Today, Explained - How to lose a democracy in 10,000 days

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

The same man who helped usher in democracy in Hungary is the one who’s chipping away at it now. American conservatives want to know how Prime Minister Viktor Orban did it. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers and Matt Collette, fact-checked by Victoria Dominguez, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. And I'm Noelle King. Noelle, you and I have a favorite kind of question to answer on this show. Yes, democracy. We're both interested in democracy and how it's doing. Especially in these United States. And today you have once again left the District of Columbia to answer questions about how American democracy is doing. Where are you this time, Noelle? Is it Topeka? Is it Alaska? Is it Tujunga? None of the above. I'm in Budapest, Hungary.

Well, that's not even in the United States. It's all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. But the reason I'm here, Sean, is because there's a certain type of American conservative that is looking at Hungary, which used to be a democracy and now is not. There's lots of anti-democratic stuff going on here. And a lot of U.S. conservatives are interested in how Hungary did this. They think what's going on here is not such a bad thing. And so this week they've flown to Hungary for a big conservative conference. And I am here, too. We miss you.

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or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hello to all of our friends in Hungary. Among the high profile conservatives going to the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC in Hungary. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference. We are so excited to come join you in your freedom-loving country with a lot of our friends and VIPs from America. Candace Owens, conservative activist,

conspiracy theorist, friend of Kanye. Hey guys, it's Candace Owens. I'm so looking forward to speaking at CPAC Budapest. Ben Ferguson, the right-wing radio host who's been on air since he was 13 years old. And I can't wait to see you in Budapest. And Rick Santorum, best known for, well, maybe just Google him. I am very excited to be able to be there and speak at this event.

I hope to see you there. But the real draw is Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, a leader whose political career did not begin when Donald Trump endorsed him last year, or even when he endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. His life in politics began many, many years ago. And Viktor Sebastian has known Orban from the beginning. I'm a former journalist for many, many years, but I now write history books. I'm a historian. Why are certain types of American conservative so interested in Hungary right now, do you think? Because the guy who's presently in charge, Viktor Orban, is a winner. He expresses a kind of Christian nationalism that has very powerful resonance, obviously, in America. He's succeeded in

essentially taking over a country. Here's footage that we just shot in Budapest. There are not tent cities of drug addicts living in the parks here. There isn't garbage and human waste littering the sidewalks. People don't get beheaded at intersections. BLM is not allowed to torch entire neighborhoods in Budapest. They see that Hungary, small though it is and cut off though it is, and in Europe though it is, has actually managed to do many of the things that the nationalist right in America is aiming to do. In a nutshell, I think that's the reason. That's how Americans used to live before our leaders decided they no longer cared about you.

Victor, Hungary's recent history, you could argue, starts with the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. You were a baby. I know your family had to flee. What happened? Well, in the war, Hungary was occupied in the final battle against Hitler from the east. In October 1944, when the Red Army crossed into Hungary, the Hungarians welcomed them as liberators. But in Budapest, the fighting was at its fiercest. The Soviet Union captured most of Eastern Europe, including Hungary, and they kept it as a Soviet state. Socialized it, turned it completely communist, a one-party state. It was a communist state.

No freedom, bogus elections. It was an adjunct to the Soviet Union. In 1951 and 1952, thousands of people were deported to the mines, state farms or concentration camps. My mother's first husband was arrested, and we were terrified to be deported to the country. Fear drove many to suicide. In 1956, Hungary tried to rebel and pull out of the pact with the Soviet Union. In spite of their lack of training, the Hungarians did well against the Soviet tanks, drawing them into narrow streets and dropping Molotov cocktails into their petrol tanks to destroy them.

