"On April 12, the day of Hungary’s parliamentary elections, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) posted on social media that it was closely watching the election and stood firmly behind Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
~ Heather Cox Richardson
"As a major networking event and ideological trendsetter for the radical right in the United States, CPAC has been instrumental in celebrating Orbán’s Hungary as the center of the effort to destroy the liberal democracy of the United States and Europe in order to replace it with what Orbán called 'illiberal democracy,' or 'Christian democracy.'”
"His system replaced the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stopped the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and rejected 'adaptable family models' in favor of 'the Christian family model.'
Today Péter Magyar, the man who will replace Orban after winning the election in a blowout, revealed that Orbán was using government money to finance CPAC."
"Orbán has clearly been working for the benefit of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, and just days before the election, news broke that last October, Orbán told Putin, 'In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.'
So it appears that CPAC was funded by a foreign government that was working closely with Vladimir Putin."
"In a speech today, Magyar told reporters that the outgoing foreign minister, who has been accused of working closely with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, was shredding confidential documents."
"One major reason [Orbán] lost so overwhelmingly is that Hungarian citizens were disgusted by corruption in government, and knew about it because of investigative journalism that remained strong despite Orban’s all-out effort to control the legitimate press."
~ Margaret Sullivan
Quoting Brian Stelter:
"Analysts say that pervasive corruption in Hungary was a key factor in the fall of Orbán’s illiberal Fidesz party."
#Orbán #Putin #Hungary #corruption
/6
https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/three-reasons-for-encouragement-even
"Outrage about corruption, CJR’s Ivan L. Nagy wrote before the election, has a 'lot to do with the tireless work of investigative journalists.'”
"A populist autocrat who had gerrymandered the maps, captured the courts, swallowed the media, and bent the constitution into a pretzel got blown out by ten points in a country he had spent sixteen years rigging in his own favor. What he accomplushed are the things Trump, Bannon, and their fellow travelers only dreamed of in the United States."
~ Lincoln Square
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #Bannon #JDVance #Republicans #Hungary #corruption
/8
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/corruption-is-the-killer-app
"How? One word, friends. Corruption.
Corruption is the killer app of anti-authoritarian politics. It always has been."
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #Bannon #JDVance #Republicans #Hungary #corruption
/9
"So [Magyar] gets, you know, all of these Orban supporters to hear the stories of the Orban corruption. In the meantime, their hospitals are falling apart. Public services are falling apart. He takes camera crews into the hospital before they started banning him. But he takes camera crews into the corporate hospitals and shows everybody what the conditions are like."
Kim Lane Scheppele
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #Hungary #corruption
/10
https://www.contrariannews.org/p/special-live-report-orban-falls-is
Hungarians rejected their Trump-Vance endorsed dictator. What does it all mean?
"And all of this builds up this massive campaign of Orban's getting rich from corruption while public services are going downhill. I say this in detail because you could just transport this to the United States right now, right?"
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #Bannon #JDVance #Republicans #Hungary #corruption
/11
"Regularly feted by the organising core of the American populist right – the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) – Orbán’s policies and methods were seen as a central influence on Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term, which has been described as a plan to ‘Orbánise’ the US government."
~ David Edgar and Jon Bloomfield
#Orbán #Trump #Putin #Hungary #CPAC #Republicans #corruption
/12
https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/has-the-forward-march-of-populism
"Across the widening Orbán ideological empire, then, we can detect the assiduous use of state funding to promote the ideas of national populism, much of it with a sinister conspiratorial twist. It has been the application of the Gramsci playbook of cultural hegemony in the service of the far right.
Sunday’s election result has put an end to that."
#Orbán #Trump #Putin #Hungary #CPAC #Republicans #corruption
/13
"There’s a reason Orbán’s playbook sounds so familiar — Project 2025 was co-developed with Orbán’s Danube Institute think tank, which also trained figures like Christopher Rufo."
~ Michael Podhorzer
#Orbán #Trump #Putin #Hungary #CPAC #Republicans #DanubeInstitute #ChristopherRufo #corruption
/14
https://www.weekendreading.net/p/orbans-defeat-and-lessons-for-america
With Kim Lane Scheppele
"When leaders become entrenched in power, having had time to bind elites to them through shared networks of illicit profits, and government institutions have been filled with loyalists and corrupt political operatives, it is hard to remove them."
~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat
#Orbán #Trump #Putin #Hungary #corruption
/15
https://lucid.substack.com/p/from-hungary-to-the-us-never-give
Reflections on the power and meaning of elections; my convo on good governance with Jocelyn Benson
"Orban had been in office for 16 years, long enough to transform the Hungarian state into an illiberal entity that had the main goal —other than doing Putin’s bidding—of maintaining him in office so he and his family and cronies could profit while Hungarians suffered."
"We must hope this vote will be the start of a wider backlash – & send hard-right populism back to the fringes where it belongs. ...
Orbán’s Hungary played a key role in the global right. As the investigative climate activists DeSmog put it: '[He] has used a network of state-backed think tanks, media outlets, & conferences to promote his brand of "illiberal democracy" across Europe, including in the UK.'”
~ Polly Toynbee
"Péter Magyar, the new Hungarian prime minister, says CPAC was paid by the Hungarian government and will not be any longer."
~ Roger Sollenberger
#Orbán #Putin #Hungary #CPAC #Republicans #corruption
/18
https://xcancel.com/SollenbergerRC/status/2043784363528060970#m
"The Republican Party’s transition towards autocracy and far-right politics in the U.S. is a direct descendant of Orbán’s politics. They share media strategies, consultants, and a common ecosystem. So the fact that JD Vance goes over, jumps on the scale for Orbán as a show of strength, and then flops is significant."
~ Brian Tyler Cohen
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #JDVance #Hungary #Republicans #corruption
/19
https://plus.briantylercohen.com/p/trump-sank-viktor-orbans-reelection
Commenting on the story of Orbán's bouleversement and its connection to Trump, David Kurtz says:
"It’s the corruption, stupid."
He's addressing Trump-Orbán whisperers featured in New York Times articles like Rod Dreher, who wants to reduce Orbán's defeat to economic malaise — not his corruption. Something to which we all know Trump is also more than a little adjacent….
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #JDVance #Hungary #Republicans #corruption
/20
https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/trumps-corruption-is-whats-tanking
Greg Sargent points to "a powerful moment" witnessed by Michelle Goldberg as the Hungarian election results came in:
"Among those celebrating by the Danube on Sunday night were Eszter Kalocsai, a 30-year-old bisexual woman, and Milan Gabriel Berki, a 24-year-old gay man. They were delirious with joy."
#Orbán #Putin #Trump #JDVance #Hungary #Republicans #LGBTQ
/21
https://newrepublic.com/article/209001/trump-orban-hungary-defeat-humiliation-beginning
"Kalocsai said she’s spent the last 10 years hiding her attraction to women.''It’s amazing!' she cried. 'I feel like I can go out and say that I love all people! Oh, my God!' Berki added, 'The feeling is overwhelming.'"
Sargent then says,
"In the Vance-Orbán worldview, these two people pose a profound threat to 'Western civilization' and the 'freedom' of peoples to live in accordance with its traditional religious and familial foundations."
William Lindsey 
