Idrees Kahloon writes:

To the outside world, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán began his rule as a pariah—an obstreperous, often lone dissenter from European Union policies, especially over migration. Then he became a prophet to new-style “national conservatives”—the anti-immigration, anti-elite right-wing movement that has reshaped the politics of the West. After resoundingly losing national elections held on April 12, Orbán has become a parable for how populism can be defeated.

His political demise was hardly inevitable. It had to be shrewdly engineered by politicians and voters who put aside their ideological differences to defeat him. In politics, there is no natural law of self-correction.

From 2010 until now, Orbán and his Fidesz party transformed Hungary into a new kind of state, which he proudly proclaimed as an “illiberal democracy.” He and his allies rewrote the constitution to entrench his power, centralizing control over civil society and countervailing institutions such as courts and universities. Péter Magyar, the presumptive next prime minister, triumphed against a tilted electoral system—gerrymandered districts, government influence over traditional media and even over the country’s billboards—designed to keep Fidesz in power. Magyar understood that such a regime does not simply collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and mismanagement.

Magyar was an unlikely agent for Orbán’s undoing, because he was until recently an apparatchik in the Fidesz machine. But that also meant that Magyar’s criticism of Fidesz corruption could not be so easily dismissed. Two years ago, he released an embarrassing tape of his former wife, then the justice minister, speaking about Orbán officials attempting to tamper with documents in a major corruption case. That was the beginning of the ultimately successful campaign to unseat the ruling party. Tisza, Magyar’s party, barely existed two years ago. Now it has won a parliamentary supermajority capable of turning back Orbán’s constitutional changes.

Crucially, Magyar’s brand of anti-Orbánism was not stridently progressive. He did not repudiate Orbán’s hostility to migration. Quite the opposite: He labeled Orbán a hypocrite for being outwardly hostile to immigration while maintaining a large guest-worker program. Magyar pledged to continue “zero tolerance for illegal immigration” and to keep Fidesz’s opposition to the EU’s migration pact. Magyar avoided being drawn into debates about Orbán’s policies on gay rights, such as the constitutional amendment passed last year that is aimed at shutting down Pride parades. He shunned attempts by foreign reporters to profile him.

One of Tisza’s most illuminating campaign slogans was “Not left, not right, only Hungarians”—which promised an ideologically diverse movement to roll back Orbán’s corruption and cronyism. [Continue reading…]