Laszlo Gendler writes:

There is an irony buried in Hungarian political history. Fidesz—the Viktor Orbán-led party that has ruled with a supermajority for the last 16 years, reshaping Hungary’s constitution, packing its courts, weakening its free press, and gradually hollowing out most institutions that might check its power—is an acronym in Hungarian for “the Alliance of Young Democrats.” Founded in 1988 by students who gathered in clandestine groups to resist a communist government, Fidesz was initially conceived as a direct challenge to authoritarian rule. Orbán, one of its founders, even accepted a fellowship from George Soros (a man he would later demonize) to study civil society at Oxford.

On April 12, Hungarians will go to the polls to take part in what is shaping up to be the most consequential election the country has seen since its democratic transition in 1990—one that could end Orbán’s long grip on power. Recent polling shows just one in five voters under the age of 40 backing Fidesz. Orbán has been reduced to pleading with parents on the campaign trail to drive home the stakes to their adult children. Fidesz is no longer in any meaningful sense an “Alliance of Young Democrats”—and hasn’t been in a long time. In fact, it has become the very political machine it was originally created to dismantle.

Orbán’s tenure has evolved into an experiment in illiberalism within the European Union—an “illiberal state,” in his own words—that he has sought to export as an election-proof model for nationalist allies like Donald Trump. But the experiment may be about to blow up, and the consequences could extend far beyond the borders of this small central European country. [Continue reading…]