The Orbán Doctrine
The Hungarian premier has turned himself into a conservative hero, but a heresiarch to progressives. In reality, he is the most misunderstood figure in European politics.
There is not a single character more important in European politics today. Some say he is an autocrat, an illiberal dictator-in-waiting, or an enemy of democracy. Others laud him as a great statesman protecting Hungary’s national interest, fighting for the preservation of Hungary’s Christian heritage in the face of an encroaching liberalism from the west.
It would not be wrong to call Viktor Orbán a genius. Like him or not, he has risen to power because he is an astute man who has played the game of electoral politics very well. Orbán’s biggest problem however is that people do not understand who he is, or more accurately, what made him who he is.
The Continuity Regime
Writing for The Atlantic, Paul Lendvai recalls:
One summer day in 1989, I saw an unshaven, long-haired young man approach a microphone to address 250,000 people in Budapest. They had gathered in Heroes’ Square for the ceremonial reburial of the leaders of a 1956 anti-communist uprising crushed by the Soviet army, and I was there reporting it live for television. The unknown speaker was a 26-year-old representing a tiny youth group called Fidesz and, with a speech lasting six-and-half minutes, he roused the crowd in the square and viewers at home, calling for free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Almost overnight, he became famous in Hungary and abroad.
That young man was Viktor Orbán.
Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, abbreviated to FIDESZ, began as a liberal student movement in opposition to the socialist regime that had subjugated Hungary for the preceding four decades. Following the end of socialism, the party won twenty-two seats and just under ten percent of the vote in the first free elections since 1945.
It may shock readers to hear that this early Fidesz was rather anticlerical, pragmatic, and aligned with the political centre prior to Orbán’s ascendancy to the leadership. But that is because there was no single leader initially. The party operated a collective leadership with two figures who stood out the most. Orbán styled himself as a national liberal, and did not seize power until the 1993 conference. Gábor Fodor was a pragmatist who advocated a Fidesz that stuck to the liberal centre and collaborated with the Alliance of Free Democrats, the party he joined after leaving Fidesz in 1994.
Orbán listened to a Fidesz strategist named László Kövér, who advocated preserving the party’s right-leaning position while introducing patriotic and populist overtones to their message. Not content with overhauling the party’s organisation (the age limit of thirty-five on membership and collective leadership were abolished in 1993), Orbán listened to Kövér and overhauled the party’s platform.
Just half a decade after its founding, Fidesz was reborn and began walking the road to the political right.
As the existing conservative parties declined and the Free Democrats forged an alliance with the MSZP, the successors to the socialist regime, Orbán found the perfect space on the spectrum to occupy and the new Fidesz emerged as the largest party in 1998. The party formed a coalition with two other conservative parties, the Hungarian Democratic Forum and the agrarian FKgP.
The first Fidesz government was rather uneventful. Their administration was typical of the turn-of-the-millennium European centre-right, and to Orbán’s credit, somewhat successful. The economy continued to grow, the austerity measures imposed by the self-styled socialist government were reversed (yes, you are reading that correctly), and life improved for ordinary Hungarians. Nothing big, nothing bad. Nevertheless, Fidesz were ousted in 2002 by the Socialist-Liberal coalition.
It would not be wrong to say that this Socialist-Liberal coalition are the reason why Orbán is the way he is today. This grouping were former communists turned closeted neoliberals, obsessed with nothing but wealth and power. The introduction of the austerity reforms by Gyula Horn prove the first allegation, but the corruption charge (and this is meant in an ethical sense) manages to be even more blatantly proven.
Péter Medgyessy, elected as Prime Minister in 2002, was exposed as a former socialist intelligence officer leading to his demise. But it was his successor, Ferenc Gyurcsány, who collapsed the MSZP. At a closed party conference shortly after the MSZP were re-elected in 2006, Gyurcsány gave a private, profanity-ridden speech that was later leaked to the public.
Divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy, and hundreds of tricks, which you obviously don’t need to know about, helped us survive this situation.
Let them protest in front of Parliament. Sooner or later they will get bored of it and go home.
I almost perished because I had to pretend for 18 months that we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, noon and night.
No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have. Obviously, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years.
These are just a number of excerpts, excluding the profanity. Gyurcsány’s party crashed in popularity after this and Orbán was able to steer the Fidesz-KDNP coalition to two-thirds of seats in the National Assembly, even after falling ten percent in the polls in the month leading up to the election. The coalition retains this two-thirds majority a decade later.
It is worth recalling his defeat in 2002 and the Gyurcsány affair when people accuse Orbán of opportunism. Fidesz were governing competently, gained more voters, yet they lost power. This was because the MSZP-Free Democrats alliance was the favoured government of the establishment, which Gyurcsány himself admitted. The system they presided over was not a post-soviet democracy, but a continuity regime. The socialist establishment rebranded themselves as social democrats and utilised their wealth & influence to retain power.
Orbán’s realignment was not, at the very least not exclusively, a product of opportunism. It was a real-time look at how and why people get radicalised.
