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Message to Trump: Authoritarianism Is Not Inevitable

At times it is easy to become demoralized and to fear that the anti-democracy forces in America cannot be stopped and Americans watch the Felon's efforts to destroy longstanding norms and pro-democracy institutions. Add to this the Felon's efforts to silence critics in the media and his so-far failed efforts to prosecute the Felon's political opponents and critics and it can be depressing.  Yet, the election in Hungary on this past Sunday demonstrated that even with a highly stacked deck against democracy, it is still possible to defeat would be authoritarians and dictators if politicians promote the right messages and are able to convince the larger population that voting can and will make a difference.  In Hungary the voter turn out was almost 80% of voters - something that should embarrass America's lazy and indifferent voters who by staying home basically vote for those most adverse to their social and economic interests.  While the differences between Hungary and America are stark in numerous ways, the take away lesson is that authoritarianism and dictatorship are not inevitable and that it is possible to topple corrupt , pro-Russia, anti-democratic regimes like that of Orban and the Felon. A piece in The Atlantic looks at what can be learned from Hungary's election:

In the end, the defeat of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, required not just an ordinary election campaign or new messaging but rather the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement. And by building exactly that, Hungary’s opposition changed politics around the world.

Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people. As it turns out, history doesn’t work like that. “Real” people grow tired of their rulers. Old ideas become stale. Younger people question orthodoxy. Illiberalism leads to corruption. And if Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

Péter Magyar, the opposition leader and likely next Hungarian prime minister, has now won by a substantial margin, giving him and his party, Tisza, a constitutional majority. To do so, they had to overcome obstacles not usually present in European democracies. After 16 years of what Orbán himself described as an illiberal regime, the Hungarian leader’s political party, Fidesz, had come to control much of the judiciary, bureaucracy, and universities, as well as a group of oligarchic companies that in turn controlled a good chunk of the economy.

Orbán used his control of the state to build an extraordinary web of international illiberal and far-right supporters, and funding mechanisms to support some of them. In the last weeks of the campaign, these friends and beneficiaries rallied round. Orbán received visits or verbal support from Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen (the leader of the French far right), Alice Weidel (the leader of the German far right), and other illiberal leaders from Argentina, Poland, Slovakia, Brazil, and more. Both Hungarian and American news organizations reported that a Russian intelligence team had set up in Budapest to amplify Orbán’s social-media campaign, and perhaps to stage provocations.

By contrast, Magyar had very little access to Hungarian media, the overwhelming majority of which is owned either by the state or by Fidesz oligarchs. He and his party had limited access even to billboard space, both because they had less money than the ruling party and because many advertising spaces are controlled by the government. Tisza leaders and supporters faced personal obstacles as well. . . . Even three weeks ago, many Tisza leaders in Budapest would speak only off the record.

Magyar and his team fought back on the ground. Knowing he could not win if he stuck to Budapest and other large cities, Magyar has been traveling the country since 2024, visiting small towns and villages, many more than once. In the last few days of the campaign, he was holding five or six election meetings every day. He avoided the themes that Orbán chose to promote—global politics, the war in Ukraine, the conspiracy that Ukraine was somehow colluding against or might even invade Hungary—and focused his campaign speeches and social media on the economy, health care, and schools. . . . He portrayed himself as a part of the European, democratic, law-abiding center-right. He waved a lot of Hungarian flags, as did his supporters.

Despite enormous restrictions and both financial and political pressure, the tiny number of journalists who were still able to report in Hungary also made a difference. In the past few weeks, the investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, along with his colleagues at the website Direkt26, one of the few independent outlets in the country, patiently debunked Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda, producing leaked transcripts and audio that revealed Orbán and his foreign minister colluding with Putin and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.

For years Orbán has claimed to be fighting shadowy foreign forces—George Soros, the European Union, migrants—but in fact he was himself dependent on foreigners all along.

Those stories resonated, especially with younger Hungarians. At a rock concert in Heroes’ Square in central Budapest on Friday, tens of thousands of them started chanting “Russians, go home”—the same chant that their grandparents used when Soviet soldiers invaded their country in 1956.

Although results are not final, Tisza appears to have won more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. That would give Magyar a constitutional majority that should allow him to pick apart some of the damage that Orbán has done to the Hungarian constitution and to public life. In his victory speech, he called for the resignation of the president, the prosecutor general, the president of the constitutional court, and other institutions. He said he would rejoin the European legal system. In response, according to one witness, Hungarians at his rally chanted, “Europe, Europe, Europe.” . . . .Some in the opposition are still expecting dirty tricks in the next days and weeks, before Orbán formally hands over power.

But whatever happens next, this election represents a real turning point. For most European governments, this result is a relief: We can’t know yet what kind of government Tisza will create, but it won’t be one that functions as Russia’s puppet in Europe, blocking EU funding for Ukraine or European sanctions on Russia. Nor will it be a regime that serves as a model for Americans or Europeans who want to capture their own states, or take apart their own checks and balances, or impose their own illiberal ideologies on people who don’t accept them.

