On Politics: The Fall of Orbán, the Rise of Magyar

Trump, Modi Orban. That's the trifecta. Name checked by commentators whenever they want. A quick way of gesturing to the authoritarian nationalist wave which has swept global politics over the last decade and a half. But as of 12th of April this year, one element of that unholy trinity, Viktor Orban, has fallen from power. His opponent, Pita Modjar, a former member of Orban's party Fides, often described as a conservative liberal, led a united opposition to a landslide victory. Having campaigned strongly against corruption and on the rule of law, Magyar's party Tisa obtained 53% of the vote, enough for a two thirds supermajority in the national assembly, thus allowing him a pretty free hand in remaking the country. Orban, of course, had long been the darling of the international right, funding a transnational network of propagandists and influencers. Domestically, he was accused of an increasingly personalist politics. Remaking the constitution and overseeing a kleptocratic mafia state in which Orban aligned companies and families, including his own, robbed the state blind. A champion of so called illiberal democracy, Orban frequently attacked and undermined the rule of law and sought out conflict with the European Union and engendered a paranoid style of politics with a proliferating range of enemies, from gender theorists and LGBT people to Islam, from euro politicians and NGOs to the central European University and of course George Soros. Over the past decade and a half, his politics got harder and harder and the corruption more flagrant and more obvious and auburnomics unravelled. So one reading of the election is that a wave of anti incumbency swept the nation. His people were simply sick of it. Never again a country without consequences, said Magyar. He has a substantial task ahead of him made easier by that majority. One factor of course, is those in institutions which are still populated by Orban cronies, many of them with very long term appointments. And so that is to say, changing the state is of course more complex than just winning an election. Another question is what precisely Magyar's politics are. In contrast to the authoritarian populism of Orban and his friends, he campaigned on a democratic populism and swerved many of the cultural issues that Orban relishes. Many will hope that he behaves like some sort of new Cincinnatus called from his plough to restore the functioning of the state. But there are many temptations which arise from a state apparatus which gives significant discretionary power to whoever's at the top. It was of course once Viktor Orban, after All who gave grand speeches in favour of democracy, the spirit of 1848 and 1956, very famously the reburial of Imre Nagy and comrades during the liberation of 1989. You're listening to On Politics on the LRB podcast, I am James Butler and with me to talk about the fall of urbanism and what comes next is Daniel Nolan, who has written extensively about Hungary's politics as well as the international right wing apparatus set up by Orban. And in the studio with me is the Hungarian British poet, translator and keen observer of the Orban catastrophe, George Syrtes. George, if I can start with you. I know you were in Budapest for election night and I'm sure you saw much of the celebrations across the city. I know many listeners will have seen those images arriving as well. Give me just some sense of the popular mood that evening.

0:02

Well, popular mood had, I think, decided that Magyar was going to win. We were on our way to a friend to actually watch the election results come in. And that meant a journey past Parliament Square Kosh with Lajos Ter, which was filled with young people and booming music. It felt like rave. It really was, in a way. And they were definitely anticipating victory and I suspect they were one of the causes of the victory. They were new voters, young voters, and they were all set up for it. So there was celebration in the streets before the count began, and then once the count was over, then people in the streets drinking, singing, waving to the police and so on.

3:40

So it felt like a regime change.

4:31

Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, if somebody's been there for 16 years and there seemed to be no hope of change, because what had changed really then, it was like an enormous release. It was joy. I mean, we stayed there for a few more days and everywhere there was this sigh of happiness.

4:34

And he's come into Magyar, he's immediately come into confrontation with the old apparatus. He's really said that he's intending to clear house. Has anything surprised you in his sort of first few days post election?

4:56

Well, everything really. There's an interview. There are two interviews, in fact, with him, one with the state television. Call it the state television. Essentially, that's what it was. And the state radio, he was basically faced by the very people who had refused him entrance through his studios and who had slandered him, who had hinted that there was some divide between him and his children, which there isn't, in the very same studios by the same people. So when he faced them, he had no time for them whatsoever. They kept trying to ask him statesmanlike questions. I'm just a political journalist. I'm asking the questions that everybody wants to know. Well, you have no right to ask me those questions. You yourselves, you have been corrupt for all these years and you're going to have to go as soon as possible. And that was so direct. You don't usually get that. You might get that funnily enough in a dictatorship. So it might come. Well, you know, that journalist, that journalist, that journalist, you're out and we'll have that one in. So it was a confrontation, I think that was, in a way, it hardly matters what the interviewer asked. Whatever issue she wanted to know, what are you going to do? And his answer seemed to be is get rid of you. It was quite shocking but exhilarating because that is what many people have actually wanted to do. So he was embodying a reaction that was there in the vote. And so you didn't get much about policy from it.