For a short while the Russians declared they were going to pull out and indeed did pull out, but then a few days later returned with overwhelming force and completely demolished large parts of Hungary, destroyed the hopes of freedom for the Hungarians. This is Hungary calling. The last remaining station. We are requesting you to send us immediate aid. For the sake of God and freedom, help Hungary. That was one of the defining moments in the Cold War. That was when it was clear that the Soviets at that point

were not going to give up any of the domains that they had won in the Second World War. And it was equally clear, despite the rhetoric in large parts of the West that they were going to roll back communism, they weren't really going to do very much to help any of the rebellions because it was too risky. There is a tradition of young people rising up against the Soviets. And then in the late 80s, the Soviet Union, as you say, begins to fall apart. And there is a young man in Hungary who begins to get a lot of attention.

Can you tell me the first time Viktor Orban came to your attention? I was a journalist covering Russia and Eastern Europe in the mid-80s when the communist system was throughout Eastern Europe and indeed in the Soviet Union was falling apart. Orban at that point was a kind of radical chic figure. Radical chic. It's the go-to dissident. The moment one landed as a reporter, one landed in Hungary, in Budapest, one of the first people you'd want to go to is to talk to Viktor Orban. He had really good English, he was incredibly smart, super smart. He had a Rolodex of everyone who was anyone in the dissident movement throughout Eastern Europe. He started this party here and some university student chums, called Fidesz, which was the Association of Young Democrats,

as a very liberal anti-communist organization totally connected with Western Europe. Their aim was to get rid of communists and bring about a democratic, very traditional, West European, liberal, centrist government deeply connected with Europe. That was their idea. Orban used to say his party was super cool centrist. He didn't want any members over 35.

Religion was never mentioned. That wasn't the kind of revolution he wanted to bring about then. It was the party of cool. Fidesz was the party of cool. He was always dressed in sort of jeans, white shirt, five-day stubble. One would ask him, well, what do you see? Let's say the communists go, Soviet Union goes, Russian troops are no longer there. What kind of country do you want? And he said, well, I want it to be a boring, normal European country, say Sweden or Austria or something. That was the kind of revolution the dissidents wanted in the late 80s. And Orban is young. He's hot.

He's oriented toward Western Europe. And in June of 1989, as I understand it, he did something remarkable. What happened? In most of Eastern Europe, the great moment was the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was the symbol of the Soviet empire falling apart and the hope to democracy rising again, being in the ascendance again. In Hungary, the great dramatic moment was this extraordinary reburial of Imre Nagy, who was the leader of the 1956 revolution. He and his group had been hanged and buried in the middle of nowhere. Outrage sweeps the non-communist world in reaction to the execution last week of Imre Nagy and three other leaders of Hungary's freedom fighters at 1956. But in 1989, there was a big, big symbolic campaign

to get them reburied, and it was a huge occasion. June 16th, 300,000 people in Heroes Square, Budapest, to mourn the man who was prime minister during the dramatic days of 1956. It was a remarkable event because it wasn't totally clear that the Soviet system and the communist system had been dead. There was still some edginess, there was still some nerves. I'm watching the streets, I'm looking for red flags, red stars.

I didn't see even one. Big demonstrations, there'd never been such things in communist Hungary before, or not to anything like that extent. Something is going on, but it's not clear. The other thing you couldn't talk about in Hungary then, even though it was fairly liberal, the thing that you couldn't talk about in Hungary then, even though it was fairly liberal, the thing that you couldn't say in Hungary publicly then was Russians go home, Russian tanks get out of Hungary.

There was a whole load of boring speeches by communist apparatchiks. And then Orbán comes up in his jeans and white shirt and stubble. Makes this very short but brilliant speech about freedom and about the hopes for democracy. And the main point of it was, he dared to say the taboo thing that you couldn't say publicly in Russia. Russian troops get out of Hungary. There was this unbelievably massive cheer that sent goosebumps through most people I think who were there. It was an absolutely extraordinary moment. Very, very few Hungarians

outside the small dissident circle knew who Viktor Orban was at that point. And then after that, everyone knew Viktor Orban. It was the moment that made him. Coming up, how that freedom fighter turned his back on democracy. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee

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It's Stay Explained. We're back with Victor Sebastien. Here's where we left off. This kid gets up, this 26-year-old, 27-year-old kid gets up. He makes a speech. He blows the country away. Everybody now knows his name. He has said the thing that no one has ever said.

