Hungary offers lessons in defeating right-wing populists.
The victory of PĂŠter Magyar's Tisza Party over authoritarian Viktor OrbĂĄn was several years in the making. And like any successful coalition, it required its components to accommodate each other.
We in the US should examine Tisza's victory and determine which aspects of its campaign can be applied to our own struggle against authoritarianism.
After resoundingly losing national elections held on April 12, OrbĂĄn 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. [ ... ] PĂŠter Magyar, the presumptive next prime minister, triumphed against a tilted electoral systemâgerrymandered districts, government influence over traditional media and even over the countryâs billboardsâdesigned to keep Fidesz in power. Magyar understood that such a regime does not simply collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and mismanagement.
Yep, rĂŠgimes do not fall on their own, it require work, cooperation, patience, and a unifying message to undo the authoritarian grip on power.
One of Tiszaâs most illuminating campaign slogans was âNot left, not right, only Hungariansââwhich promised an ideologically diverse movement to roll back OrbĂĄnâs corruption and cronyism. Emmanuel Macronâs party deployed a similar slogan, âNeither left nor right,â in 2017, when it also quickly went from nowhere to complete power in France. In the United States, the party duopoly is more entrenched, but you could argue that Barack Obama executed the trick in 2008 when he convincingly pitched himself as president for neither red America nor blue America.
Not conceding any part of the country or any community was key to Tisza's success.
Magyar directly campaigned all throughout Hungary, including in rural constituencies that tended to go unvisited because they were considered Fideszâs heartland. Benjamin Novak, a former journalist and an analyst of Hungarian politics, told me that after years of scandal and inflation and slow growth in the country, Magyarâs indictment of the OrbĂĄn regime resonated widely. âThe lived experience of Hungarians was that Hungary is falling apart,â Novak said. âAnd these guys are so corrupt that they have no idea what theyâre doing.â Magyarâs momentum persuaded other opposition parties across the political spectrum to stand down to avoid splitting the anti-Fidesz vote. Factionalism was effectively suspended. In American terms, the rallying behind Magyar (whose name is the Hungarian word for âHungarianâ) would be like an ex-MAGA Republican named Peter American winning the Democratic nomination with the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
While US politics doesn't happen like that, there are stupid third parties which insist on running hopeless candidates for president. And there are clueless voters (claiming to be progressive) who support them who end up indirectly electing disastrous Republicans. Without Ralph Nader in 2000 there would not have been a President George W. Bush; without Jill Stein in 2016, there would not have been a President Donald Trump. BTW, Bush and Trump account for 5 of the 9 appointees to the US Supreme Court.
In Hungary, OrbĂĄn demonized people and institutions he didn't like. But his corruption, incompetence, and economic mismanagement made him an easy target for demonization himself.
Until now, OrbĂĄn had succeeded through us-versus-them politicsâBudapest against Brussels, Hungarians against Ukrainians, citizens against globalists. But instead of taking the opposite of OrbĂĄnâs side on the wisdom of EU bureaucracy, trans rights, or the Russia-Ukraine war, Magyar constructed an entirely different debate focused on the ruling partyâs corruption, inflation, and neglect of public services. (In political-science terms, Magyar succeeded because his party achieved âtransformative repolarizationâ rather than âreciprocal polarization.â)
Politicians in the West simply don't win by supporting wide open migration.
The parties that have had the most success against the populist right have shown similar messaging discipline. In Poland, the nationalist, conservative Law and Justice Party lost in 2023 to a broad coalition led by Donald Tuskâa centrist former president of the European Council who nevertheless opposes current EU migration policy and makes statements such as âIf we are open to all forms of migration without any control, our world will collapse.â In Denmark, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the leader of the center-left Social Democrats, has maintained power for seven years in part by championing strict laws on asylum and assimilation that might exceed even the imagination of Stephen Miller (for example: tearing down homes in neighborhoods that had too many ânon-Westernâ residents). In each case, mainstream parties learned to adapt in ways that made them more competitive against radical ones.
Like it or not, voters just don't want mass migration these days. However, measured and regulated immigration is fine with a majority of Americans.
Wide open borders paved the way for Trump's return. For all practical purposes, those high visibility migrant caravans were free advertising for MAGA.
In the US, many liberals don't understand the difference between patriotism (good) and nationalism (bad). PĂŠter Magyar literally waved the Hungarian flag at rallies which were vast seas of Hungarian colors. We need to make this comment by the late Ăźber-liberal Bill Moyers a fundamental part of our thinking:
The flag belongs to the country, not to the government.
And it certainly doesn't belong to Republicans. By conceding the flag and other national symbols, you concede America.
In the United States, many of Donald Trumpâs most fervent critics do something rather different: When the president and Fox News criticize an idea, Democrats declare themselves to be for it. This dynamic not only allows MAGA Republicans to set the terms of the American political debate but also boxes Democrats into backing unpopular policy positions: defunding the police; limiting immigration enforcement, even for criminals; insisting upon allowing the participation of trans women in womenâs sports. Roger Scruton, the late British conservative philosopher, brought to prominence the idea of âoikophobiaââthat is, a feeling of embarrassment about oneâs home country and of affection for foreign societies that arises as a reaction to xenophobia. This affliction is not uncommon among American Democrats, and it concedes the field of patriotism to Republicans. This is an error that successful anti-populists such as Magyar and Tusk do not fall into.
Social media has done a lot to box Democratic politicians into maximalist positions which are not popular with the majority of voters.
In 2019 Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy at the New York Times did a study of Democrats on Twitter. They concluded that Democrats who were particularly active on (then) Twitter were not all that representative of Democrats in real life.
Todayâs Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its âwokeâ left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate. The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically donât post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past. [ ... ] But it would also be a mistake to assume that outrage on social media means outrage throughout the broader electorate. And it would be a mistake to assume that more moderate Democrats are out of step with the partyâs electorate.
Get a better idea of what your Democratic neighbors are thinking. A great way is to actually talk with them and listen to their concerns. The vast majority do not spend 16 hours a day doom scrolling or posting hyperbolic outrage directed at any Democratic politician who does not agree with them 250% of the time.
NYC is not majority socialist. Yet Zohran Mamdani won a decisive victory in his race for mayor. He had volunteers knock on doors and listen to voters across the city. Affordability and accountability by officials counted way more than culture war issues. Democrats who wish to be successful this year should do local or statewide adaptations of his campaign with heavy emphasis on person-to-person contact with voters.
Viktor OrbĂĄn had been in office since 2010. He was already deeply entrenched by the time Trump took his famous escalator ride. You could say that the road to MAGA went through Budapest. PĂŠter Magyar shows us that the road out of MAGA also runs through Budapest.
