Orbán
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To put it bluntly: what today dominates in European public life is only European liberal blah blah about nice but second-rank issues. Germany is the key. If tomorrow the Germans were to say, ‘We are full up, it’s over’, then the flood would immediately ebb away. It is so simple, just a single sentence from Angela Merkel.16
For his Hungarian audience, Orbán has over and over again employed the method of deeming morally suspect more or less everything that does not correspond with his own ideas. A review of his statements on the domestic and international stages offers an inescapable conclusion: it is no exaggeration to say that there is not a single politician in Budapest or Brussels who has been able to hold a candle to Orbán with regard to his political cynicism, his gifts as an orator and his talent for intrigue. Experienced and astute, he has always avoided openly attacking Merkel by name. Even after his cleverly engineered symbolic visit in April 2016 to the gravely ill Helmut Kohl, he mentioned the old chancellor’s (hated) successor in a friendly way when leaving his house in Oggersheim.
In a series of hardline speeches given in Budapest, beginning in the spring of 2015, as well as in interviews afterwards, Orbán launched absurd and overweening attacks against the various refugee distribution schemes of the European Commission. He presented himself and his government time and again as the ‘last defenders of a Europe based on the nation, family and Christianity’ in the face of an onslaught of millions of migrants bringing crime and terrorism. ‘The most bizarre coalition in world history has arisen, one concluded among people smugglers, human rights activists and Europe’s top politicians in order to deliver here many millions of migrants. Brussels must be stopped. We do not want and we will not import criminality, terrorism, homophobia and anti-Semitism.’ Swept away by his own rhetoric, Orbán claimed that in Brussels it was forbidden to say that a mass migration was threatening, that 10 million were waiting to come to Europe; it was forbidden to say that immigration would bring in its tow criminality and terror, that European culture, customs and Christian traditions were under threat, that this was no accident but a planned and manipulated action to liquidate the nation states.
In one of his bizarre outbursts against those EU leaders who fail see that ‘Europe is staggering towards its own moonstruck ruin’, Orbán even offered asylum to future Dutch and French refugees fleeing from the terrible consequences of mass migration. His regular Friday broadcasts on the state-controlled radio and, above all, his impassioned nationalistic 15 March speeches on the steps of the National Museum (marking the failed revolution against Habsburg rule in 1848) employed almost identical extremist rhetoric to mobilise society for a seeming perpetual and total war ‘to stop Brussels, to defend our borders and to prevent the resettlement of masses’. At an open-air meeting on the national holiday in 2017, he went even further, appealing to populists all over Europe to ‘defend national independence and sovereignty against the holy alliance of Brussels bureaucrats, the liberal world media and insatiable international capitalists!’17
Despite such speeches, filled with alternative facts and fake news, Orbán has always been careful, in all his criticisms and warnings against the EU’s complacent and faltering leaders, to avoid naming Angela Merkel. Yet politics is fought not only in the closed chambers of European institutions, but also in the language we use, the stories we tell and the images we conjure. We must therefore also cite the words of the cynics and xenophobic populists who do parade their prejudices and organise vile propaganda campaigns against their perceived opponents or the enemies of their supreme leader. In contrast to Orbán’s own conspicuous restraint in talking about the German chancellor, the Fidesz media empire has been authorised to attack Merkel head on. It was no accident but rather an important symbolic signal when columnist Zsolt Bayer, one of Orbán’s oldest friends going back to the founding of Fidesz, lambasted the German leader in an open letter. ‘We are flabbergasted and angry that you have joined the wreckers of Europe.’18 Four months later, invoking his German blood, he went further, calling Merkel ‘The lowest, mendacious, vile woman. Merkel has either gone mad or she is being blackmailed. She constitutes a public danger, she has to be removed from office as soon as possible.’19 Another Fidesz scribbler declared: ‘Merkel is Germany’s and Europe’s greatest disgrace and danger.’