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Orban: Hungary Ousts an Autocrat

For years Viktor Orban has been the darling of many on the political far right in America who seek either an autocracy in America or a very much truncated democracy. And - much like the Felon - Orban constantly was a thorn in the side of the NATO, the European Union and Ukraine and a reliable ally of Vladimir Putin.  With a landslide election sending Orban into defeat - unlike the Felon he conceded defeat - his replacement, Peter Magyar is promising a reversal of many of Orban's pro-Russia policies and positions and a crackdown on the corruption rampant under Orban's regime.  He has also pledged that Hungary would be a strong NATO/EU ally - something Putin is likely to detest.  The Felon saw Orban as a role model of how to destroy a democracy and make oneself a dictator and he even dispatched JD Vance to campaign with Orban as a last ditch attempt to save his regime.  Thankfully, that effort was a spectacular failure.  May Hungary's rejection of strong man rule  be an inspiration for American voters in November.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at Orban's defeat:

Friends danced on one another’s shoulders. Fathers embraced their children. A teenage girl wept. Beer flowed. After 16 years, Hungarians had voted their strongman leader, Viktor Orbán, out of office. “I knew it was possible,” Balázs Nagy, a warehouse worker, told me this evening in Budapest, on the banks of the Danube. “Hungarians are stubborn, and we don’t give up on each other.” To his wife, Szilvi, the evening’s results had reaffirmed a truth less geographic than metaphoric. “We’re in the heart of Europe, and that’s where we belong,” she said.

The couple stood in a throng of people waiting for Péter Magyar, who led the opposition to victory. Three hours after the polls closed in national elections, they watched as he marched through the crowd holding a Hungarian flag. “Fellow Hungarians, countrymen: We have done it,” he said. “Together we have replaced the Orbán system. Together we have liberated Hungary.”

Voters rejected Orbán’s party, Fidesz, in favor of Magyar’s new faction, Tisza. In the process, they set a new national record for turnout. Magyar is a onetime Orbán loyalist who turned on the prime minister two years ago and managed to do what past opposition leaders couldn’t—overcome the incumbent’s enormous advantages. Since 2010, Orbán has rewritten election rules and removed independent checks on his power. He has suffocated civil society while extending his control over the media. And he has presided over patronage networks that have enriched his friends and family while impoverishing his society. State contracts helped turn the prime minister’s childhood friend, once a gas retrofitter, into a billionaire, but salaries for everyday Hungarians have languished at less than half the EU average.

The European Parliament calls Hungary an “electoral autocracy”—voting still takes place, but under fundamentally undemocratic conditions. That makes elections harder to contest but, as Hungarian voters proved, not impossible to win. Today, an election toppled a government whose advantages included support from the governments in both the United States and Russia. Echoing a chant in the crowd, Magyar declared in his victory speech, “Russians, go home.”

Efforts by foreign governments to prop up Orbán gave his defeat implications that extend well beyond this small country of fewer than 10 million people. The prime minister has been a scourge to international institutions and a source of inspiration to far-right politicians throughout the West. He was demonizing immigrants and dictating talking points to friendly media before Donald Trump came down the golden escalator. Trump desperately tried to keep Orbán in power, issuing multiple endorsements and dispatching his vice president, J. D. Vance, to campaign with the prime minister in Budapest last week. Among Hungarians, however, sympathies had shifted dramatically. . . . . “I vote for European values and against Russian influence.”

Magyar, meanwhile, vowed to recoup funds frozen by EU institutions over rule-of-law violations, impose a wealth tax, and imprison Fidesz officials he accused of pilfering public coffers. “We will not be a country of no consequences,” Magyar told his supporters as he claimed victory.

Consistently, independent polls showed the opposition with a sizable lead, but Western diplomats in Budapest cautioned me not to underestimate Orbán’s ability to mobilize voters at the last moment, or to manufacture circumstances justifying a state of emergency. They said Magyar would need a blowout, which is exactly what he got.

His party is set to command the two-thirds legislative majority necessary to amend the constitution, as well as to reconstitute influential bodies such as the Constitutional Court and to change so-called cardinal laws governing areas including media regulation and family policy. In his victory speech, Magyar said his party would have a “mandate to build a functioning and humane home.”

A police officer who had traveled 70 miles with her family to listen to Magyar told me that Hungarians had used the last chance available to them to remove Orbán, whom she called a “dictator.” She regretted only that her mother, who died recently, hadn’t lived long enough “to see this ghost of Orbán go away.” . . . . It’s April again in Hungary, but where armed struggle once failed, democratic elections have now succeeded.