5:12

I mean, interestingly, in one sense that sounds almost Trumpian. Right. But it sounds like the early Trump, the Trump of the sort of 2016 campaign who lots of people felt that he channeled the hostility they felt or the dislike they felt of the mainstream press.

7:04

Yeah, well, that's something that to be careful because there isn't a long unbroken tradition of democracy in the country. And sometimes I thought they actually rather like their strong men at the top. Gives them a sense of security and pride. So he'll have to watch that. He made a speech after he won and in that speech, which wasn't at all a fides sounding speech, although he of course emerged out of Fideszle, it sounded like a very liberal speech. It was. The commitments he made were broad, but he was definitely going to pick up on corruption and he was looking to bring people to the law, people who are extremely powerful and at the moment continue powerful.

7:23

Dan, if I can come to you, I wonder if you can give us a sense of the politics of this election and maybe what I've missed out in my very brief account there at the start of urbanism in particular, so that period that is just now perhaps at an end.

8:18

Well, I think that overall this was won and lost on the economy. Orbanomics, let's say, went quite well for until roughly 2019, but then it took a big hit from COVID from Ukraine, very high inflation, the highest in Europe and that was accompanied by real problems with hospitals, schools and so on, which are kind of starting to look a little bit tired and dilapidated. And madhya avoided the culture wars and just ran on, like you say, rule of law and an economy. And that was what most Hungarian observers, Hungary observers had always said, that eventually it will be won on the economy. And that's how it turned out.

8:38

So I mean, it's worth saying maybe what that sort of Orbanomics is because one of the things that I think was really interesting in the campaign was that as far as I could tell, Magyar has promised to basically retain all of the sort of Orban era fiscal transfers and sort of various sort of welfare payments of one kind or another. So there's sort of a, there's certainly a continuity there in terms of remittances. So that's one side of the Orbanomics thing. The other is bringing industry into the country. So Hungary has a sort of strong industrial manufacturing base. And it's certainly despite the sort of politics of sovereignty, it's also to some extent, as I understand it relied on German manufacturing and particularly automobiles and then I think increasingly Chinese and Korean companies as well. So what's Madya's relationship to that kind of economic Stan?

9:46

Well, I mean that is very interesting because that's right, there's been a lot of Chinese investment, Korean investment. There's a BYD factory which is pretty much ready to go in Saget in South Hungary. There's a cattle battery plant in Debrecen too. And there's a lot of balls in play that Modial will now have to deal with. We're talking about does he keep these contracts which actually were signed by the Orban government. And also there's the EU aspects, there's the green goals. You know, this is a, it's a kind of complicated environment environment for him. And speaking of which, it became the actual election liability for Orban because around these, around these EV plants and the, and the BEV plants has been like really quite shocking levels of environmental damage. That became something that was one of the main election issues. So I think it, I think we're talking about in the last five years about 17 billion was, was invested in Hungary from China and Korea and that only, only Indonesia had had more investment. So it obviously is very, very important or the Hungarian economy and Modyard inherits that situation.

10:51

And I suppose the other element here, and I think it's one that has had maybe more attention, is the role of European structural funds. Right. So the accusation here, and I think it's pretty well supported, is that those payments from the European Union and the European Union has withheld, I think 27.3 billion euros in structural funds for Hungary because of the way that these were being used for client relationships, patronage by the Orban regime. And so it seems to me that Maddya has made a priority of intending to get that cash flowing again. Do you have a sense Dan, how easy that will be?

12:31

It will not be easy and the clock is ticking on it. So the deadline for that is 31st of August and there are certain milestones. I saw 27 milestones quoted which he will have to. While actually launching a government he will have to deal with this and it's going to take a lot of the government's bandwidth and the. In the first few months so far what we've heard really in terms of what Madhya has said has mostly been anti corruption like George said he went to the state media and gave it what for. Basically anyone who voted Tisa is expecting a win on this. This was central to his campaign. So yeah I think there is some pressure on but the general news from Brussels seems like they are quite keen to help in the process or to help the Tisa government in the process.

13:22

Right. I mean and certainly I guess from the European perspective this is a potential big win if you're say Ursula von der Leyen or someone like that. I think in fact von der Leyen's response to the action was you have chosen Europe so there's a political win for them there if they can sort this.

14:24

But I mean Madhyari is a. It's not Orban that's, that's immediately a win for him too.

14:43

Well, Ursula van der Leyen and Zelenskyy were the chief figures on Orban's posters. I mean in the previous election it was Soros in this it was Ursula van der Leyen and always the threat was it was the call to paranoia which they've been playing on and which is quite easy to play on in Hungary I think is that if you would for these people life is going to be far, far worse. So your biggest enemies are the EU and Ukraine and you know Ukraine, the Ukraine army is going to come and invade Hungary and ridiculous things like in fact they were so ridiculous. I think that was part of the reason that it didn't hold Walter at all.

