As part of a bridge-building exercise, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson entertained his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, at Number 10 Downing Street on 28 March 2021. The second EU leader to visit Britain after Brexit, shortly after Irish Taoiseach Michael Martin, Mr Orban reputedly admires Johnson for getting “Brexit done”. According to a government minister, Orban’s impending presidency of the Visegrad Four grouping of Central European nations (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), all four of which joined the EU in May 2004, justified the timing of his visit.
Viktor Orban belongs to a new generation of populist, conservative, and nationalist political leaders who have been energised by widespread unhappiness with globalization, and particularly with the resulting freer movement of people. At the outset of his political career, Orban was inspired by the economic liberalisation in Hungary by General Secretary Janos Kadar, who died in 1989. He was first elected to the new National Assembly in 1990, and has served as leader of Fidesz (the Hungarian Civic Alliance) since 1993, with a break between 2000 and 2003. He returned as Prime Minister in 2010 with a massive majority, having previously held that position between 1998 and 2002.
Mr Orban’s popularity within Hungary seems to be the result of his desire to preserve its Hungarian identity, as well as to keep it Christian, free from Islamic influence. Despite successive Ottoman and Habsburg rule, Hungary escaped both Islamicization and Germanification, and the difficult-to-master Hungarian language survived, a Finno-Ugric language surrounded by Indo-European tongues. As part of Orban’s isolationist agenda, he erected a razor-wire fence along Hungary’s southern border with Serbia during the summer of 2015, solely to keep out refugees from the Near and Middle East.
While Orban is commonly described as a Eurosceptic, he seeks a “European Europe”, undiluted by non-European immigrants. More specifically, he embraces a form of Hungarian nationalism that appears to be rooted in Hungary’s history. It is seen both as a matter of protecting its existing boundaries but also potentially regaining lost territories.
A small and landlocked country, Hungary’s population is less than ten million, out of which only 5 per cent are foreign-born. The country lost around 70 per cent of its territories after the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, leaving “ethnic Hungarians” trapped in what are now Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The so-called Trianon Syndrome of territorial deprivation that followed re-emerged in 1990, after a period of suppression under Communist rule (1945 to 1990), which was only briefly challenged during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
In common with populist radical parties of the far-right, Orban’s anti-immigration stance is based on a widely-held belief that “the West” is being overrun and its indigenous peoples facing extinction as a result of large-scale “non-Western immigration” and difficulties with the integration of immigrants.
Orban’s political inclinations are probably best described as Eurasian, which fits in with the fact that the Magyar race itself originated in Central Asia. His allies thus include Presidents Putin of Russia and Lukashenko of Belarus, alongside other Eastern European right-wing political leaders, while Hungary also maintains friendly relations with Turkey.
In seeking to further his political agenda, Orban’s regime has taken over control of the media and reigned in parliament and the judiciary, in common with other strong men of our times. His conservative stance dictates his opposition to such “leftist” issues as human rights, abortion and same-sex relations. Orban has particular problems with the Hungarian-Jewish financier George Soros, even though Soros has mentioned his support for, and funding of, Orban’s activities in the late 80s and early 90s.
His recent visit to London has been marked by public protests and adverse comments in the media. These manifestations of public opposition are, however, unlikely to have any effect on Mr Orban. He appears to have found a winning formula, at least for the time being, in his homeland. But political history is littered with populist fads and fancies, that come and then make way for others. Who can predict what path Hungary will choose ten years down the line?
Ashis Banerjee