In Hungary, the independence of media consumption can also be like this: Janos Backa, a lumberjack by profession, lives on the outskirts of Maroslele, in Puszta. He doesn’t read newspapers or watch television. But he is determined to vote against Viktor Orban’s party this Sunday: “I walk around and talk to people. That’s how I get information,” the 70-year-old says on this cold, windy day. “Orban’s system has to end. He ruined the country with his corruption, his friends got rich.” Janos Backa happily salutes one of 30 minibuses with megaphones that the opposition alliance around Orban’s challenger Peter Marki-Zay is sending to Hungarian provinces to persuade the last undecided to go to the polls. According to the latest polls, Orban’s Fidesz party is just under two percentage points ahead of Marki-Zay’s alliance.
“The smaller the villages in Hungary, the more vulnerable they are to pressure from Fidesz,” says Tibor Antaloczy. If a place like Maroslele has little or no corporate tax revenue, it is materially completely dependent on the state. That’s why almost all village mayors are interested in getting along with Fidesz. Antaloczy has been driving one of the megaphone minibuses from village to village through the Csongrad region of southern Hungary for days.
Five moments for democracy
Local newspapers have been activated by the government and the few opposition media are unable to penetrate the village of Maroslele, with 2,000 inhabitants. People react – here too – differently to the action of the megaphone: three streets away from opposition voter Janos Backa, Orban is elected: Yes, Fidesz is corrupt, says the retired bus driver, who does not want to read his name on the newspaper – “but who is not that?” And yes, Orban did negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin – but other Western European politicians did the same.
Some members of the opposition hoped that Putin’s terrible war against Ukraine would hurt Orban in the election campaign – given Hungarians’ traumatic historical experiences with the Czarist Empire and the Soviet Union. But according to polls after the start of the war, the opposite happened, with Orban gaining points. This also surprises and shocks historian Laszlo Eörsi, one of the most important experts on the Hungarian uprising of 1956, which then-Stalinist Moscow had bloodily crushed. “In 1956, the Hungarian people were completely different from today,” says Eörsi. “There was solidarity and cooperation at that time. In the history of Hungary there have always been times when society was open, when people walked towards democracy and did not expect the state to regulate everything. That was the revolution of 1848, after the wars of 1918 and 1945, the uprising in 1956 and the turning point in 1989/90.” Eörsi believes that the main reason why the “demand for the restoration of an autocratic state” gained the upper hand in Hungary was the notorious speech that then-Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany gave in 2006. At the time, Gyurcsany wanted to convince members of his party of the need for reforms – and asked them to stop “lying”. The secret speech was leaked, sparking violent protests by the Fidesz-led opposition in Budapest and starting the decline of the Socialist Party that led to Orban’s electoral victory in 2010.
More than 90% of the media in Hungary are close to the government. To reach voters, the opposition is touring the country with buses and megaphones.
– © Lauer
But the fact that Orban made “Putinism” socially acceptable in his country is his personal “great achievement”, which he achieved with his charisma and talent for propaganda, says Eörsi. Hungary’s opposition to Russia has a long tradition. As early as 1849, the then Tsarist Empire contributed to the suppression of the Hungarian struggle for freedom. The image of Russia in Hungary became even more negative after the emergence of the imperial and royal dual monarchy, due to the strengthening of Pan-Slavism. Orban has managed to rally one and a half to two million Hungarians behind him who “religiously” believe in him as a leader, says Eörsi. “Emperors Franz Josef and Miklos Horthy were also popular – but today’s level of religion is unique.”
Aggressive courtship of Hungarians abroad
However, Orban’s camp seems anything but certain of victory. It is being increasingly aggressively announced that voters will have to decide between “war and peace” on April 3 – with Orban representing the peace camp because he refuses direct arms deliveries to Ukraine. Marki-Zay is portrayed as a warmonger for supporting NATO policies. As things can get tight for Fidesz, Hungarians living abroad in neighboring countries are also being aggressively courted. In Transylvania, Orban expects around half a million votes and therefore a seat or two for Fidesz in parliament. The local Party of Ethnic Hungarians (RMDSZ) is actively involved in transporting the completed postcards. The opposition fears massive electoral fraud in this context, especially as the RMDSZ is radically and openly pro-Orban. No RMDSZ politician was willing to meet Marki-Zay. When the opposition leader recently held an election campaign rally at a cafe in Cluj, Transylvania, Orban’s supporters hacked the site’s website and posted lewd photos on it.
Fear of fraud was also the reason the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent observers to the Hungarian elections this time around – an unusual process for a well-established EU democracy. Sources close to the government, who do not want to be identified, tell the “Wiener Zeitung” that Orban’s apparatus is very afraid of the current presence of the OSCE.
The current situation reminds historian Eörsi of a poem by the classic Endre Ady (1877-1919), well known in Hungary, in which he compares his homeland to a ferry that glides constantly from the east to the west bank. “But I’d rather go back”, that is, to the East, is Ady’s bitter joke.