14:49

And it seems to me the case that I don't know all the detail on it but it seems to me that he Magyar has been very reluctant to move positions on the two kind of hot button issues that Orban traded on in relationship with the eu, both migration. So he said that he will retain the sort of anti migration or kind of hostility to the migration pact that has characterized the Hungarian position for the last decade or so and is very sceptical about support for Ukraine. I don't know whether that's a broad or too broad an assessment.

15:40

Well, I don't think he intends to block support for Ukraine. And as to immigration, yes, that is. Well, it's a hot issue everywhere in Europe. Of course I was there in 2015 where the Syrian refugees were gathered at one of the main railway stations and when they started railing them off in trains. It's a very split country. I mean, in a way it's an urban versus rural country, as in many places the Syrian refugees had a lot of support from a Budapest population. But I think he just pushed out too far with suggesting that Zelensky and Wilshire Andrely are in some kind of cabal against patriotic Hungarians.

16:23

Dan, I know you've written about migration and Orban's use of migration politics. What do you make of the state of the debate over the course of this election and its aftermath?

17:14

Well, if we can go back, George mentioned 2015. I remember the beginning of that year. Bdesk were in deep trouble. They were polling about 20% to the point where their communications guy actually was inviting foreign correspondents, which is transparency was never a priority for them. We actually got one to one meetings with Zoltan Kovacs because they were so stuck for a talking point. But let's say if this is February 2015, around that time the Kosovars were starting to work out the second half of the route that the Syrians would take later in the year. And Fidas just ran on that anti migration ticket really all the way to the next election. So three years basically it's been central to them. But this time they repeated the 2022 election campaign which was basically saying if you don't vote for us, you're going to be sent to Ukraine and die. That's what FIDEST were. For the first time they were running on the same ticket for two elections on the road. Migration, as far as I see, it wasn't really a central theme this time.

17:27

I was reading about the unit set up by the government, the Sovereignty Protection Organization. This sort of rather strange unit which is intended to root out foreign interference of various kinds, both in media and in elections and sort of in NGOs. So there's this kind of sort of strong. How is that received domestically? Is it understood as a kind of, you know, desperate electoral grab and attempt to induce paranoia or is there a sort of strong constituency that worries about sort of foreign interference in domestic politics.

18:54

I think that there aren't so many people who actually think about that. And it got to the point where, you know, I mean, it's quite telling that Modiyar's kind of first move was to say, don't be scared. And there's been a climate of fear around Fidesz, the Orban system, for really, for most of the 16 years, really. And I think people just got tired of it. That's what happened in terms of this, this, this office you mentioned, people just increasingly associated with, you know, are we. Are we Putinists now? Are we Russia now? And there's been, you know, like, attacks on NGOs for a good, a good 10 years and so on. It's just kind of more of the same. But it was kind of coalescing into an office and people, especially younger voters, just don't want that anymore.

19:33

Yeah, I mean, one thing is worth mentioning. 1848, 1956, all of that. I mean, Hungary is a small country surrounded by bigger countries. It hasn't been in charge of its own government. Only on rare occasions. The language is isolated, so there is a natural vein to be touched. And I think the fear of foreign interference or of foreign influence, it's kind of easier than it is here because that is the history of Hungary. So there is that vein which hasn't gone away with Magyar. I mean, it's still there. So he has to tread carefully with that. I don't think he's suddenly going to be throwing open the borders or even mentioning the borders particularly. It will be. Unless so much remains unknown at the moment.

20:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it's an interesting period because obviously we're very early on in this sort of post regime phase, which I think brings me nicely, in fact, to my next question, which is to do with the concept of illiberal democracy. Right. So lots of the way that this stuff has been received and talked about, both on left and right internationally, has been grappling with the question of what a democratic state looks like when it's helmed by an authoritarian of one kind or another. And there are lots of models for thinking about this and there's lots of interesting scholarship. You know, one of the analyses I like is of Orban's period as an autocratic legalism, right, where it passes laws to enable it to legally behave in an autocratic manner. So there's lots of legislation that's insulated from ordinary democratic control. It's why it's important that there's a 2/3 majority in Parliament, so that there's been lots of constitution rewriting things like this. But one of the defences that's made on the right of the Orban regime is say, well, this guy lost an election and he departed. So it's clear that all this accusation from the left is just hysteria and actually it's all fine.

21:36

Well, in a way that's a surprise. The speech he made on acknowledging his defeat was somber, brief and for Orban, graceful. There was no Trump like saying, well, that's been miscounted. It's some kind of illegality has gone on. The idea of a sort of legal state in that sense is if you keep stretching the law, it's a bit like you're stretching a piece of elastic. I mean, eventually it just breaks and people can see it breaking. And I think it is more than a simple election win. I think it is a perception that the corruption, blatant corruption you've been living with just won't cut it anymore. Somebody once said to me, well, I said, what do Hungarians think about corruption? And his answer was, well, at least he's a Hungarian.