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Four Ways Trump’s War of Choice Is Weakening America

The negotiations with Iran to end the Felon's war of choice in Pakistan have collapsed, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and it is unclear what the Felon's next move will be as oil prices remain high and are driving up other consumer prices. The Felon has threatened to use the U.S. Navy to blockade the Strait of Hormuz to cut of Iran's inflow of funds from oil sales, yet that would seemingly make the reduction in oil shipments even worse. The only things that are clear are (i) that the planning for the Felon's war of choice was a spectacle of total incompetence where warnings from various experts and career diplomats were ignored, and (ii) the war has weakened America, not strengthened it, despite the Felon's bombastic claims.   Moreover, if the war continues, the weakening of America will likely only be increased.  A long main editorial in the New York Times looks at four ways in which the Felon's impulsive and poorly thought through war have harmed the nation. Indeed, America's enemies must be rejoicing - if not outright laughing - as the Felon finds himself in a mess of his own petulant and hubris filled creation with seemingly no good exit strategy.  Even the Felon admitted today to Fox News, that gas prices could be higher by the time of the 2026 mid-term elections.  Here are column highlights:

When [the Felon] President Trump attacked Iran on Feb. 28, we called his decision reckless. He went to war without seeking congressional approval or the support of most allies. He offered thin and contradictory justifications to the American people. He failed to explain why this naïve attempt at regime change would end better than earlier attempts by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the six weeks since, the recklessness of his war has become clearer yet. He has disdained careful military planning and acted on gut instinct and wishfulness. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel predicted to Mr. Trump that the attacks would inspire a popular uprising in Iran, the director of the C.I.A. countered that the notion was “farcical,” The Times reported. Mr. Trump proceeded nonetheless. He was so confident that he assembled no plan to respond to an obvious countermove available to Iran: causing a spike in oil prices by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Nor did he develop a feasible strategy for securing the enriched uranium that Iran can use to rebuild its nuclear program.

Last week he careened from illegal and immoral threats about erasing Iranian civilization to a last-minute cease-fire that accomplishes few of his announced war aims. Iran continues to defy a central part of the deal and block most traffic from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. [The Felon's] Mr. Trump’s irresponsibility has left the United States on the cusp of a humiliating strategic defeat.

As we have emphasized, Iran’s regime deserves no sympathy. It has spent decades oppressing its people and sponsoring terrorism elsewhere. . . . Its navy, air force and air defenses have been degraded, and its nuclear program has been set back. Its murderous network of regional allies — including Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria’s fallen government — has been eroded.

Yet these successes cannot mask the ways in which the war has weakened the United States. We count four main setbacks for America’s national interests that are the direct result of [the Felon's] Mr. Trump’s carelessness. These setbacks likewise weaken global democracy when authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere were already feeling emboldened.

The most tangible blow to the United States and the world is the increased influence that Iran has secured over the global economy by weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the strait, which is next to Iran’s southern shore.

Before the war, Iran’s leaders feared that blocking traffic would invite new economic sanctions and a military attack. Once the attack happened anyway, Iran closed the strait to nearly all traffic except its own ships. The policy is inexpensive because it mostly involves a threat, namely that a drone, missile or small boat may blow up a tanker. Forcibly reopening the strait, by contrast, would require an enormous military operation potentially including ground troops and an extended occupation.

[The Felon's] Mr. Trump’s lack of foresight about the strait reveals glaring incompetence. . . . . The war has shown Iran’s leaders that controlling the waterway is a real possibility. Eventually, other countries are likely to develop alternatives, including pipelines, but those solutions will take time. For now, Iran appears to have won diplomatic leverage that it could have only dreamed of six weeks ago. The only apparent way to change the situation would be for a global coalition to demand the strait’s reopening — the sort of coalition that Mr. Trump is distinctly unsuited to lead.

The second setback is to America’s military standing around the world. This war, together with recent U.S. assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies, has burned through a substantial portion of the stockpile of some weapons, such as Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors (which can shoot down other missiles). Experts believe the Pentagon used more than one-quarter of its Tomahawk missiles just in the war against Iran.

The war has also revealed that the U.S. military is vulnerable to new ways of warfare. America used billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech munitions to destroy Iran’s traditional air and naval forces, while Tehran used cheap, disposable drones to halt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and hit targets in the region. The world saw how a country that spends one-hundredth of what the United States does on its military can seek to outlast it in a conflict.

The war’s third big cost is to America’s alliances. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and most of Western Europe refused to support the United States in this war — unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s treatment of them. When he demanded their help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, most allies declined. These countries will remain allies in important ways, but they have made clear that they no longer consider the United States a reliable friend. They are working to build stronger relationships with one another so that they can better resist Washington in the future.

The fourth setback is to America’s moral authority. For all the flaws of this country, it remains a beacon to many around the world. When pollsters ask people where they would move if they could, the United States is consistently the runaway No. 1 answer. America’s appeal stems not only from its prosperity but also from its freedom and democratic values. Mr. Trump has undercut those values for his entire political career and perhaps never more than in the past week, when he made odious threats to erase Iranian civilization. His secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, made a series of bloodthirsty remarks, including a threat to offer “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

Those would be war crimes. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have embraced a brutal approach to armed conflict that the United States led the world in rejecting after World War II. By doing so, they have undermined the foundations of America’s global leadership, which claims to place human dignity at the center of an argument for a freer and more open world.

When America is weaker and poorer, as this war has made us, authoritarianism benefits.

The best hope now may sound naïve, but it remains true. Mr. Trump should at long last recognize the ineptitude of his impulsive, go-it-alone approach. He should involve Congress and seek help from America’s allies to minimize the damage from his war.

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