Hungary threatens the European Union – a photo essay from Budapest

‘Orbán, get lost to the tulipy cunt.’ A famous Hungarian curse put to a new use. All photographs the author's own.The election victory of Viktor Orbán – his third in a row – in
Hungary last week is a much greater danger to the European Union than Brexit. A
clearly undemocratic Premier now threatens to overturn the rule of law and
install himself as an effective dictator based on popular mobilisation, stirred
by noxious racist and xenophobic strobes.

The menace follows his overwhelming election victory last
week on Sunday 8th March. The recipient of billions of euros in EU support,
much of which is apparently misappropriated by regime corruption, and
benefiting from German permission, Orbán is arguably now coming to represent actually existing Europe.

Hungary’s capital city voted against him and his party,
Fidesz. The town is still covered in election posters. Idealistic images of the
leaders of the fragmented opposition parties stare out from lampposts. From Jobbik,
the rightist party that came second, to centrist and leftist movements – like
Momentum, founded last year, that gained just 3% of the vote and failed to
enter parliament. A brief
post-election report is filled with their now gloomy faces in defeat and
resignation.

The thought that together they had 51% of the total was
little consolation. The electoral system introduced by Orbán loaded the votes
in his favour and gave him a two-thirds parliamentary majority, enough to do as
he wishes with the constitution.

The countryside of this modest, 10 million strong people,
backed Orbán to the hilt, after two terms in power and outrageous examples of
corruption, support for Fidesz grew.
“Basically a significant part of Hungarian society wanted this type of
governance to continue. This is not because these people are stupid,
tunnel-visioned, or unprincipled”. The words are those of Márton
Gulyás, a brilliant, 32 year-old opposition leader, whose Country for All
movement did not run in the election but attempted and failed to persuade
opposition parties to cooperate and ally against Orbán, to prevent his gaining
the two-thirds parliamentary supremacy that now offers him unlimited power.

Behind the alarm and disappointment there hangs an
overwhelming reality. Orbán’s campaign was one of unmitigated fear and
loathing. He had no programme and offered no manifesto, against which his
achievements could be held to account over the coming four years. Instead, he set
out his strategy in
a speech on 22 June last year, and proposed to defend Hungary from a
campaign organised by George Soros and the European Union to dissolve Hungary
and Christian Europe in a tide of Muslim migrants.

I knew things were grim in Hungary but until going there did
not understand how bad they are, or how it feels. It was like going to the USA
after Trump has won a third term. If you can, imagine Trump being in office for
eight years, building his southern wall and amending the constitution so he
could run again. Then, winning. Not only that, third-term Trump has increased his
popular support, has two-thirds majorities in the Senate and House made up of
his hand-picked candidates, looks forward to filling a majority of seats in the
Supreme Court. While, immediately after the election, the New York Times and
Washington Post announce their immediate closure as no longer commercially
viable.

It is not the likelihood of such a scenario that is
concerning, although this year white rural America support for Trump has
grown from 50 to 65 per cent since January. It is what it would mean – and
what has happened in Hungary. It is no ordinary election that can be reversed
at the end of a four-year term. It promises a transition from law-based
elections to plebiscitary Bonapartism, arbitrary dictatorship and a chauvinist
crushing of liberty and free-thinking.

Goodbye reality

One of the many election posters filling the
Budapest bus-stops is a fake. It is a photo-shopped picture of Soros embracing
four of the opposition party leaders. Proclaiming “Let’s Stop Soros’s
Candidates”.

“Let’s Stop Soros’s Candidates”. This image has no basis in what used to be called reality.
The four parties attempted to take its deployment to court and failed, it was
ruled to be free speech. Apparently across much of the countryside the picture
was taken to be of an actual get-together.

Along with it are other posters claiming that the
opposition wanted to dismantle the wall built by Orbán on Hungary’s southern
frontier. Another, taken from the same image of young male refugees made
infamous by Nigel Farage in the Brexit referendum, proclaimed STOP about something
that is not happening.

