Viktor Orbán’s greatest sin

The author of this essay is a former journalist of Lánchíd Rádió, the conservative radio station that closed days after the April election, along with the Magyar Nemzet daily. The author, a former supporter of Fidesz and Viktor Orbán, contacted us this week and asked the Hungarian Free Press to use the pseudonym “blahalujza”when we publish this piece, as revealing our correspondent’s identity could jeopardize the careers and existence of family members. In a cover letter to HFP, blahajuza explains: “Several articles have been written about the elections and the possible corruption around it, an equal number of pieces have been published about Orbán’s dictatorial ways, but I haven’t seen anything written by a Hungarian who has lived through the entire history of Fidesz and the various governments since 1990, someone who has gone from being one of the initial members of Fidesz to vehemently opposing their politics….”

Blahalujza’s piece is a revealing, inside look into the world that Viktor Orbán built. We are pleased to publish this in HFP. 

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Viktor Orbán reading The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray

I have thought long and hard about the elections. Trying to figure out whose fault the outcome was. How it can be that almost everybody I know hates, and I mean hates Orbán and his regime, and yet they have won again. It does not add up. I happen to believe that something very treacherous went on on election day when mysteriously servers stopped working soon after the voting began. I cannot prove this, of course. But my instinct tells me that people do not normally queue up for long hours and until late at night to keep someone in power but to vote against them. Feel free to correct me on this.

I don’t normally write or voice an opinion publicly as I have learnt that there will always be fellow countrymen (and women) who will shout louder than I can be bothered to. But last night my mother told me that Tibor Fischer, whom I greatly respect and have been lucky enough to interview a couple of times, defended Orbán Viktor – again.

Last time I spoke to Tibor Fischer, I was working for Lánchid Rádió, owned by one of Orbán’s arch enemies, Simicska Lajos – at least we are made to believe they are enemies but that is besides the point now. Having exchanged a few e-mails, I ended up telling Tibor that the radio was persona non grata. State-run organisations such as the National Museum for example, were not allowed to give us interviews at all on any subject. Whilst working there, I once got an email from an ethnography expert apologizing for the situation and pointing out the insanity of not being able to talk to us about a subject like Easter. Others with whom we had maintained an excellent working relationship wrote to us begging not to email them ever again because if it got found that they reply to us, they would be fired straightaway.

Although the radio was supposed to be on the “other side”, we always strove to represent both sides of all arguments on all issues. We genuinely wanted honest, no-nonsense and straightforward discussions. We wanted discourse.

But I digress.

I wanted to write about Orbán’s biggest sin, which I can now articulate after a considerable amount of contemplation.

It’s not that we now have no idea who owns half our country. It’s not that a small select circle of chums is stinking rich whilst others are supposed to be able to live on 47 000 HUF (approximately 150 Euro) a month. It’s not even that our children have almost no future in this country.

It’s that most people seemingly have lost all sense of moral judgement. Not because they don’t know any better but because they are scared. In Hungary today there is no freedom of conscience. Life is purely about survival. I have known several people in the opposition media who went to work for the government media that they had always spat on for its lack of professionalism, utter bias, propaganda and incessant scare-mongering. They did not suddenly come to their senses and realize that they wanted to be Fidesz subjects. Call me a cynic but I cannot fathom such metamorphoses. The journalists in question, as well as most people in the country, navigate to support their families, to pay the bills and they keep very, very quiet about what they really think or feel. Much like in the 50s when my grandparents’ most used expression at home was “nicht vor dem Kind” in case the unsuspecting child told the neighbours what their parents had said at home. And who knows into whose ears the good neighbours would whisper next… Tibor Fischer’s parents escaped from that Hungary, and yet he still defends Orban who is doing to this country what the Communist did for decades from which the country never really recovered. And now it’s starting all over again.

Recently I saw a lecture by professor Jordan B Peterson in which he was telling his students what Communism was. At first I was astonished that the people about 20 years younger than me needed to be taught what was common knowledge where I come from. But soon I realized that not only did they never live through it but, being Canadian, they could not have heard a first-hand account of what the mean darkness of the Communist world meant.

At that point I also realized that people outside of Hungary will probably never understand what the real problem is with the Orbán regime apart from the obvious constant scare-mongering, the persistent and staggering corruption and a general tendency to drag Hungary back into the dark ages.

Ten years ago, after having had a child in Britain and with a British husband, I moved back to my native Hungary. I wanted my children to be Hungarian. This year for the first time in my life I didn’t wear the tricolour rosette Hungarians wear on March 15 to commemorate one of our many failed yet beloved revolutions – this time against the Habsburgs. Celebrating March 15 had been banned in the Communist era so wearing a rosette had always been a point of resistance, a small sign of rebellion, a sign of protest against the oppression. This year I chose not to wear it because the Orban regime has been using the term “national” in such a way that has made me prefer to keep my distance from anything “national”. And, above all, it has become an exclusive term: “national” is good by default, anything else is bad. In Hungary you can only buy tobacco from the “National Tobacconist”, one of the oldest cinemas in the country has been renamed “National Urania Cinema” and they even had the audacity to rename my favourite botanical gardens “National Botanical Gardens”. The mind boggles.

However, these may just be my personal aversions.

The really unsettling thing was the emergence of The System Of National Co-operation (NER). Although vehemently rejected by the opposition, yet approved by Fidesz’s 2/3 majority, a bill called the Declaration Of National Co-operation was accepted by Parliament in 2010. Orbán declared their election victory of the same year was a new social contract and the text of the Declaration is required by law to be on display in all government institutions. Other institutions were kindly asked to display the text, if they so choose. Although the declaration begins with the words “Let there be peace, freedom and consensus…”, the very fact that it was plainly the product of Fidesz ideology and no real consultation took place carries dictatorial tendencies and, if nothing else, leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Orbán Viktor betrayed at least two generations. Certainly mine but also my mother’s who was about the age I am now when Orbán appeared like a comet on the Hungarian political scene. He did what no-one had in their wildest dreams dared even think of: he told the Soviet troops to get out at once. He was our hero. We admired what we saw as fierce intellect, razor sharp, clear mind and almost unparalleled bravery. Even many years later, when Fidesz was in opposition, we spent many hours standing in the rain and sweltering heat, walked many miles during demonstrations in support of him. My mother’s birthday present was a small, fold-up chair, known to us as “the demonstration chair”, so she could occasionally sit down during rallies. Orbán’s words were like summer rain to us, like a breath of fresh air after many decades of stale Communist propaganda and outright lies. When Fidesz were finally re-elected new horizons seemed to open up, the promise of a better, free European life was in the air. Ecstatic with joy, we felt his time had finally come.

I don’t recognize the Orbán Viktor I see today. I often wonder if he does. I also fear the reasons for this we will never know. If ever I allowed myself to be emotional about it and think back to the days of the Third Fidesz Conference, where my friends and I saw him come up the stairs in jeans: charismatic, yet humble, casually saying hello to us, no doubt my eyes would fill with tears. Now I only see a man who betrayed all of us, and my heart fills with worry over the future of my children.

I can only hope that I am wrong about him. I can only hope that his secret tutor is not Hermann Goering who during the Nuremberg trials gave this very simple recipe for all dictators to follow:

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

I can only hope that Darkness At Noon is not descending again.

blahalujza

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