Hungary: No Right or Left

O1G

Almost immediately after the Hungarian elections saw the defeat of Viktor Orban and the FIDESZ party and the exuberant victory of the Tisza party led by Peter Magyar, I left Hungary. Got on a plane and flew to Newark. No, not like many of the NER billionaires who were exporting their vintage car collections to Dubai or jetting off to the US for a well deserved weekend with some sympathetic right wing think tanks. No, I simply had to rush off to a family emergency... and wound up staying three weeks. I always miss the good stuff. 

I was here in the late 1980s when the Communist state began to collapse. The 1989 "Rendszerváltás" ("change of systems") was a progression that developed over a period of about two years, dragged out through negotiations and an unfamiliarity with democratic institutions. The end of FIDESZ, on the other hand, all happened in one night. Zap! Pow! Change! Ding dong the Witch is dead! People poured into the streets to celebrate on election night, and once again Hungarians felt bold enough to shout their opinions in public again. After 16 years during which we were told in no uncertain terms that it would be better to keep our mouth shut and "ne politizalj... ('don't talk politics') Hungary was simply euphoric in those first weeks after the collapse of the Orban regime. 

O1G means "Orban Egy Geci" (Orban is a Scumbag)

From my remote media command center in distant New Jersey I could (gleefully) follow the Hungarian news of those first few days... watching Prime Minister Magyar take down a propaganda spouting  TV news presenter with the promise that their job and their "news" program would soon be history. Watching videos of hard core FIDESZ supporters attempting to grasp that they were no longer in positions of control. FIDESZ had actually believed their own propaganda, backed by polls conducted by their own trusted marketing research. One day confidently in power with a firm hand in the corrupt till of state money, and now the tables had turned. It was so abrupt. For an old leftie like me, it was delicious. 

The depth of social change became clear during the opening ceremonies seating new members of the Hungarian Parliament. According to protocol, the Hungarian Anthem was played, and then special guests appeared: the children's tamburica orchestra from the village of Sűkösd where Magyar Peter had visited during one of his epic treks by foot across Hungary. As the children played the Gypsy song considered to be the national Hymn of Hungarian Roma, the far right wing Our Home party (Mi Hazank, the successor party to the fascistic Jobbik party) stood up and walked out of the hall. The response the next day was quick and damning. Magyar Peter labeled them clowns who had no respect for children or the democratic traditions of Parliament, and for days the media was full of comments and stories by Hungarians appalled at the blatant racism. And there was nobody from FIDESZ to laugh it off or make a joke on the TV news about it' Considering the damage done to Hungary's Romani communities during the last twenty years, spearheaded by policies of Jobbik and its successor parties, it was a giant step in the right direction. these days Parliamentary sessions are a new form of recreation: FIDESZ throw accusations at Magyar Peter, who, in a in lawyerly manner, is very good at snapping right back to them about their individual hypocrisies and ties to grandiose corruption. Its like watching a game of Angry Birds.

FIDESZ had polarized the mere identity of being a Hungarian to base it on support of their party. If you weren't with FIDESZ you were not Hungarian, or as Viktor Orban explained last weekend as part of his lame excuse for losing an election by two thirds, you were probably being paid by foreign agents, working for George Soros, getting money from the European Union to slander Hungary, or involved with some kind of subversive liberal NGO. Viktor still doesn't understand how he could have lost. The electoral system had been designed to prevent FIDESZ from losing elections. Orban still sees the world in pastel CPAC colors of right or left. As long as he continues to do so there is no danger of him ever returning to power. Something as simple as "Everybody despised you" was too complex to grasp.

"Orban's popularity worries the left-liberal radicals" FIDESZ media pre-election

Now at night I sleep soundly to the gentle murmurings of FIDESZ politicians weeping in the night. We are not sure what will happen next, but Hungary is now more or less safely in the hands of a government of technocrat administrators chosen for expertise in their fields. The arrogant, overbearing figures that loomed over our lives for the past decade are now reduced to blabbering clowns. It is disorienting, but for the time being, there really is no right or left. Just Hungarians.