Walking by Hungary’s immense neo-Gothic parliament building in Budapest’s Kossuth Square, one of Cockburn’s travelling companions sidles up to him. “For a certain kind of right-winger,” he grins, “Hungary is their Rojava.”
“We were Trumpists before Trump,” Orban often says
There’s something to this idea, for sure. Since 2010 the premiership of Hungary’s Viktor Orban has – like the proto-government of the Kurds in Syria – given certain groups in America a space to see their ideas implemented that they do not enjoy at home. The Orban government is rebuilding Budapest in the traditional Baroque style, and there are generous cash payouts to mothers. Hungary has experienced virtually no immigration; the country is almost entirely Hungarian, save for certain historical minorities like Germans and the Roma. The southern border has been fenced off since 2015.
And like the Rojava, it may all be about to come to a very abrupt end. Polls vary significantly, but most foreign observers expect the liberal opposition Tisza party, led by a sort of Hungarian Gavin Newsom by the name of Peter Magyar, to win the general election on April 12. Should Magyar carry the day, the Orbanists warn, the work of the past sixteen years will all be undone. The Fidesz (Orban’s party) ministers Cockburn speaks to are alternately defiant and elegiac.
The Orbanists are keen to keep up this “populist international” connection, even amid the general gloom. Yesterday they descended on CPAC Hungary, the local offshoot of the American Conservative Political Action Conference to hear speeches from the likes of Dave Rubin and Dinesh D’Souza. Skulking around the conference hall, Cockburn tried to gain access to the VIP lounge to meet Orban himself, but was shooed away by a young man wearing a Holy See lapel badge.
Before the prime minister takes the stage, a recorded video message from Trump is beamed in. Budapest is a “great place in a great country,” said the President from the Resolution Desk; he also sent his best wishes to Orban, “who I am endorsing, as you know […] he has my complete and total endorsement, as a matter of fact.”
Orban is the one of the few world leaders who never fell out with Trump. This may be because, with a population of 10 million, Hungary does not count in world affairs; it may also be that Orban is one of the few people who the President will acknowledge as an influence. “We were Trumpists before Trump,” the Hungarian Prime Minister often says. The President often prides himself on having no fixed allies in the world – he may be about to lose the one person who he has ever honoured as such.
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