Orban’s Political Longevity: Hatred from EU Bigwigs Makes Him Popular at Home
© AFP 2023 / Attila Kisbenedek
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The recent “protests” against Orban in Budapest were a storm in a teacup. Although less than 0.01 percent of Hungary’s population participated, they made the front pages in the mainstream press. What was behind them? Eurocrats’ fear of Orban’s chairmanship at the EU Council of Ministers, which starts in July, and his call for dialogue with Russia.
The protests against Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban seem to be copied from the same playbook as those in January against neighboring Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico.
“What is going on in Budapest is an exact copy of what we had in Slovakia,” says Peter Marcek, former deputy of Slovak parliament and chairman of Slavs’ Unity party. “They want the opposition to get back to power, using foreign money. And the opposition is totally pro-EU and pro-US.”
The magic word “thousands” is used in the stories about protests in Budapest. For comparison: at the last election in 2022 Orban was supported by 3,057,000 Hungarian citizens, who made up 54.1 percent of those who voted.
So, can 0.01 percent of Hungary’s population be allowed to cancel the choice of 54.1 percent?
In fact, the scandal that the pro-EU had been pushing has nothing to do with Orban personally, but rather with his former justice minister Judit Varga, who is seen as an Orban loyalist.
It is worth noting that the “case’ against Varga is based on an audio recording made by her former husband Peter Magyar in February 2023. In the recording, Varga details an attempt by state officials to make her remove certain parts from documents in a graft case.
Now Varga says that the husband made her lie on record. She divorced Magyar in March 2023 (a month after the recording was made). Magyar never explained why he decided to make the recording public only now, a year after it was made.
“This story reminds me of what was done here in Slovakia in order to remove our prime minister Robert Fico in the middle of his second term in office [in 2018],” recalls Marcek. “At the time a journalist [Ján Kuciak] was murdered, and the mainstream press kept saying that it was the work of some of Fico’s friends.”
As a result, Fico was forced to resign in 2018 before ending his term in office. He returned to power only in 2023, much to the EU’s chagrin, having won a free election.
When Fico was asked before the vote what were the reasons for the conflict in Ukraine, he cited NATO’s expansion to the east and “the fact that Ukrainian neo-Nazis acted freely in Ukraine.”
Of course, the EU could not stomach this from Fico. Nor could it tolerate some of Orban’s bold statements, which reflected Hungarian public opinion but ran against the mainstream views in Brussels.
Here are a few quotes:
“Soros network is embedded in the European institutions. They are in the Commission, they are in the European Parliament… So, it becomes more and more difficult to express the opinion of the people of Europe. Brussels is becoming a prisoner of the international network of activists which George Soros has built.”
“The crucial question is not who’s on the Left and who’s on the Right. As European leaders grow ever keener to march into war, the decisive question is who is pro-peace and who is pro-war. So… I think it would be a good thing if in Hungary – and in other European countries too – we sent to the European Parliament as many pro-peace politicians as possible, and as few pro-war politicians as possible.”
"The people who are interested in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine – these are the arms manufacturers. They get unprecedented profits. Speculators and big business of the West are also poised to have their share, including Soros."
In response to a question from Tucker Carlson during a recent interview on whether it is a realistic goal “to take Crimea away from Russia,” Orban answered: “There is no way to do it. It is totally impossible.”
In the same interview with Carlson, Orban said: “When the terrorist act was committed that destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline… We made a statement together with the Serbian prime minister: if anybody decides to do the same think with the South Stream pipeline, taking Russian gas to Serbia and Hungary, we shall consider it an act of war and a terrorist attack – and we shall immediately react. So, don’t do that! You could do it to the Germans, but you can’t do it in this region.”
Meanwhile, according to the EU rotation rules, on July 1, 2024, Orban is expected to assume the chairmanship of the European Council of Ministers — a top decision-making body of the bloc.
Traditionally, the position of the chairman of the European Council has always been held by an EU loyalist. The chairman can determine the agenda of the EU’s summits and of the working meetings of ministers from member countries.
But Orban is not someone who will rubber stamp everything Brussels desires — as can be seen from his statements on the need to mend ties with Russia and find a peaceful solution for the Ukrainian problem. On Friday, he went as far as saying that Ukraine should never be a NATO member, but instead a neutral state between Russia and NATO, with guarantees of security from both sides.
Will Orban withstand the current “storm in a teacup”? Yes, no doubt about that. But there is also no doubt that the EU will continue its attempts to destabilize Hungary and Orban’s government. However, some observers say these attempts may only make Orban stronger.
Rod Dreher, a columnist of The American Conservative (TAC) living in Budapest, noted in a recent article: “There is a reason why Orban has been elected four times in a row, in free elections… Each time he won after the EU officials, Biden and John McCain called him names. It only makes him more popular.”