22:59

And Dan, can you give us a sense maybe of how this sort of corruption works or has worked in practice under Orban? Because, you know, I think there's a. There's a kind of clear, you know, there's a general sense of there being patrimony and client, you know, clientelism and skimming. But. But is there, Is there a clear structure been described.

24:04

It's been described as state capture in reverse in the past because. Because the state appointed the oligarchs rather than the other way around is how it normally works. Orban, even in the 90s, was saying that the trick would be to identify eight or 10 oligarchs and get them to report, get them to support your regime. And he kind of stated the. There was like four sectors you need to do this. Banking, retail, energy and media. And so it was a definite plan. And he really did capture those.

24:29

Some of this was so blatant. One of the first things Orban did back in 2010 is that he gave over major construction contracts to his father and then he named a gas fitter in his village, Feltud, as a man who was going to be his bagman, the man whose going to be looking after his money. So he could claim, I'm not taking my salary. But in the meantime he built a kind of mini Versailles near his village. He's built an enormous, well, not enormous, but a football stadium with all the modern Comforts, which houses twice as many people as live in the village. And all these are plain to see. So people would have had to say either close our eyes to this or say, well, whatever happens, at least he gives us stability, he gives us our sense of patriotic pride. And he just took over institution now over institution. And that's going to be one of Mahjar's great problems.

25:12

Right. They're all There's a problem, isn't it? Is that is that, you know, you can win an election, but if someone's been building their version of a state for 16 years, then they have, you know, with, with little regard for sort of separation of powers. There's an enormous number of Orban appointed judges. There's a. The judiciary is an object of great concern internationally. I think Hungary and Poland are the two that get cited as European cases for concern about the judiciary. And certainly my understanding is that much of the media is or has been sort of Orban aligned as well as these kind of significant manufacturing companies. Yes. Now some of those kind of big major capitalist companies have already said we're happy to work with new regime, new regime, new government, but in the sense that they welcome a kind of clearer rule of law, that's the kind of thing that business can get behind. Are there other areas where you might see more resistance to this sort of change in regime, to modules, changes?

26:15

Well, I think all those institutions which are soaked in Orban's people, there'll be another set of people who would be very willing to come in and reset the situation. But as we said it, that's going to be really very, very hard. I mean in terms of culture, I mean it's close things. He tried to create a patriotic library which involved a lot of right wing people from earlier. He has managed to set up friends and channels who have pursued individuals and sent them off into exile into places. And none of this is happening through physical violence. So it looks, carries on looking legal. It's just free speech, isn't it? But that will be very hard. But I think at least you could begin with the media because those people, the front people anyway, I should think can be quickly replaced.

27:36

Dan, what's your sense?

28:42

Well, it seems like the media is kind of collapsing of its own accord now the state media. So you know, that's maybe surprising, but suddenly there's going to be no state money coming in for advertising revenue and so on. So it just appears to be if we talk about these four pillars that we mentioned, retail banking, et cetera, then it seems like the media is the first pillar to go. It's really happening.

28:44

One of the things which is worth saying is that what happened with Fidesz is roughly what happened with the Hungarian Communist Party. There are an awful lot of people working for it, but there was no ideology. The ideology, it was like mortar between bricks. You could just push them and the wall fell down. And I think the same case with Fidesz now and with Madola. I mean, I don't know how ideologically committed he restorebanism, but you join these things because it's a way of being in politics. It's a kind of career. And if you get that far, you should be quite good at manipulating that because you've had practice.

29:21

You're listening to On Politics on the LRB podcast. Stay with us for this very brief commercial break. You're listening to On Politics on the LRB podcast. Welcome back. I'm speaking with Dan Nolan and George Syrtesch about the fall of Viktor Orban. I wonder if one of the so one of the places where the ideology may have been thicker is in the kind of astonishing changes to the higher education regime that were made under Orban. So that involved the campaign against the Central European University, which I think was pretty well publicized here. I think there was a lot of outrage and support. But there's also been the production of this. I think it's a private institution, the Corvinus Collegium, which has hosted I think it has a stake in the petrochemical industry, the state petrochemical industry, and sort of receives money via that. And so it's vastly well funded off the back of state revenue institution, which has supported all sorts of sort of rather sinister international party liberalism was you

29:59

get rid of these liberal guys and replace them with our people who are not going to be adopting liberal values.

31:16

But with Orban gone, can it survive? I mean, lots of people seem to think that it's going to be a pushover, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that that's the case.

