Orbán's Loss is a Huge Win for the West
Hungary's authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán lost his re-election campaign in what is widely seen as a rebuke of his far right populism, and huge news for the West, NATO and Ukraine.
The far-right authoritarian’s loss to Péter Magyar is not just good news for the EU, but also for NATO, for Ukraine and for western democracy.
16 years after he came to power, Viktor Orbán was facing an uphill battle this election, with a central issue being his close ties with Russia.
The Russians were so concerned about their main proxy in NATO faltering that they suggested he do what apparently they see as the remedy for a failing candidate, suggesting weeks ago that he fake an assassination attempt.
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Yes, apparently, a fake assassination attempt is Russia’s go-to when it looks like a candidate they need to win is failing.
A pause.
On Sunday, the election was held and Orbán lost. Unlike his buddy Donald Trump, whom he appeared to mentor on the ways to send a previously great country into a democratic backslide, Orbán actually conceded.
His loss is a huge win for the West and its shared liberal democratic values.
A Great Day For Western Democracy
Who can forget our own president, himself a student under Orbán, describing himself during the 2024 campaign as saying to some president (caveat that most of Trump’s recounted conversations are inaccurate at best and completely fictional often):
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’
“I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ ... ‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”
Oh, yes. The old I’ll encourage Russia to do whatever they want to you. That’s our president. The anti-American, anti-democracy president, who puts and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Orbán above European presidents and British Prime Ministers, aka, our allies.
Things were so bad that under Orbán, Hungary was accused of leaking secrets to Putin to such an extent that the EU chose to limit the flow of confidential material being shared with Hungary.
“The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X at the time. “We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time. That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary.”
“Even ahead of a critical NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023, envoys moved to cut Budapest’s delegation out of sensitive talks,” former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said according to Politico EU.
For a decade, Trump and US conservatives explicitly adopted political strategies, governing techniques, and policy blueprints pioneered by Orbán to weaken liberal institutions and centralize power. They hosted him at CPAC to give lectures about how to undermine democracy. He was seen as the role model for what Trump sought to accomplish here in the U.S.
And now, he’s out. He’s been rejected by the voters after 16 years of authoritarianism.