And then what happens? He goes into politics, which I guess is what everybody would have expected from a young man like this. Tell me about his early political career. Well, he leads this party Fidesz through parliamentary elections. He leads them as he has done up till now. He's always been in politics. He's never had any other work, never had any other job. So he is in opposition for the first eight years of democratic Hungary. And then he wins an election in the late 90s. It's a kind of center- to Europe, he is elected prime minister, and then he just becomes kind of a stodgy Hungarian politician? Essentially, yeah. Who was his constituency? Was it the young people in the jeans and the sneakers who voted him into office? Who liked this guy? By then he was

starting to appeal to much more traditional conservatives in Budapest, but mostly people outside Budapest. But of course, that's what he was trying to get at. But he didn't fire anyone up. He was too cautious. That's what he said. And the economic problems were enormous. Ah, so the fiery opposition leader now has to deal with actual governing. And his party, Fidesz, is voted out in 2002. What happens to him next? They lose power for two terms, so eight years. He uses that period to completely transform.

That's when the transformation of Fidesz happens. He saw the coming tide was going to be what's called populism now, what's called, you know, nationalism, ultra-nationalism, much further to the right, much more rigorously conservative. The use of Christian rhetoric. He'd never used any Catholic rhetoric before. He'd never gone down that road. This is when he starts anti-immigrant rhetoric. Orban was elected prime minister again in 2010. He's been in power ever since.

If I'd been in Budapest over the last 12 years or so, what would I have heard Orban say that would have surprised me if I knew him in the 80s? Oh, it's the fault of the global elite. It's the fault of the city dwellers. It's the fault of all the pro-Europeans.

It's the same rhetoric as you're hearing almost everywhere as regards after the financial disaster of 2008. Although in Hungary, as always, it's foreigners that are to blame. The race is on to get Hungary's border fence ready by the end of the month. It's being built by prison inmates and put in place by soldiers and the unemployed. He's not anti-Semitic, but there are plenty of people around him who are. A lot of the rhetoric is very unpleasant anti-Semitic rhetoric. The face of billionaire philanthropist and native Hungarian George Soros is the centerpiece of Orban's re-election

campaign and though Orban denies it, Jewish groups see another appeal to history in the vilification of Soros. This is really the cliche that that Jews are secretly working to undermine the European white and Christian race. Do you think that Orban authentically became more conservative and more nationalist over time? Or was this entirely pragmatic? Was this entirely about staying in power? In my view, it's all completely calculated and pragmatic. I don't believe he's really got an ideological bone in his body. He probably didn't believe all the liberal stuff he was talking in the 80s. He doesn't believe in anything

that isn't a benefit to him. He is the ultimate opportunist. It is a big accusation that you're making. And because you're a journalist and historian, I want to ask you if you would defend the point. Why do you believe this about Viktor Orban? What makes you think that this man is the ultimate opportunist? Many people will say those things that he would say privately are totally, completely different than those things that he would say in public. The other thing you really need to know about Orbán is the level of corruption of the government that he has led. He has never had a real job. He's never had a business. None of his family have really had much businesses, yet somehow they're billionaires. Well, how does that happen? Orbán's best friend, a gas fitter called Lorinc Mesoros, quickly became the richest man in Hungary, leading to accusations of nepotism and economic corruption.

