“Anyone looking for a crystal ball for the coming Trump administration would do well to ‘study Hungary’s record’. And not just for clues about how a rightist strongman can permanently reorder a society and its institutions once it controls the legislature (as Trump and Orban do) and a judiciary (as Orban does and Trump is about to) – but also for how such a politician continues to consolidate power as his policies fail….”
— Susan Faludi: Hungary’s sharp rightward turn is a warning to America[identity deleted]: “I hate to say that this can’t happen in the US, that the Hungarians have a long tradition of oppressive governments and that the US does not; that the Hungarians are used to repressed freedoms of all kinds, and have almost never really had freedom in the way the US has; but after so many instances of “it can never happen”, I am not sure of anything any more.
“I do feel that at least in North America it would take a lot more to do what Orban has done. The traditions of the countries are at opposite sides of the spectrum. It is just as hard for Hungarians to internalise the freedoms that we have, as it would be for us to internalise the oppression that has been their way of life, essentially for centuries.”
My explanation would be different:
1. No one lives for centuries: Each individual’s lifetime experience is what they see and hear during their own life-cycle (including what they are told about past centuries).
2. Hungarians have not been oppressed for centuries; they’ve just kept telling themselves that for centuries. Plenty of eastern European peoples (and peoples elsewhere) have had a much worse time of it than Hungarians, who were on the side of the oppressors during the Austro-Hungarian centuries. But Hungarians have made a culture of feeling sorry for themselves (though not for their victims), and they keep passing it on from generation to generation.
3. I think the real common factor is the mentality of the deplorables; they are all over the planet. Perhaps under 50% in the US. But the majority in Hungary. I could sketch the profile of a deplorable; it’s not very deep: They are not impoverished people but people who are less well off than they were or they feel they deserve to be. And the rest is just about where they lay the blame: immigrants, black people, non-christians (or non-whatever is the home cult), conspiracies, China, liberals. They also claim to blame the rich (though that’s exactly what they want to be, and when they are, they become exactly like the rest; Trump is among the worst of them, though he’s always been well off).
Well the deplorables now have their day (again). But more is at stake than ever in the past. And more damage — permanent damage — can be done by them in a short time than ever before. The worst time to hand the planet over to the deplorables.