Adolph Hitler was initially elected. So was Nicholas Maduro (Venezuela). Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko makes “free election” claims, with a purported 80% landslide in 2020, but there was more than a bit of ballot-box manipulation. Two decades ago, even Vladimir Putin was elected… and has since made sure that the Russian Constitution eliminated term limits. What do all of these autocrats have in common? Keeping their nation pure, their religion intact with more than a little willingness to slaughter opposition in the name of that pursuit of purity. Belarus survives because it shares that purist pursuit with Russia. Foreigners, particularly Americans, are the evil empire.
Many even chastise “evil” America that sent its forces, under manifestly false pretenses (remember the “weapons of mass destruction” that were never found), to conquer a nation far, far away from its own borders. Iraq. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as those of this ilk still living claim, was nothing more than self-defense against a NATO threat mounted on its borders. Even within the democratically elected NATO-allied nations, disharmony mounted during the Trump years as he threatened to withdraw from that military alliance, cozied up to dictators across the globe (especially Vladimir Putin), closed US borders and even began erecting a wall, slowly building what Europeans saw as a white nationalist hegemony, pushing free elections aside, in the strongest lurch towards autocracy since the United States was founded.
But Trump wasn’t/isn’t the only isolationist outlier in NATO. Several Eastern bloc nations and Turkey veered toward undemocratic practices, shifting power away from the natural checks and balances of their judiciary to down and out ethnic and racial exclusion. Autocrats firmed their hold… even with support of their electorate. But for the unity that resulted from Russia’s vile invasion of Ukraine, NATO seemed to be on the road to extinction. Putin’s war reversed that trend… fiercely.
No one personifies that autocratic, nationalist populism, like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (above). In his (and his party’s – Fidesz-KDNP) 12 years in power, Orbán has drifted so far away from the fundamental principles of the European Union (as well as NATO), in which Hungary is a member nation, that the EU has refused to share allocated revenues to which Hungary was otherwise entitled. During his presidency, Trump made no secret of his admiration for Orbán. The Hungarian elected autocrat also made no secret of his utter disdain for Hungarian-American billionaire, George Soros, blamed for the latter’s purported left-wing crusade against Orbán.
Orbán’s many antidemocratic machinations include crushing media critical of his administration, limiting democratic groups from organizing, allowing ethnic Hungarians no longer living there to vote (solidifying his hold), passing severely exclusionary asylum/ immigration rules, reconfiguring both the prosecutorial and judicial arms of government (purging those who did not adhere to his policies), pressing women to have “Hungarian babies” as a sign of patriotism, curbing academic freedom, rejecting minority (especially LGBTQ) rights and hailing Hungarian ethnic and religious values to the exclusion of other faiths and values.
Orbán has always been close to Vladimir Putin, a relationship that, to this day he still maintains with pride. Although he has criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Orbán is nevertheless an outspoken critic of President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Hungarian PM refuses to allow his border to be used to resupply arms to Ukraine and refuses to participate in NATO sanctions against Russia. The only concession to his membership in NATO alliance has been to take in a significant number of fleeing Ukrainian refugees.
Even as opposing parties formed an awkward coalition to defeat Orbán and his own rightwing coalition, on April 3rd Orbán won his fourth election in a landslide victory by almost a two-to-one majority. Glowing from his victory, Orbán victory speech hailed his coalition’s triumph over the “overwhelming force” of “the left at home, the international left all around, the Brussels bureaucrats [referencing the EU], the Soros empire with all its money, the international mainstream media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president” as proof that “Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics, and patriotic politics [are] not the past, [but] the future.”
As other European powers understood that their need for Russian gas and oil was fueling Putin’s war, struggling with how to end that dependence, Orbán just smiled. Putin would always make sure Hungary was well-supplied, and Orbán was not about to change that. For all intents and purposes, the Hungarian people have ceded their democratic prerogatives to Orbán, a happy autocrat with wild popular support… Like Putin? But at least so far, Orbán is not a war criminal.
I’m Peter Dekom, and mouthing a commitment to “democracy” is hardly sufficient to protect true democracy, minority rights and free and fair elections, a lesson that seems to be sliding away from the consciousness of too many Americans.
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