Originally published at: Hungary’s Creep Toward Autocracy Helped Inspire Trump. In 2 Days, Voters Will Try to Reverse It - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. On Sunday, April 12, Hungarians will go to the polls in an election that will decide the future of their country and the illiberal state that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — Europe’s longest-serving head of state and a role model for far-right authoritarians…
Orbán faces a serious chance of losing his fifth consecutive reelection.
And yet he remained President.
No wonder Putin’s Cock-holster models himself as an Orbán wannabe.
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“We need a movement, not a moment”, Al Sharpton.
One of the most important protections to keep a democracy a democracy is for the democracy to make change slow and deliberate. I mean it took Republicans 50 years to overturn Roe.
Republicans understand this. It is why they stay so loyal to their Party. The change they want, in most cases from a liberal democracy to a nation where some are more equal than others, will not happen in a single or even in several elections. Real change in a democratic society with constitutional protections takes decades.
Democrats, on the other hand, have a tendency to think because they voted once, everything they dreamed of should happen immediately or they won’t get off the couch the next time to go vote or otherwise support people who want what they want.
Or to put another way, what this article says to me is that while it took 16 years for rightwing autocrats in Hungry to pervert the fledgling democracy into an autocratic state, those who oppose the autocratic state will give up if their candidates are elected and fail to make their dreams come true in a week.
To me this sounds like not only are American Republicans like Hungary’s autocratic party, Hungary’s opposition is much like American Democrats.
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J.D. Vance: Once a hillbilly, always a hillbilly. That he follows Donnie’s fascist autocratic fixation makes it even worse. Soulless. To think that if Donnie goes, Vance would assume the Presidency is beyond belief.
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Alright, libtards, you go on and on and on and on about poor, humble, hard-working Orbán, while Madman Mamdani marks 100 days of carnage and you don’t even bat an eye!
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Orban does bear a striking resemblance to Ralph Kramden, only way, way evil. That would make Vance Ed Norton, also way, way evil.
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The results of this election in Hungary will be important to the current administration that has been losing elections right and left in this country.
Will they lose the election in Hungary as well? Stay tuned.
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On Sunday, April 12, Hungarians will go to the polls in an election that will decide the future of their country.
I hope that means honest count of all Hungarians. If so, everything will be fine.
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I miss the potholes : - (
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The Orban regime counts the votes of Hungarians who are citizens of surrounding countries–Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Croatia. (Maybe Ukraine, too: the small strip once called Subcarpathian Ruthenia.) These are the lands that were taken from Hungary after World War I, which Hungarians have always wanted to reclaim, some of which were under Hungarian control during World War II. Orban usually gets a significant haul of votes from these people, even though they are not Hungarian citizens. It’s mostly a grievance vote.
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Of course the oligarchs and captured legislators want lots more defense spending – it’s already half of the discretionary spending available to Congress. It’s candy. It’s the goodie bag for constituents like Palantir and Peter Thiel. Everything else discretionary – transportation, health, education – gets cut. Oh, and there’s that little issue of $88 billion a month that goes to servicing government debt (and it gets worse with the Big Beautiful Budget Act). There are over 200 countries in the world, of which just 5 countries (USA, China, Russia, Germany, and India) account for over 60% of military spending, and among the 5, the US leads by far. This isn’t about defense so much as making jobs in a wartime economy (Russia has near-full employment with an unemployment rate near 2%) and enriching the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. We aren’t to the “meat wave” level that Russia has inflicted on its population (especially regional minorities) but for the white Christian nationalists more war offers a patriotic path to ethnic cleansing. Of course, you have to purge the top brass of minorities and “woke” leadership to pull that off.
One other thought, hiring has stopped in the current economy. An interesting effect for low-end citizen workers is that they are being hurt by mass deportation and concentration camping. It’s a self-reinforcing mechanism referred to as “complementarity”, which, because Trumpsters never do their homework, has led to massive unintentional job destruction. With a higher defense budget, at least Jimmy Bob can get a job capturing and securing the Greenland ice sheet or deep-sea clathrate nodules.
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Yes, the wording is confusing. It’d be clearer if it were written, “Orbán faces a serious chance of losing reelection after four previous reelections.”
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Here’s a lesson that the Felon can learn from Orban:
Orban not only LOST, but also conceded the election to his adversary.
Maybe trump will see the light and change his ways, offering to repay everyone harmed by his malice.
Ya think? At least he’ll know that it’s possible to lose an election and face the reality (for others, of course, if not for him).
- Bolsinaro
- Orban
- Lots of GOPers in November.
- ?
It was completely inappropriate for Vance to do that. But then again, water remains wet.
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Talk about inappropriate!!! He probably did do this, but it might have landed in the felon’s account.
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Whoa, it looks like Orban has a penchant for cheeseburgers, much like his pal Donnie! Mar-a-LardAss!
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