16 years in power was apparently too long for Victor Orban, Europe’s light on a hill

By MICHAEL SLOVANOS

CONSERVATIVE and radical commentators worldwide are wondering why the bulk of voting Hungarians have abandoned Victor Orban, the man who has led a populist revolution against the cultural-Marxist European Union for the past 16 years.

One well-known Australian conservative, former PM Tony Abbot, upset leftist media in Australia by offering some positive words on social media for Orban.”Viktor Orbán has been a very consequential PM – probably the most consequential Hungary has ever had,” he posted on X.

“The economy has strengthened, the city of Budapest has been transformed, and Hungary’s family policies and determination to keep its culture have been studied around the world.

“He and I differed on Ukraine but I thought he was dead right to defy the EU, on illegal immigration especially. Why should a sovereign nation be bullied by Brussels into policies that would jeopardise its future as a distinct people?

“Under Orbán, Budapest became something of a haven for conservative intellectuals. This has been a significant point of soft power for Hungary and I don’t expect the new government will want that to change.”

The EU’s unelected chief bureaucrat Ursula von der Leyen was of course ecstatic over Orban’s loss: “Today, Europe is Hungarian. We are stronger. More united. To the people of Hungary – you’ve done it again. You have spoken. You have chosen Europe. It’s a victory for fundamental freedoms,” the little blonde aristocrat crowed.

Von der Leyen had the gall to compare the election of Orban’s opponent Peter Magyar to the Hungarian Peaceful Revolution of 1989 when thousands of the 65,000 of Soviet troops stationed in the country began to return to the USSR under a plan that would drastically reduce the number of Soviet soldiers.

Ironically Von der Leyen and her Eurocrats have duplicated the former Soviet Socialist Republic system with their vast army of Brussels bureaucrats enforcing centralised economic regulations and a cultural Marxist social agenda.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, one of the surviving Rothschild boys, Nathaniel, 5th Baron Rothschild, financier and hereditary peer of the United Kingdom, posted his response on X: “Nice to wake up and see that Hungary is still a democracy. #ORBAN bye.”

If European populists are upsetting the Rothschilds, they should know that they are on the right track.

The same for Alexander Soros who made the following absurd comment on X: “The people of Hungary have taken back their country. A resounding rejection of entrenched corruption and foreign interference.” … Taken back their country from who, we might ask. And no stepped-up interference from the EU in Brussels?

But Orban’s replacement Magyar is a much younger man who comes from the same party as Orban. Whether or not his promises to bring Hungary back into the EU fold with open-door immigration and LGBTQ promotion is yet to be seen. It seems like too radical a change in direction for a country that voted multiple times for the opposite.

Perhaps a new generation of votes were simply not educated or taking much notice of Orban’s politics. In the election campaign, observers noted a flood of anti-Trump and anti-Israel messaging everywhere on news platforms and social media, along with articles, clips and memes distributed by progressives and pro-EU fanatics hammering home the repeated smear that Orban was a Russian asset, a Putin Puppet, and an enemy of democracy.

If anything, Orban’s defeat, will only spur on Europe’s rising populist-nationalist tide. The Irish have just shown they’ve had enough of the EU agenda with protests continuing across the country and so have the Brits who have recently come out in the streets in their hundreds of thousands.

In France the populist right was denied power only by a majority coalition of disparate parties being cobbled together by Emmanuel Macron.

One observer believes Orban’s defeat was aided by the entropy of governance itself, by the slow accumulation of years upon years of attacks and errors which can bring down, with the aid of time alone, once powerful and vibrant forces.