Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a message congratulating Hungary's newly elected prime minister, Peter Magyar, for having evicted long-serving populist leader Viktor Orban, also known as The Viktator, from power. The message included all the usual welcoming words, but Tusk's note ended with two slightly cryptic words in Hungarian: 'Ruszkik Haza' – Russians go home.
Orban's Legacy and Impact
Hungary's value to Moscow was its membership in the European Union and NATO, which allowed it to pass on all information its representatives had access to as members. Orban also blocked various EU decisions of which Russia disapproved, such as his recent veto of a $105-billion EU loan to Ukraine to replace U.S. aid cancelled by President Donald Trump.
That loan will now go through. However, repairing the huge damage done by 16 years of Orban will take much longer: the judiciary has been packed, the government is a kleptocracy, the media are 80 per cent owned by Orban's cronies, and the electoral map has been gerrymandered.
Global Populist Concerns
The main interest for everybody else is the possibility this is a communicable disease. Populists all over the place clearly fear it might be. Orban rose to power when Trump was a property developer, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was a junior minister, France's Marine Le Pen and Britain's Nigel Farage were fringe figures, and Germany's Alice Weidel was a financial consultant.
They all found time in their busy schedules to offer their support to Orban, and now they are strangely silent. It is like when your parents die: you realize it is now you on the front line.
Last week, with Orban trailing badly, they pulled out all the stops. Trump, in his fifth intervention in support of Orban in six months, posted 'I AM WITH HIM ALL THE WAY,' and Vice-President JD Vance showed up in person on the way to his equally unsuccessful performance in the 'peace talks' in Islamabad.
This is an unusual amount of attention to lavish on an election in a country of nine million people in the unfashionable end of Europe. Compare it to the attention world media gave to the 2023 election that brought Orban clone Robert Fico back to power in Slovakia. That event got almost zero attention, whereas Sunday's election in Hungary got front-page coverage almost everywhere.
A Harbinger for Populism?
The difference is entirely due to the fact that Orban's loss was seen as a defeat for the founding father of the populist strategy, at least in its current incarnation – and possibly a harbinger of the future. The anxiety of some and the hopes of others have been stoked by the growing likelihood the populist formula is failing in its natural homeland, the U.S. Trump's own erratic behaviour is part of the problem, but the economic dislocation caused by his war against Iran is an even bigger reason for them to fear defeat in November midterm elections.
Only Trump's anguish and panic are visible yet, but his fellow populists in Europe and even in far-flung outposts like Argentina seem concerned the wind has changed, even though nobody else has noticed it yet.