31:25

Mario has actually said in the election program that he will investigate MCC and so on. There is also the think tank, the Danube Institute, which had certain fellows. It's generally an Anglophone thing and that will be easier. You just cut the funding off. But like you say, The MCC has 10% stake in Mal, 10% stake in Gideon, which like two of the biggest Hungarian companies. So that that is a lot more complex procedure. But the, yeah, in terms of, in terms of some of them, like the CPAC that they were organizing, Danube Institute, these He can just, he can cut off the funding to that. But the mcc much more complicated I think.

31:35

I mean it seemed to me to be a political misstep to host this kind of strange American conservative rally, the CPAC Europe thing that they did in Budapest. It seemed amazingly tin eared when a country has suffered such really significant stagflation of the kind that Hungary really did for a significant chunk of time post Covid to host this kind of glitzy but rather tone deaf American rally with, you know, I mean, then we had of course J.D. vance popping over. Was it just a catastrophic misjudgment, Dan?

32:31

I think it was had a negative effect on Hungarian on their polling figures. Apparently the JD Vance visit or feed us drop three points in the polls. So, you know, I mean, Orban, Orban is the guy. He had, you know, maybe the only, only other leader in the world who was kind of close with Trump, Putin and Xi and Hungarian voters have spoken and they don't care who he has on speed. Speed dial.

33:14

No, I mean, I thought, I thought that was interesting because there's a sort of fear that if you can demonstrate international influence then voters will stick with that because you look powerful. And it seems to have been pretty demonstrably rejected as a political argument. But where does this leave that sort of international network of figures? I mean, I'm hesitant, I was, I think saying before we started speaking on air. I'm always hesitant to read elections in terms of what they mean for international observers rather than what they mean domestically. It's a bad trait of the British left to do that. But it nonetheless interests me that a really significant link in the chain which seemed at one point completely immovable. It seemed like Orban was going to be there forever. It seemed like that this was going to be a sort of a key part of a sort of reactionary international that was just not going to be dislodged. And yet it has. So what about everyone else? I mean, because at one point Kaczynski in Poland said, well, we're going to build Budapest in Warsaw. Budapest is coming to Warsaw. You know, there's all sorts of people who've been funded by this guy. You know, is it, you know, are they going to follow the Kaczynski sort of Polish a habit in opposition which is to find a way to obstruct everything, complain to sort of, you know, find a way to undermine, you know, the foreign government or, you know, what can we expect from them, from people

33:49

who are, I mean, the likes of Trump and So forth.

35:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:40

Well, they feel it as a serious wound because they were kind of Trump and Orban was mini me, but which was mini and which was me? It wasn't always clear because Orban got there first, of course, and he declared his illiberal democracy before Trump came to power. I don't know how far it will affect the Trump world. I think Trump world, if it blows up, it will have blown itself up rather than anything else. There's always a right wing strain and at different times in history, these will become more important because of. I mean, immigration is a major issue and that is, on the whole, a right wing issue. So if you are wary of it, you will probably be gravitating towards those who are against it. In 1989, when I was there for most of the year, we went to a party in one of the major city parks where new political parties took up trestle tables and had little leaflets to give out. There were over 50 new political parties. Clearly most of them were going to disappear and did disappear. But if you look at the shifting ground of Hungarian politics, the governing party and the opposite party, there is, there is a sense of shift. It could be that there used to be this party called Jopik, which was at the far right part, which began to move towards the middle, which scared Orban and they managed to get rid of them. But these forces are at play within Hungary. I think there is a generational difference. I think young people, especially those who have been to university, have traveled abroad, have worked abroad, are essentially internationalist and they see their own salvation in a way, in something which is not trapped by America and by the likes of chi and so forth, but which is instinctively European. Well, Vienna. Well, you know, Bratislava used to be Hungarian capital, Bratislava. So there are emotional ties which I think now have, with some luck, may have pushed aside the grand patriotic gestures of the last 16 so years. It doesn't mean that those instincts have vanished, it's just that I think it's associated with a certain generation and that generation. I just had to look at the people around Orban when he made his acceptance speech. Lots of gray middle aged men, basically about 12 or 13 around them. And you looked at Magyar's absolute huge crowds and many, many young people. So I think that may be a good sign.

35:41

If I can ask a question. Building on that and come to you, Dan. You know, those of us who've sort of watched Hungarian politics, you much more closely than I, over the years have had kind of cause to wonder about why the opposition movement found it so hard to coalesce in various ways or find a kind of coherent politics or a candidate to stand or to succeed. And it seems that, you know, that opposition movement seemed to have had many, many kind of false starts, many dead ends. Its eventual figurehead ends up being a former Fidesz member. And as George has pointed out, it might well be that in a state in which there is only really one party that has kind of effective power that produces or attracts all kinds of political talent. But in the latest issue of the lrb, there's a short piece by Jan Werner Muller on the election and he observes that it's an observable fact, not just in Hungary but in a number of states that it's the left and the center left who are willing to kind of find some kind of compromise with a center or center right candidate and stand behind them in order to move against the regime. And it's quite hard to find political movements on the right who are willing to make that compromise in reverse. So this is a sort of slightly long winded way of asking what the status of those kind of political strains say to the left of someone like Magyar is in Hungary or are they just not simply not in any state worth speaking of?

