Balázs Orbán, Political Director of PM Viktor Orbán; Member of the Hungarian Parliament; Chairman of the MCC Board of Trustees
The left’s latest trick is to present itself as moderate, even right-wing, then reveal its radical, progressive, authoritarian side once in power. Hungary is living proof. We all should learn from it!
Until recently, Hungary was one of the conservative world’s most important strongholds. The people now in power pretend to be conservatives too, even as they tear down everything that matters to our country. American liberals are preparing to do the same. Do not be taken in by their honeyed words.
Hungary’s new Prime Minister, Péter Magyar campaigned as a moderate, promising to defend families and national interests. The first warning came on election day, when Alex Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the leaders of the European Union were dancing for joy. Hardly a conservative lineup. Once in office, he inmedately took a sharp turn to the left while moving to prevent the conservative movement from returning to power.
I have been following the campaign ahead of America’s midterm elections. Democrats are using the same approach. They present themselves as moderates who will keep everything that worked under Trump and fix everything that did not. Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán offered precisely that kind of soothing sales pitch in her recent column in Washington Times.
For five years, I served as political director to former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. I helped build a movement that made Hungary a model for conservatives around the world. What is happening to my country tells a very different story.
Once liberals take power, the mask comes off. They push radical policies they concealed during the campaign and that lack social support. Then they try to destroy their conservative opponents so that they never have another chance to win a democratic election.
Our new government’s first symbolic acts was to deny Hungarians the chance to vote Viktor Orbán back into power, as Americans did with President Trump after the failed Biden experiment. It then barred most of the leading figures in Hungary’s largest opposition party from running for office again.
The governing majority also changed the constitution to end the conservative president’s term. Long-established private institutions, including Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which educates young people from all over the country, and the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank, have been nationalized. The country’s largest conservative media outlet was taken over by the state and then shut down. The director of Hungary’s museum commemorating the victims of communism was dismissed, and the museum temporarily closed, because the new government objected to its “cultural outlook”. The institutions that allow conservatives to develop ideas, educate young people and rebuild after an election defeat are being dismantled.
The former culture minister is under arrest. His only crime was supporting conservative artists and organizations. Authorities were sent after the former governing party’s databases and seized all its records on party members and activists. The chief prosecutor found this so indefensible that he resigned.
Hungarians recognize these methods from the communist era. The state treats political opponents as enemies to be broken and brings independent institutions under its control. The language is now liberal and democratic, but the ambition is familiar: Totalarbitrary exercise of power.
The government is also dismantling conservative policies on gender and the family. Key provisions of Hungary’s child-protection law are being repealed. Parents no longer have free access to the registry of child sex offenders. The government is preparing the way for same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. Advocacy groups promoting gender ideology have been allowed back into schools and the media. Education officials have even marked the start of the school year together with these groups.
Abroad, the government immediately rolled over for the European Union’s institutions in Brussels. It supports the war effort in Ukraine, has taken Hungary back into the International Criminal Court and has abandoned meaningful resistance to the EU’s migration rules. Meanwhile, people are sleeping on the streets and drug liberalization is getting under way. We have seen this elsewhere.
Despite promising tax cuts during the campaign, the government is now moving toward higher taxes. It is preparing an annual wealth tax that is already driving capital out of Hungary. Investment has stalled, unemployment has begun to rise, and the government is doing nothing to curb soaring fuel prices. It has also created an agency with sweeping powers to take almost anyone’s assets into state ownership without judicial review. Entrepreneurs and savers have reason to worry about what comes next.
Viktor Orbán lost the April election, accepted the result and handed over power, after 16 years of being falsely branded a dictator. Instead of apologizing for those accusations, his opponents are now trying to cripple his movement. They must accept that the people who voted against them retain the right to organize and compete to govern again.
Americans should judge claims of moderation by what follows victory. In Hungary, reassuring campaign promises have given way to a radical liberal agenda backed by the repressive power of the state. The danger is that, by the time voters want another change, the government will have dismantled the institutions that make a change possible. That is liberal authoritarianism, and Hungary is paying the price.
Never let them fool you, fellow conservatives!
https://orbanbalazs.substack.com/p/the-lefts-new-disguise-a-warning?r=5rdf4u&utm_medium=ios