The prime minister's son-in-law, Istvan Tiborz, also saw his wealth rapidly increase. He's used public money to make his friends extremely rich. He's used the EU's money to make his friends extremely rich. They have massive contracts with EU companies, and all those contracts go to his friends. They have grown wealthy on massive EU handouts. That's how he's corrupted the state. You're saying this is about money, this is about getting rich. This is not about an actual philosophy of governance. So how does Viktor Orban start to consolidate power and then continue down that road to where he is today? What he won in 2010 was a two-thirds majority in parliament,

which basically allowed him to change the constitution. And what he did was he created committees that appointed the judiciary. It's the party that appoints the judiciary. There is a general climate of fear that they can do anything to us judges. In certain types of cases, maybe one involving a foreign currency loan, or refugees, or referring to a politician from any of the parties, the judge may think he or she is expected to rule in a certain way. He created a council that had ultimate control over the press, radio, television, the internet, in a way that's unknown almost anywhere else in Europe. An International

Press Institute report describes state media as uncritically echoing the messaging of the government. While the government. While the government's accused of distributing its massive advertising budget to finance private media outlets that support it and starve those that don't. He used his original two-thirds majority in order to obtain these commissions, which gave him ultimate control over the state in a way that is unusual in a democracy. And he gerrymandered the voting districts. That happens in other countries too, but it's done in a much, much more systematic way in Hungary.

Four years ago, not this election, he got a two-thirds majority of 65% of the seats on the 39% of the vote. It's a very similar country now than it was in the last few years of communism. Only the one party state is Fidesz. Do you think Hungary still is a democracy? No longer entirely a democracy. Even though Viktor Orban managed to pull all of this off within the confines of the law. Like he didn't do anything illegal.

I'm not saying he's a fascist authoritarian. He isn't. But he's certainly not a Democrat either. That's an interesting argument. All kinds of things are in one's country within the law. It doesn't necessarily make it either democratic or make it right. I mean, it's within the law, but I've been trying to explain how the laws are made. And the laws are not made in a democratic way. Right. I'm saying he did it within the law. And you're saying, yeah, but he made all the laws. He appointed every single judge and the judges make the laws. And he made the constituencies in which the parliament in which he's ruling that

is elected. And that isn't entirely democratic. There's this old saying, you know, the voting is democratic, the counting isn't. There are other things that are happening that makes it essentially a one-party state. Voting is only one part of democracy. You need a free press, you need a free judiciary, you need separation of powers, all these things that don't apply in Hungary. I think the thing that continues to astonish me is Viktor Orban is not Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus. He's not throwing people in prison. He's not killing his opponents in the

streets. He's not poisoning people. He's not. And there is opposition allowed. There's no people being sent to the salt mines. It feels like he's making a very specific point, doesn't it? You don't need to send people to the salt mines in order to keep power. That seems to me what makes him so special. kind of similar. The last political prisoner in Hungary under the communists was in 1974, a guy called Miklos Harasti. How totalitarian, and I don't regard Hungary as totalitarian, to take that word away, but authoritarian. How things work in Hungary is that you don't get on if you're not a part of the ruling party. That's how it works. This is in a way the same kind of way that communist Hungary worked. You're in or you're out. You're allowed this or you're not allowed this.

And it damages families, it damages the fabric of a society. It becomes totally impossible to run a proper democratic society if you're an opposition person, but your family are scared that you might do the wrong thing to jeopardize their position. It's a very subtle, very clever process. It doesn't require prisons. It doesn't require salt mines. It requires a system of being on the outside of everything. You'll never get into the right side if you're not a member of the ruling party. And so I will end, Victor, by asking into the right side if you're not a member of the ruling

party. And so I will end, Victor, by asking you the question I asked you at the beginning. Why is the American right so captivated by Hungary and by Viktor Orban? Orban's a winner. They think that he offers the formula for winning electorally, and then when you win electorally, maintaining your power electorally. A winner with no salt mines, a winner with no secret police, just a guy who wins

and gets away with winning. Yeah. Yeah. The state has been stolen and corrupted. It could be so much better. Tomorrow on the show, we will be reporting from Budapest. We will be talking to Hungarians, those who like Viktor Orban, those who do not. And we will be asking them how they feel about their country moving from democracy to something very different. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan.

It was edited by Jolie Myers and Matthew Collette. It was engineered by Efim Shapiro. And it was fact-checked by Tori Dominguez. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you