39:04

Well, as we said, there's three right wing parties in the parliament now. I think it's about 100 years since there's no left of center party in the Hungarian Parliament. I mean, this is a broad coalition that MADHYA has set up. So some of them will be looking to perhaps help TISA a bit as part of a grand coalition. In terms of the left, I'm not sure there is such a huge, I mean there are some leftists in, in Hungary, but they tend to be maybe Budapest, a couple of other cities, you know, Serge Debrecin. But they've kind of coalesced around this partisan site, which is, you know, the one that initially took the MADHYA interview. So, but I'm not sure at present there is a huge kind of Hungarian left speak of.

40:56

And can I ask additionally his relationship to the. Because I don't have a read on it, but it seems to me that he's been quite hostile or one of the things that helped him succeed was his hostility to the established opposition right. He's been a bit quite critical of opposition movements over the years and actually didn't align himself with them or while campaigning, didn't reject their support if they threw their support behind him, but didn't want to make himself out to be in continuity with that Was that an important part of the campaign?

41:54

Yeah, I think so. I mean, we're talking about, I mean, jobbing. The far right party were actually part of the, you know, the united opposition in the previous election. So I mean, so there have been examples of right wing parties taking part. But I would say that Modyar has benefited from the fact that it's not the first time that the opposition have just said, okay, let's just have a go, we'll try and get a candidate in there and then we can sort of hit reset on urbanism. So he benefited from that. That's happened in the last previous two elections too. And there was a lot more, you know, there was a lot more debate and a lot more to and frozen about who's going to be the candidate. Do we really want to be in the same electoral coalition with these people? That work was already done and Mudyard just kind of slipped in later in the day.

42:26

I think you shouldn't forget that there was a governing socialist party, so called Socialist party in Hungary after 1989. And Zurcian, who was a previous prime minister to Orban, had actually a majority. And it was only the fact that he endured a scandal in which he admitted lying to the nation that he kind of vanished. And it's been a major mission of Orban to completely destroy Durchan. So in a way the socialist instinct, I wouldn't push it very far, but I think there was a socialist liberal kind of constituency there. But it was brought into disrepute partly by these scandals. But it doesn't mean it's. And of course we mustn't forget that all these little ragtag parties, they had no exposure to the public, they had no press, they had no media, they had no money. So they could squabble amongst themselves. And there were hopes of some of them, but they all failed. And in a way, once everything keeps failing, people tend to give up on an idea. I mean, I can't really imagine Hungary now becoming a sort of left wing socialist country. But. But the left wing instincts are not altogether dead, I think.

43:27

Yeah, well, I mean, I think certainly there's obviously a kind of strong welfarist position, right? I mean, which goes I guess back even to say goulash communism or something like that, right. This strong sense of the state as something that provides or should provide or should rebalance some of the. The suffering there. So I mean there's obviously that. But I suppose, I guess the other element and it's worth talking about additionally is, you know, Madras, you know is from this, as I understand it, like quite significant legal jurist family and has like a very strong line in the importance of the rule of law, the importance of kind of institutional functioning, you know, and I think it has served him really well in these, you know, in this campaign. And he seems like a kind of strange figure in one sense. Right. So he has this kind of very 19th century, you know, interest in sort of liberal virtues like the rule of law, while having this kind of quite 21st century campaign sort of coalesce around him, like lots of really cunning use of social media, that sort of stuff. So it's odd in the sense that the 20th century bit seems almost missing. But I wonder whether you have a sense of what he's going to be like when he's confronted with these institutions which are set up and have been set up by Orban to really invite whoever's at the top of them to use them pretty autocratically. Because this seems to me to be like a pretty significant risk and hard to know how to mitigate.

45:02

Well, I think a lot depends on momentum. If you take his interviews with the old state media, that indicates a lot of momentum and he can use that to try and take on people who are in similar positions in banking and jurisprudence and so forth. He could go hard in, but I don't know that'll go. But that'll probably his current wind will propel him some way. And then it depends what happens with Hungary's economy and the condition of Hungarians and how far, what sort of hopes they have of him because we don't know that I think the vote was changed. We want to change. It's a bit like Blair in 97, I think is a very similar kind of figure. And almost anything is better than what has come before. And on the power and momentum of that, you can bring about change. How far that energy runs, we'll find out.

46:48

Dan, what do you make of it? Is there an institutional trap here for someone who's run in this kind of quite this sort of democratic populist way?

