Orbán has thrived on the diet of hostility the EU has fed him. Chancellor Merkel's open door immigration policy provided him with the opportunity to take a distinctively different position, adopting a much stricter policy in Hungary, which won him popular support at home. Similarly, President Macron's advocacy of a European army and greater powers for Brussels has played into Orbán's hands, gaining him popularity with Hungarian voters for defending their country's hard won independence. For all its protests, it is EU money that has financed the consolidation of Orbán's power. It was Merkel's European People's Party (EPP) which, for nearly twenty years, aided and abetted Orbán and his Fidesz Party as it strengthened its grip on political power in Hungary.
Yet, if Europhiles stand guilty of creating the monster they now deplore, so too have populist conservatives failed to see that Orbán's statist policies and hostility to a free press are anathema to the outward-looking, free trade instincts on which the success of Brexit has been founded. Sadly, too many on the populist right see Orbán as a model to admire and follow. At CPAC in America, he was an honoured guest, being praised by Trump supporters even after the Hungarian Foreign Minister had given a dressing down to the Ukrainian ambassador for supposed mistreatment of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine - and that was in the very week that most people in Europe were recoiling in horror at Putin's butchery of innocent civilians in Bucha. This, too, from Hungary, the country whose struggle for freedom was so brutally crushed by Russian tanks in 1956, as commemorated by Mihály Kolodkó's 'Sad Tank' mini-sculpture across the Danube from the Hungarian Parliament [see photo, above].
It is not just in the USA that conservatives have seen Orban's Hungary as a model to admire. In the UK, many of the same people who were disappointed to see the predictable failure of Marine Le Pen, France's Nationalist, Socialist, Putinist alternative to Macron, make no secret of their admiration of fellow Putin patsy Orbán. After all, unlike Le Pen, he does at least win elections.
Of course, not all that Orbán does is bad. Although he no longer controls Budapest itself, there is much to admire in the massive building projects he has supported there. In Buda Castle it is a joy to see buildings such as the Royal Riding Hall restored to their original glory having been razed to the ground by the Communists. The City Park is being transformed into a world class showcase of all that is best about Hungarian's artistic, cultural and scientific creativity; only this month Orbán opened the spectacular new Museum of Ethnography there with a characteristically pugnacious and patriotic speech.
There is nothing wrong with such patriotism and national pride, but unfortunately, in Hungary, it is accompanied by a narrow nationalism not unlike Putin's own. In Hungary's case that takes the form of a national obsession, carefully nurtured by Orbán, with the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. That treaty, concluding a war that Hungary itself had started, then went on to lose, left significant Hungarian minorities in its neighbouring states. In order to try to reverse that, Admiral Horthy, the autocratic ruler of Hungary in the 1930s, allied with Hitler's Germany. Sure enough, he was rewarded with the return of slices of former Hungarian territory from the countries that Hitler had bullied and invaded. As we all know, that shameful pact with the devil did not end well for Hungary.
Now Orbán has rehabilitated Admiral Horthy in no uncertain terms. Recently, while spending three weeks in the beautiful city of Budapest, I visited the exhibition, 'A New World Was Born: 1914-1922'. Like all the best propaganda it is dressed up in an interesting and entertaining package, but at its heart is a rewriting of history which portrays the UK and the USA as the bad guys, is sympathetic to all of Hitler's territorial demands and makes Admiral Horthy out to be a national saviour beyond reproach. It is a travesty of the truth.
And this is at the heart of all that Orbán does. Just as Putin has followed the Hitler playbook almost to the letter, so too has Orbán followed that of his hero, Admiral Horthy. Horthy saw that Hitler was intent on redrawing the map of Europe and saw that as an opportunity for Hungary. As the saying goes, 'that ended well, didn't it?!' Being Putin's patsy doesn't look as though it is going to end much better for Hungary than being Hitler's ally ended for Horthy's Hungary.
Orbán is unquestionably tactically adept, but that does not make him strategically wise, any more than that supposed 'strategic genius' Putin has proved to be. There is another way ahead for Hungary, but Hungarians seem reluctant to take it. That is to learn from history and to adapt appropriately - rather than trying to undo or rewrite it. The UK has reinvented itself again and again, after losing its American colonies and, more recently abandoning EU membership to return to a more global outlook. Austria has done much the same - eventually successfully transitioning from an imperial power to a prosperous smaller one. Would that Hungary would follow suit!
It's not as though Hungary wants for an example to follow from its own not-so-distant history. The beauty and wealth of Budapest were founded on an enlightened ruling class that encouraged enterprise and innovation, looking to Britain, France and the United States for much of its inspiration and investment. In the prime location on the Pest side of the Széchenyi Bridge, the British-based Gresham Life Assurance Company built the stunning art nouveau Gresham Palace (now, magnificently restored, the Four Seasons Hotel). Immediately opposite, on the Buda side of Hungary's most famous bridge, is another grand building; it houses Russia's International Investment Bank, which recently moved its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest as part of Putin's strategy of dividing Hungary from its NATO neighbours. It is a concrete sign of the way that Hungary has taken a wrong turn, rejecting the western, democratic model for the Russian, nationalistic, autocratic one.
As for conservatives in the UK, USA and other western countries, who seek a successful model of a traditionalist, patriotic government, they need not look far for such a model, in the shape of Poland and its ruling Law and Justice Party - a far better example to follow than Viktor Orbán's Hungary.
No comments:
Post a Comment