George Szirtes - Here lies danger. Hungary is on the verge of full-blown autocracy
Having bussed tens of
thousands of supporters into Budapest for a pre-election “peace march” on 15 March, prime minister Viktor Orbán addressed
them, promising that after his victory on 8 April he will deal with those who oppose him by “moral, political and legal
means”. But who are his
opponents? Is it the ragbag of small parties who cannot unite in opposition and who have, in any case, been
deprived of the platforms required to reach the electorate? Is it the NGOs and
other human rights associations who have been looking after those most badly
affected by his policies? Is it perhaps the Central European University,
Hungary’s most highly ranked university, which produces ideas that might
be critical of him? Is it perhaps the refugees he depicts as a tide of migrants ready to drown the country with their alien,
menacing ways? And if it is all these, at whose door does he lay the blame?
Surely it is George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who funded Orbán’s
own time at Oxford as well as the underground presses of pre-1989 Hungary and
Warsaw Pact Europe, and who now funds some of those troublesome NGOs and the
Central European University. It must be him because it is Soros’s grinning face
that is on countless billboards and posters around the
country in the past year. It must be Soros, he who controls so many other
governments and whose idea of an open society is a none-too-well disguised
invitation to dangerous Islamist forces to take over Europe – don’t let Soros
have the last laugh, declared the posters and billboards, invoking every antisemitic trope in the book. Don’t let this
ex-Hungarian, rootless cosmopolitan foist his “sinister vision” of society on
us, they echoed.
And what could be more
sinister than an independent candidate, one Péter Márki-Zay, beating Zoltán
Hegedüs of Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, to the mayoralty of Hódmezővásárhely, right in the Fidesz
heartlands? It was a shock result for all involved, a potentially dangerous
sign of things to come for Orbán at the election and beyond. This tendency must
be stamped on. But how? Soros is the answer, of course. He is the ever-available scapegoat. “Their task, should
they get to power,” says Orbán of those who oppose him, “is to execute ‘the
grand plan’.” Europe, he claims, is about to be invaded by tens of millions of people from Africa
and the Middle East and “if Europe does nothing, they will kick down our doors.
The history of the conquered nations will be rewritten by others, and those who
are still young will see how they become minorities in their own country.”
Forget the fact that
Hungary has practically zero immigration from those regions, and that the EU
request that they should take in 1,300 was fiercely resisted, resulting in the
erection of two rows
of barbed-wire fence at the border with Serbia and Croatia, and
the deployment of a civil militia – which could always be used
for other purposes – to patrol it. More importantly for now, he tells his
hard-core supporters that all who oppose him under the “independent” banner are
in fact undeclared Soros candidates ready and willing to carry out the wicked
financier’s orders. “Our strength lies in unity: one camp, one flag. We need
everyone working together,” he declares, adding that he understands that people
may be frightened by the prospect.
If they are
frightened, of course, it will have been because of Orbán’s own version of
“project fear”, the only thing that could shield him from the mounting charges
of financial and social corruption. It is because he has instilled fear into
those who oppose him, chiefly through loss of employment. He has control of all civil institutions and has already
succeeded in having the main paper of opposition, Népszabadság, closed down. Hungary is a country
wounded by history: defeat in wars, invasion and occupation; revolutions;
betrayals by allies; and, above all, the catastrophic treaty of Trianon in 1920
which carved up both country and population. Only a strong leader can
protect us, says the national instinct. Hungary today is on
the verge of full-blown autocracy. And now, with Viktor Orbán’s threat of
“moral, political and legal” vengeance to come after 8 April vote, the country
is, as the rest of Europe cannot fail to see, in the act of stepping over the
threshold.
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