Proclaiming STOP to something not happening.To use Miklos Haraszti’s description, a propaganda state has
been created in Hungary. It combines post-truth anti-Semitism, such as the anti-Soros mantra in which the ‘J’
word is not mentioned, with explicitly anti-Muslim bigotry. Using this
vile propaganda Fidesz has mobilised support across a countryside weakened and
threatened not by immigration but by the scale of emigration, as the best of
the younger generation flee the country for opportunities abroad.

With the opposition parties reeling from the
devastating scale of their political annihilation, a civil-society network came
together to call for a rally of protest via Facebook. For a spontaneous demonstration
the turnout was astounding.

To our left. To our right.These two photos are taken from the same spot as we gathered
in the avenue leading to the Opera House before marching on parliament.

The demonstrators were very mixed. The red striped flag of
Jobbik supporters joined the Momentum generation.

There were the young.

The serious

And the patriots

Some demonstrators came in peace and carried daffodils that were handed out

The posters were often witty and intelligent.

‘Dictators of the world, unite?’ A pertinent question.

Two placards were especially visible by the screens in front
of the parliament building as we listened to the speeches.

This shows Chancellor Merkel saying ‘We cannot give you as much as you steal’.

Warning finger:
‘Don’t Cheat
Don’t Steal
Don’t Lie
Because the government cannot tolerate competition’.

Others were more scholarly.

‘Rights are not what they give but what they cannot take away.’The regime’s destruction of the opposition press was
highlighted.

Propaganda machine is no media.

The press is squeezed.

At the end of the speeches, in the huge space in front of
the parliament, the organisers declared they would sing the Hungarian national
anthem followed by the European Union’s. In clear, firm tones the great crowd
sung their national anthem. Then the speakers blasted out Beethoven’s Ode to
Joy. Its words were not familiar and as the glorious choir began, spontaneously
people began to turn on their phone searchlights.

This 35 seconds gives you an idea of the size and the
presence of the people of Hungary that the EU ought to be supporting.

The speeches at the end of a great rally are usually
symbolic not substantive. But inspired by the force of the mobilisation one of
the organisers declared that they will gather ‘next week’.

There were loud protests next to me. Rightly so. It can
hardly be bigger. A numbers game will be played. Some organisers will disagree
leading to negative publicity. 

European solidarity

This problem is a familiar one of recent years for the
spontaneous, open-minded opposition to the well-funded organisation of closure
and narrowness. Without clearly achievable demands, a civil society movement
cannot grow into an immediately effective force.

Any attempt to simply defy the authorities will be ground
down, by techniques now quite well established and shared by security forces
around the world; who are only too happy to crush the diehards when support
peels away. The only time such protest has been completely successful in its own
terms was the indignados in Spain in 2011. They occupied the main squares of
Spain, starting in Madrid and then in 81 towns and cities.

They generated an intense learning experience and almost
immediately debated when to disperse, doing so within three weeks. Unlike the
Occupy movements in Wall Street and London, they didn’t try to hang on
indefinitely. Instead, they pivoted to engage with the poorer areas of Spain to
challenge the way the economy was being run. Out of this came not only a new
and relatively successful political party but also municipal victories in
Barcelona and Madrid.

No such opportunity to defy the authority of Viktor Orbán
was on offer in Budapest or could be. After all, he had just won an election
with a significant increase in support. He felt the force was with him last
July, when Orbán declared, ‘Twenty-seven years ago here in Central Europe
we believed that Europe was our future; today we feel that we are the future of
Europe’.

The task that confronts the urban demonstrators is to prove
this wrong – which they cannot do without Europe itself refusing Orbanism as
its future.

Anthony Barnett is currently a visiting fellow at the IWM Vienna 

The Lure of Greatness, England’s Brexit & America’s Trump – Anthony Barnett

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