems to shut 3rd parties out at the state level. Both parties have benefited. 90% of the Congressional Black Caucus would be primaried out in the blink of an eye if we had 3rd party pressure on them.
One political race I have my eye on is the Buffalo, NY mayoral race. A young, Black socialist candidate, India Walton, trounced the incumbent mayor, a Black Democratic Establishment politician, Byron Brown in the primaries.
Scrambling to stay in office, the incumbent is mounting a well financed write-in campaign.
Ms. Walton described her perspective on what the Democrats should be for the people of Buffalo this way,
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/buffalo-dems-officially-endorse-india-walton-for-mayor/article_1dd5079c-0698-11ec-a41c-f70278717d09.html
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@ Afrofem
To answer your questions – which I find a bit passively aggressive;
an extraverted and/or a male person will be interested in things, persons or events outside from their nearest environment or scope. And in many other things which ‘has nothing to do with them’ personally.
To be interested in smth or smbd doesn’t mean ‘to feel like having a dog in a fight’. Basically, anybody observing a set of events has a standing, a right, an opinion, or else, to say about what they see and what is not done in much of privacy.
I cannot answer for all the mankind or Whites, but as for other Russian citizens and myself I think that the reasons, apart personal extravertive traits, mine or anyone else’s, are
Russian imperialism — the state propaganda shows the BLM as ‘the barbarians destroying the godless Western civilization of weaklings’;
state conservatism — the Russian government sees the crisis of its state legitimacy caused by its bribing system, police brutality, power abuse, fake court decisions, tourtures and ideological censorship as a possible reason for a next revolution.
Unlike Americans, the Russian slave descendants — or rather ‘state slaves’ — has no constitutional right for an uprising. Hence, a riot or a revolution.
Alas, the racism is last but not least point on the list. That multicultural Russian empire of racial and religious tolerance has gone long before the last tsar of the last dynasty was shot.
Personally, I also see the BLM movement as an uprising and a legitimate sequence of civil protests against unethical state acts. The thing is that ‘unrelenting brutality by agents of the state, as well as, armed vigilantes against’ civil activism is one of many diseases plaguing Russia.
Seing the effects of the BLM I hope we can borrow the best strategies and practices.
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