47:57

Yeah, I think that he, he has to work out what he can change and what he will have to navigate basically in terms of institutions. And he, you know, I mean, for example, he told. So, you know, there's top judges, the president, they're all in place until 2029. So he's potentially got, you know, a president, a constitutional court blocking everything, anything that they want, he has to deal with that.

48:05

But, but could he use his constitutional power to change that, to cancel contracts

48:47

or to cancel contracts. He could, couldn't he? But, but, but like, but they could, they can block the constitutional changes also, can't they have to sign that through. So it's kind of a vicious circle. Maybe there'll be more backstairs intrigue than we anticipate.

48:53

Well, I mean this is where it comes down to political skill. Right. Doesn't it? Where you think, okay, well

49:13

what are

49:19

the fights that are useful to have? What's the fight that allows someone who has this momentum behind him to come into government and say it will be politically beneficial for me to pick this fight or this argument? So, you know, we haven't mentioned it, but I think, you know, the, the genesis of his campaign in some ways was this kind of quite unpleasant cover up sex scandal, paedophilia abuse scandal which propelled him, you know, he picked that fight. Well, this fight with his ex wife, you know, quite astonishing in some ways. But he used that fight as a way of sort of generating moral credibility and things like that. And there are obvious things in terms of corruption that you can certainly do that when you're in government. The way we do it in Britain is you want to buy someone off, you give them a lordship. Right. Like you say, okay, I want you to stop doing this and I'll put you in the House of Lords. And it means I can get you away from the thing that you're destroying or damaging or, or screwing up. And I don't know whether there's a way of doing that domestically in Hungary. But are there fights that it's useful for him to have?

49:20

Well, firstly, I'd say that Brussels is the equivalent of House of Lords. If you want to get rid of someone, that definitely happens. Not mentioning any names, Thomas Deutsch, but if there is someone who's a little bit, you know, needs to be dealt with. Lavacic was also sent off there, but anyway, I mean, he seems to be okay with a national bank governor for example. But the, you know, some of these oligarchs are quite well known now. So he definitely, that would be a huge win for him if he's actually seen as, you know, taking on the oligarchs, stopping them from all the foreign transfers and so on are something that you can do and dig deeper into it. I mean it's essential that he does that because he ran on it.

50:34

Yeah, I mean, mustn't forget that a constitution is actually not very old and it's been altered 15 times. It's a fairly brittle something to build on, but. And you can Probe it and maybe. I'm sure he's going to propose changes to it again. And I suspect he might have to do something like that because the legality that Orban established became transparently illegal. So he can try to adjust it, but I mean, I have no idea how. I'd be very interested to see what other ideas there are.

51:30

Yeah, I mean, this is where I come back to that question of the sort of institutional trap, right, where you know, it's very difficult to, you know, when we began, you know, I mentioned the Roman figure Cincinnatus, you know, this virtuous character who's called from his sort of non political job into government to kind of as dictator, in fact, you know, in the Roman Republic, to restore republican virtue is a sort of fantasy, right, about a sort of strongman figure. And things don't work like that really in practice. But it points out the temptation is that it's very, very difficult when, you know, particularly when you need to make changes and you have available to you only these methods that are questionably democratic and whether you can resist the sort of mission creep, as it were.

52:07

Well, that sort of Cincinnatus idea. When Arpad Gantz was president, he was a figure like that. He was a very popular, and he did. He was seen as a virtuous figure who had come in from completely outside politics and was doing his best to put things right. Fides were seen as something like that themselves. I remember a conversation, must have been 1990, with an older, rather wonderful poet who's now dead. I said, who are you going to vote for at the first election? And she said, fides. I said, why? They're innocent. They haven't brought the hunger's murky past with them. So the idea of finding that kind of figure today, I doubt whether that exists.

52:58

Dan, do you have a sense of whether this is a thing that is navigable? I mean, the more we talk about it, the more sort of immense a task it actually seems.

53:53

Well, the two thirds helps for sure. If he'd won a simple majority, then that would just be a complete mess, I think. I think that would be total gridlock. But the two thirds gives him plenty of leverage and he has a huge mandate. So, you know, it's not ideal, but it could be worse.

54:07

Yeah. Okay. I have a slightly different question. It. It's prompted by George's reference to history. And I suppose one of the things that maybe actually you can say is one of the few commonalities between Orban and Maggia is they're both interested in articulating a very sort of distinctive vision and very distinct visions of Hungarian history. And I wonder if either of you or both of you have a sense of, you know, because Hungary, I mean, you know, as George has alluded to, is a country that has changed shape a lot over the course of the past century, you know, vastly changed shape.

54:27

It's like an amoeba keeps spitting cats.

55:13

And, you know, this, you know, obviously there are kind of toxic ways that can manifest politically a sort of irredentism, you know, pining for past glories. And I say this sitting in, you know, an old imperial capital myself. And this is a syndrome that afflicts British politics as much as anything else is pining after past glories. But there's also, unlike in Britain, a pretty clear sort of liberal and emancipatory political history in Hungary as well. And, you know, 1848 is the obvious one, 1956 is the obvious one, as is 1989. So how important were those visions of the nation, you know, in this political campaign? Or is it very much secondary to the question of the economy?

