Is Hungary’s Viktor Orban cornered?

Viktor Orban has not aged well. When I met him in Budapest two months before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 he was a typical hyper-ambitious student leader. Anybody who has been to university knows the type: fluent, ruthless, perpetually on the look-out for the main chance, and oddly old still to be a student. (He was 26.)

Orban had just gained a national profile in Hungary with a bold speech demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Hungarian-American George Soros, probably still just a multi-millionaire at that point but definitely the richest Hungarian, brought him over and introduced us. (I had just interviewed Soros.)

Soros was on a mission to bring liberal democracy to Hungary, and he had recently spotted Orban and made him his protegé. Indeed, he was sending Orban off to Pembroke College at Oxford to get a quick master’s degree and become more conversant with liberal ideas.

We talked for a while and it was clear Orban had decided Soros was the main chance he had been looking for. He had already founded a political party, Fidesz, which was liberal in those days, but I can honestly claim that I smelled a rat even then. Orban talked like a liberal, but he obviously didn’t believe in it — or in anything else except power.

He was prime minister by 1998, still passing as a liberal democrat, and even led Hungary into NATO membership the following year. However, he lost the 2002 election and spent the next eight years in opposition. It was clearly time to change sides, and when he won the 2010 election it was as an ultra-nationalist, hard-right, anti-semitic populist.

He has won every election since then and he and his pals are the richest people in Hungary. Elections are still free, but almost all the country’s media are owned by his allies.

Relentless propaganda tells Hungarians that they are permanently besieged by foreign and domestic enemies: immigrants, homosexuals, Jews (Soros is a prominent target), decadent liberals, the European Union (although Hungary remains a member, presumably for the subsidies) and NATO. Not to mention Ukraine. And it usually works.

Why do so many Hungarians fall for it? Maybe because there is a huge national grievance shared by almost every Hungarian: more than two-thirds of the historical territory of Hungary was given to neighbouring countries when Austria-Hungary was broken up after the First World War. Or maybe they’re just more gullible.

Other European countries also fall for populist leaders from time to time: Slovakia and the Czech Republic have them at the moment, and even the United Kingdom might have one (Nigel Farage) after the next election. But Hungary has elected Orban in four consecutive elections.

What makes it interesting is that this time Orban may lose. The election is due on April 12, and for months now his Fidesz party has trailed the opposition Tisza party by a wide margin — generally around 10 per cent. The real cause of his problems is a stagnant economy, but he can’t fix that and he has started to panic.

The standard resort for any European populist leader in political trouble is to blame “Brussels” (i.e. the European Union). Like most populists Orban admires Vladimir Putin’s Russia, so he has always objected to the EU’s sympathy and support for Ukraine. But this election is an existential threat for his rule, so now he portrays Ukraine as an enemy.

The key image in Orban’s election propaganda this time is an AI video showing a little Hungarian girl weeping at a window, intercut with scenes of her father being executed in a war. “This is only a nightmare now,” says the caption, “but Brussels is preparing to make it a reality … Let’s not take risks. Fidesz is the safe choice!”

The message is plain: “Vote for me, or the evil EU will send your father/husband/son off to be killed in a faraway war!” Never mind that no politician in any EU country has ever suggested sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Never mind that the executioner in the video must be a Russian, who Orban would normally see as a good guy.

Never mind the details. Just feel the fear.

Orban also vetoed a 90-billion-euro loan to support Ukraine, mostly by buying weapons from Washington and passing them on to Kyiv. The “awkward squad” (Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic) agreed to that last December, so long as they were exempted from paying for it — but then Orban saw his polling numbers drop and changed his mind.

But he will probably still lose the election, and he has already faced divine justice. He was a good-looking young man, but he now looks like an angry toad.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers.