Hungary: ‘Sorry About Our Prime Minister’
The New York Review of Books
Visitors
to Budapest this past July were greeted by large billboards, sponsored
by an opposition group, saying: “Sorry about our prime minister.” A few
weeks later, ugly images from Hungary began circulating around the
world: Hungarian prison laborers, soldiers, and jobless men in workfare
programs all mobilized to build a razor-wire fence at the border with
Serbia in record time; Syrian families prevented from boarding carriages
at Budapest train stations; police firing tear gas on refugees trying
to cross the border from Serbia; government leaders warning of a “United
European Caliphate” if the Muslim masses aren’t stopped in time. Yet
the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, clearly thinks there’s no reason for
him to be sorry, let alone for Hungarians to feel ashamed of him. He
gleefully points out that he is merely applying European rules that
require him to secure the EU’s external borders. And in Brussels and at
the UN, he has been shopping around his proposal to close Europe and
send refugees elsewhere—what he calls a system of “global quotas.”
Many
Europeans don’t like what Orbán says, but concede that he seems the
only politician who knows what he wants; others, especially on the
center-right, don’t yet dare to admit that they find some of his ideas
congenial. What none of them seem to understand is that Orbán’s policies
are driven by competition with the far-right inside Hungary: Orbán’s
Fidesz party has been vying for support with Jobbik (“Movement for a
Better Hungary”), an openly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma party aligning
itself with Iran and Russia. While Fidesz is officially a member of the
“European People’s Party,” the supranational association of Christian
Democrats and moderate conservatives, the Orbán administration
constitutes in fact—if not in name—the first far-right government in
post-war European history. Now, as Orbán explained in a speech to party
faithful last month, the refugee crisis has given him a
“once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to destroy Europe’s “liberal identity”
and replace it with his preferred “Christian, national” one. This is a
project that should disturb anyone who cares about the future of
democracy in the European Union.
Hungary’s
successful self-portrayal in recent weeks as the “last defender of
Europe” constitutes an extraordinary reversal of fortune for Orbán.
Earlier this year, he looked vulnerable for the first time since 2010,
when his Fidesz party crushed a scandal-ridden left-wing government and
secured two thirds of the seats in parliament, a supermajority allowing
him to push through sweeping laws to perpetuate his power. Orbán
weakened independent courts, clamped down on media pluralism, and, under
the pretext of fighting evil European multinationals, handed much of
the economy over to cronies. He introduced a new (Christian and
national) constitution, before re-engineering election rules so that, in
the April 2014 parliamentary poll, Fidesz again secured a supermajority
in parliament, despite a dramatic decline in its share of the vote. At
the time, Orbán felt confident enough to trumpet his plan to create what
he called an “illiberal new state based on national foundations”—citing
Russia, Turkey, and China as examples to follow.
Orbán’s
concept of the illiberal state has remained somewhat mysterious.
Alluding to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous remark, Orbán
once compared it
to pornography: he could not explain what an illiberal state was, but
he knew it when he saw one. As he came under attack from the West—US
foreign policy thinkers in particular—for officially abandoning liberal
democracy, Fidesz intellectuals rushed to clarify that Orbán was merely
against a state making economic freedom sacrosanct. Economic freedom,
according to Orbán, results in the law of the jungle (so that European
multinationals can crush small Hungarian businesses). Instead, he wants a
more nationalized economy and a “workfare state” that requires people
to join the labor force in order to receive benefits, and that is
predicated on a strong national, family- and faith-based community (the
result being that prisoners and many Roma can end up in workfare
programs). One other consequence of Orbán’s efforts to promote a new
nationalist ideology—reminiscent of Vichy France’s motto of “Work,
Family, Fatherland”—was a reorientation of Hungary towards Russia, which
extended a huge loan to Budapest last year. Orbán, faithful to a
classic literary image of Hungary as a “ferry-boat” between East and
West, was cleverly able to play—and get cash from—both sides (Hungary
remains one of the largest net beneficiaries of EU subsidies).
But
then things began to go wrong for the seemingly invincible “Viktator.”
The country’s most important oligarch, Lajos Simicska, a lifelong friend
and more than once a financial savior for Fidesz, was apparently
unhappy with the “opening to the East.” He also felt that the government
had been increasingly freezing him out since Orbán’s re-election in
April 2014: his media companies were being deprived of state advertising
and his huge construction company cut off from the enormous EU funds
earmarked for improving infrastructure. Like Putin, Orbán seemed to fear
being dependent on oligarchs. In response, Simicska declared “total
war” on the prime minister, calling him names
in public and threatening to reveal unpleasant truths about his former
college roommate’s past. From one day to the next, Simicska’s media
empire turned against Orbán, who was now accused by Simicska of building
a dictatorship. Meanwhile, new scandals engulfed leading Fidesz
politicians, some of whom appeared to be enriching themselves by selling
off state property and taking a cut in the largely secret deals with
Russia.
