From Budapest With 'Love' — A Tale of Two Futures
Heidi Siegmund Cuda talks to Yale Professor of Philosophy and author Jason Stanley who cautions that a future under Trump may look a lot like Viktor Orbán's Hungary.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban…He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it…He’s the boss.”—Donald J. Trump, introducing Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago, 8 March 2024
All the World’s a Stage
My son once told me that if Donald Trump were not trying to destroy America, he would make a fine game show host or Vegas lounge act. As I watched a clip of him at his gilded oligarch-chic beach hotel, Mar-a-Lago, I thought of this. How schticky loungey it all is. Models getting their hourly rate to pose next to disgraced politicians — the thumbs-up posturing a subliminal flick of the nose to law enforcement.
There on stage last Friday night is Donald J. Trump praising Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — saying there’s “nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán… a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it…He’s the boss.”
Orbán is the living embodiment of the dream for wannabe dictator Trump, who is facing ongoing legal entanglements and likely a seventh bankruptcy and/or more oligarch bailouts as recent judgements approach a half-billion dollars.
The timing of Orbán’s visit is designed to steal President Joe Biden’s thunder after his historic State of the Union address. Biden came out swinging, putting Vladimir Putin on notice and framing the narrative correctly. Not since 1941, have America and other democratic nations faced such peril.
Meanwhile, the lounge host is dancing with dictators.
“What's life like in Orbán's Hungary, the most corrupt country in the EU? Miserable, especially if you're a child, (high malnutrition rates), a young adult, a woman, LGBTQ+ person and ally, a refugee, and anyone with an open mind,” wrote filmmaker and author, Andrea Chalupa. She then cited a recent study that concluded Hungary is the most corrupt country in the EU.
But for the MAGA cult, reality is continually inverted and subverted, pesky facts swatted away like flies, as a misuse and abuse of words muddies the darkening waters.
A Thirst for Dictators
In Trump’s praise of Orbán, I hear another gnawing thought, a memory of something Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the Strongmen author, told me in our first interview with her for Byline Times, about what happens when a country develops a thirst for an autocrat:
“We should feel overjoyed that we were able to vote out Trump in the middle of his process of autocratic consolidation because we saw from the great result he had – over 70 million people voted for him – that the thirst is not quenched,” she said. “The problem is, once the bond between leader and follower is consolidated, almost nothing can break it.”
America’s fascist flirtation revealed the very fragility of democratic freedoms.
“What the Trump years have shown us is how fragile our democracy is and how no country is immune from the temptations of a leader who says ‘I can fix this. I am your voice,’” Ben-Ghiat added. “We have to build democratic protections into our everyday lives. We can’t think it’s going to survive without our help.”
As I listened to the laughing approval when Trump praised Orbán for legitimately being a dictator I thought about this thirst — a lack of awareness that authoritarians benefit only the authoritarian. They can’t even be counted on to benefit their closest allies, because if you have what they want, it belongs to them.
Receding Freedoms
As we reported in our ‘Unmusked’ investigation, in 2018, Orbán encouraged owners of hundreds of Hungarian media properties to ‘donate’ them to a Government allied foundation. The Central European Press and Media Foundation (CEMPF) began absorbing cable news channels, internet platforms, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines. The result was a centralized right-wing Government-controlled media syndicate.
Freedom of the press has been on a steady decline in Hungary ever since.
Orbán’s attacks on the rule of law ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he declared a state of emergency and began seizing unlimited power to rule by decree. Among the targeted groups were the LGBTQ+ community, women, journalists, academia, and asylum seekers.
In our first interview with Ben-Ghiat, she noted the nature of Orbán’s style of power consolidation.
“Orbán is a very interesting case because he has managed to consolidate his control without physical violence… it’s not without violence entirely, but he has also not used mass detention. He’s not poisoning people like Putin, and he’s not sending hundreds of thousands to be arrested like Erdogan does. He’s used the media. He’s used buy-outs, he’s used threats, and he used COVID very effectively because he saw this as a moment to consolidate his power.
“While I was writing the book, he got Parliament to allow him to rule by decree, so COVID was a moment where some rulers made their moves because they knew that it could hurt them – that mass disease and economic hardship could hurt them – so they made their moves to go the opposite direction so now no one can remove Orbán.”
No one can remove Orbán
I offer this deepish background to understand what the US is facing in this moment — a tale of two futures. One, where freedoms are rapidly on the decline. Or, a future where we hold the line in defense of an imperfect democracy, so we can begin patching the vulnerabilities revealed by the Trumpocene.
A Tale of Two Futures — Jason Stanley Warns America
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