Impossible 'til it Happens
- sloaneliz
- 34 minutes ago
- 6 min read
The first person I ever heard predict the downfall of Viktor Orban was Ezsther Bokros. We spent two days with Ezsther last spring in Budapest. A guide attached to the Rick Steves organization, Ezsther has a deep love of Hungary, an impressive knowledge of its history, politics and culture, and a hilarious compendium of slightly fractured English idioms.
“Connect yourself to the train!” she shouts as our subway car pulls up. Meaning, we assume, get on the train. We connect ourselves.
“Can we stop for coffee here?” calls one of our group as we walk by the New York Café—a gorgeous neo-Gothic gem considered the pinnacle of coffee house culture during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. “Easy-peasey shampoo squeezy!” Ezsther hollers back. Meaning, we assume, yes. We can stop for coffee.
“Ohhh, this place is chic-y-perky,” she says, describing the palace in which Orban is supposed to reside. “But not good enough for Viktor. His compound over there,” she waves toward the hills on the Buda side of the Danube, and the Rozsadomb -- Rose Hill district -- where the wealthiest residents live.
On our first day together, as we visited the breathtaking Parliament Building, I ask Eszther how Hungarians view Orban. I wondered how honest she could be in what we have learned is a pretty highly surveilled state. It’s possible, I am thinking, that the critical remarks of a tour guide might make it back to somebody who could make her life miserable.
“Ach!” she spits. “I will need tranquilizers before I can talk about that.” I let it drop. So I am surprised the next morning, when, apparently, Eszther had taken some tranquilizers. She dives in as we are walking around the Budai Varnegyed — the beautiful Castle Quarter overlooking the river. She is clearly unconcerned about who might hear.
“Our civil rights are gone,” she says. “First he took over our government. Then our courts. Then our universities. Then our media.” In knowledgeable detail, she traces how Orban consolidated power starting in 2010—when, she reminds us, the people voted him in. She is withering in her criticisms.
“And how do you see the future?” I ask cautiously.
“Oh,” she says cheerfully, “we will vote him out in the next election.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised by her conviction. “What makes you say that?”
“Resistance is growing,” she says simply. “People are fed up. He will be gone.”
That night over dinner, members of our group discussed this, out of Eszther’s earshot. To say we were skeptical is an understatement. She had described in gobs of detail how powerful this autocrat had become. How could she believe one election would do it?
Well, we were wrong, and Ezsther was right. It is possible to overthrow a right-wing autocrat who has seized control of basically every one of society’s power structures. The people of Hungary proved it on April 12 of this year, voting in pay-dar mod-jar Peter Magyar and voting out Viktor Orban. And the most amazing thing about it—other than Eszther’s confidence that it would happen—was the way Magyar’s party did it: by using Orban’s own corruption against him.
I learned about this in a fantastic piece by Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton scholar who studies backsliding democracies. The essay is long and complex; a lot of things had to break Magyar’s way to get the win. But basically, says Scheppele, what happened was this: Orban and his oligarchs assumed that all resistance to a right-wing autocrat would come from well-educated liberals—AKA people who live in cities. So, Orban rigged the elections to give country dwellers roughly three times the numerical voting power as city dwellers. Sussing this out correctly, Magyar embarked on a two-year talking tour of the countryside, knocking on doors, meeting with people, asking them how their lives were and what would make them better.
It reminds me of Ground Truth, the deep listening campaign launched by Swing Left last year, and also the efforts of Working America, which has for 20 + years done basically the same thing. No talking points. No persuading. Just knocking on doors and asking questions. And listening. Really listening. And in the case of Working America, delivering real, practical help to people who need it.
When the news came in that Orban had fallen, I thought of Ezsther. I remembered her serene confidence on a warm spring day a full year before. She was so convinced that change would come--even though lots of people (including me) dismissed that conviction as wishful thinking.
Where does that belief in the possibility of change come from? Maybe, from having so much of it. Hungary’s history is roughly five times the length of America’s. It is filled with ethnic violence, vicious religious conflicts; battles that destroyed whole populations. The Christianity/Islam seesaw was long and bloody, each trying to wipe the other out.
Today you see evidence of this on the walls of its churches. In the glorious St. Matthias Church, Eszther points out how Islamic symbology (flowers and plants mostly; because Muslims believe it is sacrilegious to depict human forms) is grafted on top of Christian iconography--images of Jesus, Mary and the saints. Hungarian churches are a time capsule showing more than a thousand years of religious strife.
Hungary has been invaded more times than historians can count. In the 20th century alone, it lived through two
World Wars (imprudently siding with the fascists both times), a savage genocide, Soviet control, and loss of 71 percent of its original land mass--a consequence of its alliance with the WWI fascists. Once the opulent, glittering eastern capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Budapest was bombed out of existence by Hitler. Almost no building you see here is original. They are replicas, gorgeous replicas. There are whole schools of architecture here pining for the glory of the 19th century—and turning out newly minted architects who can recreate it. Eszther says most people can’t tell the difference, original versus copy.
Right after the Magyar win, there was a lot of talk about how a democratic backslider should go about
rebuilding its democracy. Magyar put some of it in motion right away, firing despots and emasculating the state-run media. It’s early days yet, and the question remains: having given away so many of their freedoms, how will the Hungarians get them back? But Magyar has promised to root out corruption, restore the rule of law and freedom of speech, and repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union. Addressing the crowd from the steps of that beautiful Parliament building, right after Orban conceded, Magyar said: The story of this day was not written by politicians in back rooms. It was all of you. You wrote it through your work, your hope, your concern and your determination. This is now your transition to democracy, this is your homeland, your National Assembly, and we thank you! Inspiring. (As an aside, the man also has mad dance skills. Check out the clip from his inauguration day.)
We in America have had less time under the yoke of our wanna-be strong man than Hungary had under theirs—just a year-and-a-half this time through, versus 16 years of Orban. But the seeds of MAGA were there before Trump showed up to exploit them. Economic inequity. Racism. Misogyny. Multi-generational poverty. A Congress more interested in maintaining its power than serving its people. A Constitution that actually works against positive change when human need demands it (looking at you, Equal Rights Amendment). Trump has had plenty of enablers (looking at you John Roberts, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Bezos and so many other quislings). So the problem does not go away when Trump does.
But on the other side of the ledger, we as a backslider have some things in our favor. The Supreme Court is a lost cause, but there has been plenty of bravery in the rest of the judiciary. The corporate media has embarrassed itself, but look at the explosion of truth-telling on platforms like Substack and Bluesky. Mostly, what we have is us. The people. People who have been activated by the threats and understand that if you want to preserve your democracy, it’s not enough to vote every four years. You have to show up. 8 million of us showed up at the last call to action—and many of those work hard in between the major events. Our number is growing.
That’s how Hungary did it. It was not their military that wrested control from an autocrat most people believed was untouchable. It was their people. Their voters. Can we learn from that example? Maybe. We cling tightly to our American exceptionalism, but there’s a lot to learn from the rest of the world, and from history.
Can we learn? Will we listen?
As a wise woman once said: Easy-peasy-shampoo-squeezy.
Photo credit: NPR
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