Mária Schmidt, the director of the controversial House of Terror Museum in Budapest and one of Orbán’s closest advisers, launched in a mid-2016 long essay a frontal attack on Angela Merkel for sacrificing Christianity and German national interests. Merkel is ‘neither national nor Christian but global and an atheist, not Christian Democrat but liberal, not close to the people but elitist, not democratic but bureaucratic’. Schmidt’s startling conclusion may well reflect Orbán’s dream, though perhaps megalomania is a better word: ‘Kohl and Stoiber (the former minister president of Bavaria) see in the place of Merkel, who is giving up the legacy of Adenauer and Kohl, Viktor Orbán as their political heir and anticipate from him the continuation of this tradition.’20
In numerous speeches both in Hungary and at EU conferences and meetings, Orbán has furiously turned against both the various refugee schemes and, increasingly, against foreign-financed non-governmental organisations. However, in striking contrast to the vitriolic attacks launched by the Fidesz media, he continues to refrain from criticising Merkel by name. For example, at a congress of Europe’s centre-right leaders in Malta at the end of March 2017, Orbán unleashed a blistering attack on EU policies in response to the 2015 refugee crisis, which he claimed had aided terrorists and threatened the continent’s ‘Christian identity’, identifying migration as ‘the Trojan horse of terrorism’.21 But, yet again, he did not explicitly confront Chancellor Merkel, who was also present. In the same vein, she vigorously defended her refugee policy without even referring to Orbán.
Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as US president, whose candidacy Orbán was the only head of government to publicly support in the summer of 2016, the Hungarian premier can now operate with boundless self-confidence in his perpetual war against liberal Western values.
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THE END OF THE REGIME CANNOT BE FORESEEN
The worrying thing about Orbán’s ‘illiberal democracy’—an increasingly authoritarian regime still concealed behind the figleaf of a parliamentary opposition—is that it is entirely unprecedented in Hungarian history, and its end cannot be foreseen. George Orwell in his modern classic Nineteen Eighty-Four analysed the ‘huge system of organised lying upon which dictators depend.’ But, he cautioned, ‘it is quite easy to imagine a state in which the ruling caste deceive their followers without deceiving themselves’.1 The way in which the media empire of the Fidesz government, through massive control of state television, radio and most newspapers, achieves the disappearance of objective truth and, with easy cynicism, falsifies the records about past supporters and adversaries of the group around Orbán is simply on a different plane from anything else we have seen since their takeover seven years ago.
Western observers often wonder why the octogenarian former benefactor of Fidesz, the billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, has since the end of 2015 become the Orbán regime’s public enemy number one. For those not familiar with the Hungarian language, it is hard to imagine how far the vilification of the Hungarian-born US investor has gone, and how the media empires directly and indirectly controlled by Fidesz have disseminated vile and fabricated propaganda making a bogeyman out of a Holocaust survivor who, through his Open Society Foundation, has spent some $12 billion to promote liberal democracy, social justice and human rights in the post-communist countries as well as throughout the whole world.
On 30 October 2015, in his weekly Friday radio broadcast, Orbán personally gave the signal for the attacks on Soros, because of his views on refugees and his assistance to various human rights and refugee organisations worldwide. Specifically, Orbán named in the same breath people-smugglers and the activists who ‘support everything that weakens the nation sta
te. The best example of this type of Western thinking is George Soros, who maintains and finances the European human rights activism which encourages the refugees to start [out]’. Orbán has time and again repeated this smear, and has subsequently sharpened his attacks. When, in March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights found the Hungarian government to have violated various provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights in its detention and expulsion of two migrants from Bangladesh, Orbán said on public radio: ‘It is a collusion of human traffickers, Brussels bureaucrats and the organisations that work in Hungary financed by foreign money … Let’s call a spade a spade. George Soros finances them’.2
Thus Soros, who has done more for the consolidation of democracy in post-communist Hungary and the other East European states than perhaps any other private individual, is portrayed at the age of 86 as a kind of ‘demon of the refugee crisis’, as the person responsible for the flood of refugees and as the mastermind behind a campaign against Hungary. To add insult to injury, this message is being spread by the very people who received substantial financial and moral aid from Soros both during the communist era and after the regime change. It is often recalled how, way back, an official Fidesz statement even defended Soros and his foundation from ‘malicious attacks’, since he had ‘actively contributed to the creation of a freer and more open intellectual atmosphere through his support of the younger generation and university colleagues’.3 Even at that time, in the early 1990s, the philanthropist was already under public and scurrilous attack from anti-Semitic and nationalistic politicians on the fringes of both the opposition and the then ruling party (the centre-right MDF).
