‘They want us to be like the rest of Europe. But our culture is different.’
Budapest — A “post-reality campaign” seeking to “corrupt” Hungary’s “searing national memory” by “build[ing] terror of an enemy that doesn’t exist at all.” That’s how Anne Applebaum, the liberal historian and writer at The Atlantic, described Viktor Orbán’s closing message in Hungary’s fraught general election campaign, which will come to a head when voters go to the polls this Sunday. By inventing “existential threats — from migrants, from so-called decadence, from the European Union,” Orbán is, in Applebaum’s estimation, engaging in a sinister campaign of distraction from his purported efforts to impose “authoritarian populism and one-party rule” while downplaying what she regards as the real threats facing the post-communist Central European state.
“Brussels doesn’t pose an actual threat to Hungarian health and happiness,” she declares. “Ukraine is not going to invade, but Russia might.”
Applebaum — a Washington, D.C., native turned Polish citizen and staunch Europeanist, who happens to be married to the foreign minister in Poland’s avowedly anti-Orbán government — is perhaps the consummate example of the worldview that has caused much of the international left, from the New York Times’ editors to top European Union officials, to become so invested in ousting Orbán and his ruling conservative Fidesz Party. As right-wing forces continue to gain strength across the Old Continent, including in some of the EU’s most influential member states, Hungary has become a potent and living symbol of the existential threats that Europe’s establishment fears it faces.
Orbán’s government, in power since 2010, has presided over Hungary’s transformation into the EU’s black sheep: the country that refuses to countenance progressive priorities on migration, climate change, cultural leftism, national identity, and European integration; the country that refuses to take part in arms deliveries to Ukraine and has withheld its crucial approval from an EU loan package to its beleaguered Eastern neighbor.
On the domestic front, 16 years of uninterrupted Fidesz governance has not been perfect. Hungary’s economy has shown signs of stagnation, and while data from the beginning of this year has been somewhat positive, a mixed bag remains. The country’s health-care system is widely seen as decaying, even among Fidesz voters.
Orbán’s economic strategy, which has involved privatizing some state-run businesses and awarding control over them to politically aligned figures and organizations, is, to put it mildly, unorthodox. As Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote in these pages, the government’s economic policies “deserve a verdict” on their own terms.
Both sides say that such a verdict should come from Hungarians themselves. But when the country’s external critics make sweeping claims that Hungary’s economy, health-care system, and civil society are in states of utter disrepair, they do so with different motivations. That’s because for Hungary’s liberal-Europeanist naysayers, defeating Orbán this weekend isn’t ultimately about improving the Hungarian economy, raising the standard of living for ordinary Hungarians, or any other domestic issue for which they might profess concern in passing.
Instead — and they say as much openly — defeating Orbán is about sending a message to President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, the American right, and the various European right-of-center forces that have backed Orbán — from incumbent heads of government such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and the premiers of Czechia and Slovakia to insurgent figures such as France’s Marine Le Pen, Germany’s Alice Weidel, and Spain’s Santiago Abascal — that a strong, federalized EU and the progressive “European values” for which it stands (values such as opposition to “populism, xenophobia, [and] divisive nationalism”) are here to stay.
As Applebaum put it, Orbán’s defeat “could mark a turning point in the war of ideas that has convulsed the democratic world for the past decade.” The message is clear: Orbán is the first domino that must fall in the quest to restore the socially progressive, multiculturalist, and liberal-internationalist consensus that dominated Europe and the United States in the pre-Trump era.
Gladden Pappin, president of the state-affiliated Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and a prominent Orbán-aligned intellectual, agreed that the election’s ramifications would be felt far beyond Hungary’s borders.
“The European Union has made a series of catastrophic mistakes on migration, its energy policy, and its war policy. Hungary under Viktor Orbán is an inconvenient indictment of their policies on each of those points,” Pappin told me over coffee. “They’re seeking to circumvent national sovereignty and European institutions, and the most convenient way to secure their goal would be to eliminate the pro-sovereignty government in Hungary.”
Which direction will Hungary choose? As Sunday approaches, the electoral picture is shaky and unclear. Most public surveys show Tisza, the pro-European opposition coalition led by former Fidesz member Peter Magyar, commanding a clear and consistent lead. But the government’s representatives insist those polls are biased or outright wrong, and that their surveys indicate Fidesz will eke out a win.
The implications of a last-minute visit by Vance, in which he headlined a political rally alongside the prime minister in Budapest and reiterated his and Trump’s support for Orbán’s reelection, are similarly unknown. Hungarian favorability toward America is among the highest in Europe, and Orbán has promoted his close ties with the U.S. as evidence of his status as a global statesman and his ability to deliver economic, commercial, and military security for his country. The government’s allies are hopeful that the explicit, full-throated American support they’ve received will make a meaningful difference on Sunday.
For their part, the opposition are trying hard to keep their distance from international affairs, focusing instead on domestic issues. Unlike his predecessor as opposition leader — who, in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine, argued that Hungary could potentially use its military to aid Ukraine’s defense and subsequently suffered a landslide loss to Orbán in the 2022 election — Magyar has called for the Ukraine war to conclude and has said that “[n]o one wants a pro-Ukrainian government.” An EU critic — though a more measured one than Orbán — Magyar has largely focused his attacks on what he alleges is the government’s cronyism, corruption, and domestic-policy failures.
Still, despite Magyar’s professed skepticism of Ukraine, the EU is reportedly preparing for a 90-billion-euro loan package for Ukraine — blocked by Orbán amid claims that Ukraine is delaying reconstruction of the vital Druzhba oil pipeline in a bid to hurt Fidesz’s reelection chances — to be released soon after the election, regardless of the outcome. The EU’s rationale? If the opposition sweeps into power, Brussels anticipates Magyar quickly lifting Hungary’s veto on the loan.
But if Orbán pulls out a win, the Druzhba pipeline remains closed, and Hungary refuses to rescind its veto, the EU is considering options such as withholding more funding, changing voting rules, and restricting Hungary’s membership rights, with the justification that an Orbán victory couldn’t have been free and fair and that Hungary’s continued opposition to “EU values” must be punished.
Many exhausted Hungarians are ready for the campaign to conclude. One graduate student told me that she was tired of her country being made a “symbol” by foreign actors. Another student acknowledged Hungary’s economic and health-care struggles while also expressing skepticism toward potential involvement in the Ukraine war and the agenda of socially progressive, pro-European forces within the opposition.
“They want us to be like the rest of Europe,” he said. “But our culture is different. Hungary is different.”