The Central Power
The two-thirds majority was enough for Orbán to not just proclaim a new government, but to pursue his objective of regime change in Hungary. To Orbán, Hungary was not a new liberal democracy but merely a restructure of the old socialist regime. The same people were in power, after all. Fidesz were still considered in 2010 to be a centre-right party.
Orbán’s objective in government was to establish his concept of the “central power”. He aimed to turn Hungary from a multi-party democracy into a dominant-party democracy, where Fidesz was the reigning power with an ineffective and divided opposition.
He took many steps to do this, most famously by banning political advertising on private media networks and stacking the media board with his allies. Because of constitutional amendments that were passed, it would require a 2/3 majority to change this down the line. Key sociocultural issues such as Fidesz’ opposition to same-sex marriage have also been enshrined in the constitution.
In simple terms, even if Fidesz lose power it is very unlikely that the opposition will have the support required to undo their flagship policies. Some say this is undemocratic and illiberal, and there is certainly a case to be made for that to be so. Others would instead argue that this is just using the power of the state to do what the post-dictatorship officials did with money and the media. In other words, if Orbán is illiberal then so are much of his opposition.
On Europe
The single issue that Orbán is most misunderstood about is his approach to Europe. The political scientist Matthijs Rooduijn claims that Fidesz are a Eurosceptic party, and many other media outlets can be found claiming that Orbán and Fidesz are Eurosceptics. While most of these are hostile depictions, conservative and populist readers in the west note this with joy.
The reality is that Orbán is not an opponent to the European project. Quite the opposite in fact. As recently as September 2020, Orbán went on record to suggest the establishment of a European army as a way to resist Russia. His opposition to the European Union is not a fundamental rejection of Europeanism, but a rejection of a liberal establishment in the EU who he does not believe are concerned with protecting European civilisation.
The Civilisational Approach
He has been at the forefront of Hungarian politics for a while, but his ascendancy to prominence in European politics only dates back to the migration crisis. Since then he has constantly emphasised the concept of a European civilisation. His criticism of progressivism and mass migration has all been part of his defense of a European civilisation.
He has been rather vague in what this civilisation entails, though he has consistently linked it to Europe’s Christian heritage, rallying against what he calls “anti-Christian and anti-Church forces”, a collective who he says “have a strong media doing everything in their power to stymie the spread of Christian values”.
A war of cultures and civilisations is under way. The war for Europe’s spirit and future is being waged here and now. We need prayer for Christian unity, because Christianity cannot be upheld in Europe without cooperation
Viktor Orban, June 2021
The adoption of a civilisational approach to politics ties in with Orbán’s Europeanism, suggesting that he looks beyond the nation-state and believes that Europe exists as something more than a geographic region or a bloc of aligned polities.
His concept of civilisation is intrinsically linked to his brand of cultural conservatism. It values the family, gender roles, the role of the Church in society, and is hostile to immigration from non-Europeans. In other words, it is the standard conservatism of before 2010.
The Long Game
What exactly is Orbán’s game then? It can be summarised as a patriotic, conservative and realist. His willingness to collaborate with Russia and China shows a disregard for liberal values, or at least a prioritisation of pragmatism before principles. At the same time, he does view Russia as an external threat to Europe and urges the formation of a European army for this reason.
It is likely that going forward Orbán will continue to hold to these positions. In a recent advertisement he expressed disapproval towards further European integration, while campaigning to welcome his southern neighbour Serbia into the Union. This suggests he is seeking to build a bloc of culturally conservative opponents to the socially liberal agenda of much of the European establishment. It would be imprudent to suggest that he wants to “Hungarify” Europe, that is to replicate his “Central Power” across the entire continent. The strongman is too much of a pragmatist to know that’s unlikely.
Though, it would also be imprudent to doubt that he would try if he thought he had a chance of succeeding.
Urging Caution
I would like to conclude with a more personal note that is purely my own thoughts and not necessarily those of any of our past contributors. I am urging liberals and progressives to be cautious in their approach to Orbán’s anti-LGBT campaign and to reflect on European history.
We must recall that a majority of the founding fathers of the EU were conservative Christians whose views towards homosexuality would more closely reflect those of Viktor Orbán’s than those of the average European progressive.
Those were the people governing in the time of our grandparents. Are we to suggest that our European values are so flimsy that after less than a century they are almost completely unrecognisable?
Further, is it a prudent move to isolate social conservatives so severely? One of the purposes of this publication is to serve as an outlet to promote the thought of centre-right Europeanists, in a time where conservatism is being slowly taken over by eurosceptic populism.
To say that tolerance of homosexual activity is a European value is to say that orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other socially conservative philosophies are fundamentally at odds with European values. If this is the case, then Europe is simply a modern invention that did not exist before the 21st century and much of the European population are not welcome.
In summary I am urging progressives and liberals not to seek a hostile reprise of Orbán, which would undoubtedly strengthen him, and to remember that the Christian contribution to European civilisation must not be erased.