As Soros was also involved in the financing of Vienna-based think tank the Institute for Human Sciences and has attended various conferences in Austria, I have met him several times in Vienna and even conducted a long English-language TV interview with him in 1995 for a special ORF (Austrian public broadcaster) programme. Though we have a similar background,4 I hasten to add that I have never sought any subsidy from his foundations, nor do I share all his comments on the Euro crisis or on the role of the IMF. His speculations (for example against the pound sterling in 1992) on behalf of his Quantum hedge fund, currently worth about $25 billion, are certainly not above criticism.
At the same time, it must be emphasised that Soros’ foundations have provided invaluable financial and moral support to all the reform states in Eastern Europe as well as in the succession states of the former Soviet Union. Hundreds of hospitals, welfare organisations, health research institutes, environmental activists, charities, non-governmental organisations and volunteer groups helping refugees or persecuted minorities such as Roma communities have received substantial grants. Naturally, the activities of the Soros foundations in more than 100 countries have also encouraged policies promoting democracy, human rights and freedom of speech. It was therefore not surprising that President Putin was the first to order a crackdown on foreign-financed institutions that had already, in the summer of 2015, been put on a ‘patriotic stop list’. By the end of that year, Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the OSI Assistance Foundation were declared to be ‘undesirable’ in Russia.
Not only Viktor Orbán, but also other East European politicians in domestic trouble have obviously drawn inspiration from Putin’s shutting down of civil society groups financed by George Soros. From the nationalist Macedonian leader Nikola Gruevski (in the midst of corruption scandals after a decade in power) to the Romanian Social Democratic party chief Liviu Dragnea, faced with similar accusations, politicians fighting for survival in the post-communist countries blame Soros and his foundation for political upheavals threatening deeply rooted networks of corruption and political misdemeanour. The steamroller of Fidesz propaganda did not hesitate to use the complaints of discredited politicians embroiled in domestic crisis in neighbouring countries as proof that ‘the Soros empire’ seeks to overthrow governments and to impose his will on global institutions.
Orbán told the Fidesz website 888.hu in December 2016 that ‘the coming year will be about displacing Soros and the forces he symbolises. In every country efforts will be made to push Soros out. The sources of funding are being revealed, as are the secret service links, and which NGOs represent which interests’. His outspoken deputy at the helm of Fidesz, Szilard Nemeth, speaking at a news conference a few weeks later, made no bones of the plans to project fear and guilt: ‘These organisations must be pushed back by all available means, and I think they must be swept out, and now I believe the international conditions are right for this with the election of the new president in the US.’5
The campaign against Soros and his Open Society Foundation launched by Prime Minister Orbán reached new heights on 4 April 2017, when the government used its majority to fast-track a law through parliament destined to close the Central European University (CEU), founded in 1991 with an endowment from George Soros. It is by far Hungary’s most prestigious institute of higher education, with 1,440 students from 107 countries (including 400 Hungarians) and a distinguished faculty from forty countries. With 13,000 graduates since its founding, the CEU ranks among the top fifty institutions in the world. It is not a ‘Soros university’, as alleged in the vilification campaigns against him, because its administrative affairs are run by an international board that also appoints a fully independent rector, who is responsible for the academic staff and the education programmes. Fortunately, Michael Ignatieff, who was named rector on 1 October 2016, is an internationally respected scholar and former leader of the Liberal Party in Canada. Despite the protests of academics around the world, including twenty-four Nobel laureates and a series of protest demonstrations, the largest of which drew 80,000 to the streets of the capital, President János Áder, reelected a month earlier by the Fidesz parliamentary majority for a second five-year term, signed the controversial amendment into law without great ado. This means that the CEU must cease activities in Hungary if it fails to establish a base in the United States by February 2018.