Partly
as a result, some disenchanted Fidesz supporters shifted their
allegiance to the xenophobic Jobbik party, which had actually toned down
some its extremist rhetoric precisely to appeal to such voters. Jobbik
is now the strongest opposition force and the only major party never to
have been in government. (Fidesz rejected coalitions with them, but, in
any case, had no need for Jobbik, as long as it enjoyed a supermajority
in parliament.) The fact that the party remains untainted by corruption
makes it attractive in the eyes of some voters who might not share the
party’s prejudices but wish to register protest. By April, when Jobbik
won its first direct district in a by-election in Western Hungary (which
is generally more affluent than Jobbik’s stronghold, the Northeast),
Fidesz had lost its two-thirds majority. Orbán needed to act.
In
a 2014 survey, only 3 percent of Hungarians identified immigration as
among the two most important issues facing the country (unemployment and
the general economic situation were seen as the real problems). In
early 2015, Orbán set out to change this perception. While other
leaders, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, linked arms in the
streets of Paris and called for tolerance, Orbán used his stage in
France to tell Hungarian state television that “recent events” should
lead Europe to restrict immigration, especially of those with “different
cultural characteristics.” In May, the government mailed out
questionnaires to 8 million citizens for a “national consultation” on
what it called “Immigration and Terrorism.” The survey contained
questions such as “Did you know that economic migrants cross the
Hungarian border illegally, and that recently the number of immigrants
in Hungary has increased twentyfold?” It also encouraged citizens to
agree with the opinion that “mismanagement of the immigration question
by Brussels may have something to do with increased terrorism.”
A
month later, billboards with stern warnings went up: “If you come to
Hungary, don’t take Hungarians’ jobs!” or “If you come to Hungary, you
have to obey our laws!” These government-sponsored ads were all in
Hungarian and thus obviously aimed at a domestic audience—it is unlikely
that migrants had picked up one of the world’s most notoriously
difficult languages en route. In any case, there were no foreigners
eager to snatch jobs from Hungarians; those coming on the now famous
“Western Balkans route” were desperate to go further west to Austria and
Germany as fast as possible. The same has in fact been true of numerous
Hungarians: at least 500,000 citizens have left the country since 2010,
seeking work in London, Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere. Many find the
political climate at home unbearable, or have realized that Hungarian
jobs are not in fact for Hungarians in general, but for those with
proven friendliness towards Fidesz. (One of the unintended side effects
of freedom of movement courtesy of European integration and the Schengen
system has been that, unlike during the Cold War, oppressive
governments can easily get rid of domestic discontent.)
By
summer, it was far from obvious that Orbán’s anti-immigrant campaign
was having any of the intended effects. The response rate to the
questionnaire was low; another survey done around the same time showed
that a clear majority thought that emigration, not immigration, was the
problem, in view of the country’s declining population. While opposition
parties on the left remained weak and divided, creative minds from
within civil society got busy. The leaders of the satirical “Two-tailed
Dog Party” crowdsourced a campaign with billboards looking exactly like
official government ones. These were the posters that said, “Sorry about
our prime minister,” and featured announcements such as “If you are the
prime minister of Hungary, you have to obey our laws!” or “Come to
Hungary, we’ve got jobs in London!”
Meanwhile,
the decision in mid-June—even before the “national consultation”
officially closed— to build the fence along the border with Serbia was
beginning to have an effect: it increased the number of refugees rushing
to Hungary, as complete closure of the Balkans route now appeared to be
only a matter of time. Refugees became much more visible around the
main train stations in Budapest and elsewhere. Rather than letting them
pass through, the government started to enforce EU law and insist that
refugees register in the country of first arrival in the EU. Whoever
might not have agreed with the views propounded in “Immigration and
Terrorism” now got the message: “economic migrants” brought with them
chaos and possibly violence—even if the dramatic scenes in Budapest and
elsewhere were actually caused by government incompetence or, for that
matter, by what appeared to be an effort to make being in Hungary as
unpleasant as possible (the government refused help from the UNHCR).