55:16

I think it's always going to be important because of history, because here you are, yes, we're sitting in imperial capital, but it's been that way for a very, very long time. And Hungary has only little snatches of imperial glory under the Austro Hungarian period, which has never returned. And before that you'd have to look in the 16th century. So there's a security here, all kinds of security here. The fact that it's an island, it is separated from its imminent enemies. I don't think if to call it patriotic suggests a particular approach to that. But there's always going to be a self conscious sense of being Hungarian, which is not entirely always right wing.

56:09

No, no.

57:03

I mean it goes back before the war. The idea of deep Hungarianness, which is a literary concept, that there's such a thing as being a Hungarian, which is not all the other things that are already mixed in with our society, but. But it's a kind of. It's not like Scots nationalism, but it's a little bit like that.

57:04

And what do you make of that? How significant in your reading is the question of the nation in Hungarian politics and particularly this campaign?

57:26

Always and increasingly so really in the last 20 years. I don't think you can win an election without it. There are certain, you know, sort of cultural touchstones. You said, you know, 1848, Peter Fee poems and so on. 56, the flag with the, with a hole cut in the middle and so on. I think, like 89, post 89, not so much, actually. But yeah, there are. There are certain, like, you know, half a dozen kind of national leitmotifs which you have to hit, really, if you're campaigning in Hungary. But interestingly, they're not so recent. So I don't know what that says, why Hungarians don't really associate with the last 35 years so much.

57:36

It's interesting that the first we heard of Orban and I was there in the square where he made this speech in 89. Was he Russians out? And what does he finish up with? He finishes up in the lap of Vladimir Putin. I don't think people forget these things. I don't really think there's an enormous love for Putin in Hungary because there is historical memory. 1848, it was the Tsar's troops who put down the revolution that year. And then there's 56 in 1949, when they first established themselves.

58:29

People, I think, all over are looking right now for anything to grasp onto to find a way to support a successful campaign against authoritarians of various kinds. And it produces the desire to find one weird trick to make your campaign successful. I suspect the answer is going to be no. But is there one weird trick from the Mudyar campaign that people elsewhere should be trying to replicate?

59:05

I can't think of.

59:41

Dan.

59:43

I would say maybe one takeaway is. It's much harder to topple an autocrat than never to vote for one. I think that can be a takeaway. You know, it's difficult. It's difficult. It took 16 years and then suddenly it happened. But it did seem like almost an impossible job. So, yeah, I would say prevention is the best cure. Waiting 16 years for the economy to fail or to take a party inside, I don't think these are necessary. I mean, they can work elsewhere, even. The idea of. I mean, an amazing thing that Modyard did was he visited pretty much every settlement in Hungary. Now you can do that in Hungary. It's not really exportable if you're in American politics, is it?

59:46

But he was doing so without much visible security, and I think that impressed people.

1:00:43

My final question for you both. I think it's really easy as a foreign observer to take notice of an election and then not see or hear or think about a state until some other big event happens. I hope that won't be the case with Hungary. It seems to me to be both a significant and interesting place to observe and think about. What are the risks? What are the most immediate risks that this new government faces.

1:00:51

Well, I suppose it may be economic. Its enemies may very well have the power to deprive it of the means to affect the changes it wants to make. So it could become unpopular fairly quickly. That's why I think momentum is so important. You're there now. You've got to move. You can't stand still. You've got this room, move to the next room.

1:01:24

And Dan, what, what faces, what faces the incoming government?

1:01:48

I would say one thing they should avoid is, is making the whole of his term about anti corruption battle. They need to get, you know, they, they, you know, they have a few months to get this 18 billion and they should certainly do that. But in four years there's a whole new cabinet and so on. There's some interesting characters in it and those ministers are going to have to show what were the wins that we had in these four years. We can see in UK politics, you can have a government that's in power for a decade and a half and within a few months it's moved on and people aren't so forgiving. It's like basically you're the government, you sort it out. So they are, yeah, don't get mired down in this corruption for four years.

1:01:53

That I think is a good place for us to leave it. George Sietesh, Dan Nolan, thank you very much. And if you've enjoyed this conversation and conversations like it, you will be interested in reading the London Review of Books. You can of course find the paper on a newsstand near you or online@lrb.co.uk in the latest issue, Andrea O' Hagan reads Patrick Radden Keefe. Will Davies writes on Hyper politics and Lala Khalili on the fight for control of the Arctic. And you can see a short film about the life and work of George Syrtes by following a link in the description to this episode or navigating to the LRB website. Thanks for listening.

1:02:50