Soon afterwards, in a clear imitation of Russian methods, the Hungarian government—instead of trying to find a compromise—has further broadened the search for convenient scapegoats by rushing through parliament a law affecting NGOs that receive foreign financial support of over 7.2 million forints (approximately €24,000), forcing them to register themselves as if they were foreign lobbies or agents. The main targets among the several dozens of NGOs are the Society for Freedom Rights (TASZ), the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (MHB) and the Hungarian branch of Transparency International, the respected watchdog reporting annually on worldwide corruption.
Rejecting the international criticism and ignoring the series of demonstrations at home, Orbán has intensified his efforts to create what The Guardian called ‘a state of perpetual paranoia’ and to demonise George Soros as ‘the essential enemy’ seeking through his foundations and his wealth to put pressure on Hungary. Orbán’s blistering attacks are a telling reminder that the struggle over the CEU was not just about a unique university, but about the core values of liberal democracy. In a lengthy interview with a Fidesz paper in April 2017, he made clear that he was picking a fight with Soros and transferring aggression from domestic political opposition to foreign enemies and immigrants, as part of a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the 2018 election campaign. A verbatim quote can show how Orbán has become prone to inventing enemies:
There can be no special privileges, and no one may stand above the law—not even George Soros’ people. I do not believe that the civic intelligentsia would be happy to be allied with people whom the impending legislation will clearly show to be operating with foreign funding, serving foreign interests, and following instructions from abroad. All this is about the fact that—through his organisations in Hungary, and hidden from the public gaze—George Soros is spending endless amounts of money to support illegal immigration. To pursue his interests he pays a number of lobbying organisations operating in the guise of civil society. He maintains a regu
lar network, with its own promoters, its own media, hundreds of people, and its own university. He wants to keep the pressure on Hungary: the country that expects even the likes of George Soros to observe its laws. I believe that George Soros must not be underestimated: he is a powerful billionaire of enormous determination who, when it comes to his interests, respects neither God nor man. We want to protect Hungary, and so we must also commit ourselves to this struggle.’6
Because the target of such venomous personal attacks is an extremely rich US investor and philanthropist who happens also to be an elderly Hungarian Jew blamed for conspiring to let as many Muslims as possible into his native country and thus to destroy ‘Christian identity and national pride’, the Dutch vice-president of the EU Commission Franz Timmermans publicly accused Orbán of resorting to anti-Semitic rhetoric in this affair. The left-liberal weekly Magyar Narancs compared the prime minister’s ‘storyline’ with the ill-famed ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ about a Jewish world conspiracy, concocted by the Tsarist secret police in 1903. However, in his frequent references to migration as ‘a Trojan horse of terrorism’, Orbán himself never fails to mention that the migrants themselves bring with them ‘a significant anti-Semitic potential.’
But, as Magyar Narancs put it, the word Jew has not been mentioned at all in the Soros context, as there is no need—everybody understands the reference. The British historian and political scientist Timothy Garton Ash was so incensed with Orbán’s describing Soros as a ‘predator’ and the refugees from the Middle East as ‘ants’ that he attacked his ‘poisonous language as fascistic’ and called for the expulsion of his party from the EU centre-right faction (the European People’s Party) if the Hungarian leader did not change course. Jan-Werner Müller of Princeton formulated his criticism of the Christian Democrats and centre-right parties in a similar vein in the Financial Times: ‘How can Christian Democrats criticise the anti-democratic excesses of Recep Tayip Erdogan in Turkey, say, or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, if they tolerate egregious violations of the rule of law by one of their own? One who slowly but surely undermines the union from within.’7