By
contrast—as in other European countries—thousands of private citizens
in Hungary have on their own tried to help refugees, in what may well be
the greatest volunteer effort in modern Hungarian history. But it seems
unlikely that anything like a political movement will emerge from this,
as every attempt over the last five years to translate civil society
activism into effective opposition to Fidesz has failed (like Putin, the
government has repeatedly harassed civil society organizations and
accused them of being “foreign agents”). In recent weeks, Orbán has
deployed not only the police, but also the army and an elite anti-terror
unit to confront what he describes as “young men from the Arab world
who look like warriors.” Immigration and terrorism—there it is, finally
plain for all to see. The legal changes required to use the army had to
be approved by a two-thirds majority in parliament. Jobbik gladly
supplied the necessary votes in late September, but overall it was
Orbán’s Fidesz that benefited. Polls now show Fidesz up and Jobbik down.
For
years, Orbán had been trying to convince conservatives elsewhere in
Europe that his administration was the real thing: a Christian
government devoted to traditional morality and a strong nation-state
(never mind that even the most superficial understanding of Christianity
would point to universalism—Christ, or at least the Good Samaritan,
somehow seemed to have stopped in Serbia). Orbán was counting on there
being many right-wingers disaffected by Christian Democrats’ willingness
to surrender national sovereignty to the EU and throw in traditional
marriage in favor of gay marriage for good measure. But other than at
the fringes of a Spanish right, nostalgic for Franco, he found few
takers.
In
this respect as well, the refugee crisis proved a godsend. Take the
German Christian Social Union (CSU)—the dominant party in Bavaria that
is in permanent alliance with Merkel’s Christian Democrats, but whose
own leader is also competing with the Chancellor for power within the
German government. Seizing the opportunity to score points against a
supposedly sentimental “Mama Merkel”—who had opened the borders for the
refugees walking on the highway from Budapest to Vienna—the CSU invited
Orbán to a high-profile meeting in a Bavarian monastery. While they
celebrated the Hungarian leader as “Europe’s border guard captain,”
Orbán took the occasion to accuse Merkel’s government of “moral
imperialism.” He also charged Merkel with indirect responsibility for
the death of refugees, as she had encouraged them to take the risky
journey to Europe; and while Orbán initially appeared to be an outlier
on this issue, it is now Merkel who is increasingly under attack in
Germany for having gone too far in accommodating refugees. (Last week,
in an internal meeting of the European People’s Party, Merkel shot back
that she had saved Europe’s dignity by letting in the refugees and that
as an “Eastern European” who had “lived behind a fence for long enough,”
she knows that turning Europe into a fortress won’t work.)
Orbán,
a man who thrives on confrontation, has made it clear that he wants to
start a pan-European culture war. In the speech to his party last month,
he announced that the refugee issue had created an “identity crisis”
for “hypocritical” liberals—“the first good identity crisis” he had ever
seen and the beginning of the end for “liberal babble.” He explained
that “after having proclaimed… universal human rights, having forced our
ideology on them…, having sent our celebrities into their homes, now we
are surprised that they are knocking on our door.” Since liberals would
also soon shut the door and thus be seen to abandon their principles,
“national-Christian ideology” could regain dominance in Europe.
It’s
been said many times: the refugee crisis is a major challenge to the EU
and its declared “fundamental values,” human dignity and the rule of
law. But so is a government that spends millions of dollars of taxpayer
money on hate campaigns and mistreats the most vulnerable. (Hungarian
state TV is not supposed to show women and children among the refugees;
police have to wear masks, since the refugees are said to carry
diseases—though officers often remove the masks as soon as cameras are
gone.) Until the refugee crisis, leading European politicians had
largely turned a blind eye to Orbán’s illiberalism, mostly out of
cowardice, but also because they’ve been so absorbed by the EU economic
crisis. The EU, according to a common perception, is already under
attack for dictating to Eurozone members what their national budgets
have to look like; it cannot possibly be seen as hectoring them on
democracy as well.
All
along, Orbán has been selling outsiders the story that it’s either him
or the neo-Nazis—the Jobbik party. One result of Orbán’s militancy in
the refugee crisis may be that, at last, other European leaders are
beginning to see that in many ways there is now little difference
between Fidesz and Jobbik (the fence had been the idea of a mayor with
close ties to Jobbik, for instance). The EU, which Orbán variously
accuses of colonialism or derides as “rich, but weak,” has the means to
ostracize a country no longer observing its values: the other EU Member
States can suspend the voting rights of an offending government, and
Brussels can also cut off funds that at the moment perversely benefit
Fidesz, an anti-European party (legally, a country cannot be kicked out
of the EU as such; but members can leave the club voluntarily). If the
Union fails to act now, its credibility will be permanently damaged.
Orbán’s challenge goes to the moral core of the European project.
October 14, 2015.