“Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.” Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation

The Guardian reports:

When the Guardian visited Budapest last month, sitting down with people in offices, coffee shops, and dining rooms, a note of hope threaded through many interviews.

With elections slated for spring 2026, Orbán is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz party’s elite, Péter Magyar. Several recent polls suggest that, if the trend continues, Orbán could lose his grip on power.

“For the first time in 15 years, there is a serious contender,” said Péter Erdélyi, the founder of the Budapest-based Center for Sustainable Media. With hope, however, comes risk: now was, he said, a dangerous moment for anyone perceived to be standing in Orbán’s way.

This year the prime minister said he would “eliminate the entire shadow army” of foreign-funded “politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists”, suggesting he could go further than previously used tactics such as smear campaigns, relentless audits and physical intimidation by Fidesz supporters.

Orbán’s party seemingly made good on the threat when it put forward legislation that would give authorities broad powers to, in the words of one rights organisation, “strangle and starve” NGOs and independent media it sees as a threat to national sovereignty.

The draft law, said Transparency International, marked a “dark turning point” for Hungary. “It is designed to crush dissent, silence civil society, and dismantle the pillars of democracy,” the organisation said.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee issued a similar warning. “If this bill passes, it will not simply marginalise Hungary’s independent voices – it will extinguish them,” said thhe co-chair Márta Pardavi.

The situation in Hungary had been made more complicated by Trump’s ascension to the White House, said Erdélyi.

“The US government, almost regardless of who occupied the White House, was a moderating force on authoritarians pretty much everywhere but certainly in central Europe,” he said. “And the new White House, of course, is not only not interested in being that, but it is also turning away from the transatlantic relationship or multilateralism in general.”

Magyar’s swift rise has shaken Hungarian politics, according to Miklós Ligeti of Transparency International Hungary, who credited the politician and his movement, Tisza, for catapulting corruption to the top of Hungarians’ concerns.

Through his savvy use of social media and rallies that have drawn thousands, Magyar has repeatedly linked underperforming public services such as healthcare and schools to the country’s soaring levels of corruption.

“Now people start to understand that the serious underfunding of these two services is somehow linked to the fact that the government is spending taxpayers’ money on the enrichment of certain business entrepreneurs who have good ties with the government,” said Ligeti.

While Orbán and his party had long been able to deflect criticism by pointing to the country’s strong economy, this was no longer the case, sparking questions as to how they keep their grasp on power, said Márton Gulyás, a left-leaning political commentator who helms Partizán, the country’s most-watched political YouTube channel.

“I think right now they are in a very dangerous phase, mostly because of the tremendous problems in the economy,” he said. “They’re losing money heavily on debt, inflation is still high, food prices are still high and wages have stagnated.” [Continue reading…]