The last (relatively) sovereign state within the European Union has been eventually brought to toe the EU ideological line. Viktor Orban’s FIDESZ party has suffered a landslide defeat in Hungary. Viktor Orban, the incumbent prime minister, a man who would have visited Washington and Moscow within the same month, the man whom the European Union establishment hated viscerally (also referring to him as a dictator!) for sixteen long years has been toppled. The TISZA opposition party and its leader Peter Magiar won 138 seats in a 199-seat Hungarian parliament, which enables them to single-handedly change the constitution. The Brussels bureaucrats are gloating. How did it come about?
Democracy is the expression of the will of the people, as we know, but the will of the people is malleable. Long exposure to the intense anti-Orban propaganda that had been carried out for several years has had its effect. Add to this a couple of errors perpetrated by the Orban government, and you have the whole picture. What were the government’s errors? Corruption, the close liaison between the Hungarian authorities and President Donald Trump, who turned out to become a war-monger, the fact that Budapest backed up Israel in the latter’s conflict with Iran… Also, the European Union’s sanctions imposed on Hungary as punishment for Viktor Orban’s independence and the simple factor of Hungarians growing tired of having the same leader for so many years.
The overall result? The overall result will be that the European Union will be more monolithic than before. Viktor Orban was a beacon of independence and resistance to Brussels’ dictate. Sadly, the European Union’s steamroller has walked over the land of Magyars. Pity.
Pity because unanimity is a straight path to self-annihilation. Pity because unanimity petrifies and fossilises ideology – any ideology – and a petrified and fossilised ideology is suicidal even if it is an otherwise good ideology. Ever. Democracies pride themselves on having a system of checks and balances. Hungary was – even if small – such a check. Thanks to the veto right, this small country could effectively block some of the (more irrational) European Union initiatives. Now, all the European Union party-members will clap their leaders and execute their leaders’ orders. A divergent voice is what prevents a group or a system from going totally astray. This divergent voice of reason will be lacking in the years to come. Pity.
