Smrt fašizmu, sloboda Mađarskoj!

Hungary PM: bring back death penalty and build work camps for immigrants
Rightwing nationalist Viktor Orbán threatens to defy EU law and launches anti-immigration manifesto calling for internment camps for illegal immigrants

 
 Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has called for a debate on reintroducing the death penalty, but risks sanctions from the EU.

Hungary’s nationalist rightwing leader, Viktor Orbán, has threatened to reintroduce the death penalty, outlawed in the European Union.
The prime minister also reinforced his reputation as the EU’s main maverick with a powerful anti-immigration manifesto that equates migrants with terrorists, says immigrants are taking Hungarians’ jobs, recommends internment camps for illegal immigrants and states they should be forced to work.
A persistent critic of the EU, who holds up Russia’s president Vladimir Putin as a model leader, Orbán responded to the murder of a woman in southern Hungary on Tuesday by calling for the reconsideration of draconian measures banned in the EU, which Hungary joined in 2004.
“The death penalty question should be put on the agenda in Hungary,” he said. “Hungary will stop at nothing when it comes to protecting its citizens.”


Budapest autumn: hollowing out democracy on the edge of Europe

 

Hungary abolished the death penalty – after this was proscribed by the EU charter of fundamental rights – following the collapse of communism in 1989. The EU executive in Brussels said on Wednesday that moves to reinstate the death penalty could incur curbs on Hungary’s EU rights and entitlements.
Orbán’s Fidesz party is allied with Germany’s governing Christian Democrats and other mainstream centre-right parties in the European parliament. There were calls on Wednesday for it to be expelled from the grouping.

A staunch critic of west European multiculturalism and of immigration, Orbán is also disseminating 8m “questionnaires” in Hungary to claim a mandate for his tough anti-immigration policies.
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The 12 questions include:
“Do you agree that economic immigrants endanger the jobs and livelihoods of the Hungarian people?”
“Would you support the government placing illegal immigrants in internment camps?”
“Do you agree with the government that instead of allocating funds to immigration we should support Hungarian families and those children yet to be born?”
“Do you agree that mistaken immigration policies contribute to the spread of terrorism?”
Orbán’s party enjoys a sweeping parliamentary majority but recently lost a byelection to the extreme-right Jobbik party. Analysts say Orbán is seeking to recoup support by veering towards the radical right.

János Kornai 10/09/2015 |  
Mađarska – paunov ples

Neke od novih mađarskih institucija ili procedura su slične ili iste kao institucije i procedure tradicionalnih zapadnih demokratija – na prvi pogled. U mađarskom pravosudnom sistemu je došlo do mnogih promena. Zašto je to loše? Sistem po mnogo čemu još uvek liči na sisteme nekih evropskih zemalja. Nekada se trgovina cigaretama odvijala preko malih radnji koje su se takmičile među sobom. Sada je jedino vladi dozvoljeno da izdaje dozvole za prodaju cigareta. Zašto je to loše? I u Švedskoj država ima monopol na trgovinu alkoholom.
Ono što imamo je mozaik, čiji su mnogi delovi originalni mađarski proizvodi, dok su ostali zaista uvezeni iz zapadnih demokratija. Ali ako pogledamo taj mozaik kao celinu, videćemo jasne obrise Mađarske Viktora Orbana. Iz blizine se vidi smer kojim se kretala svaka komponenta te mašinerije, od početne tačke 2010. Na primer, u SAD sudija Vrhovnog suda ima doživotni mandat. U Mađarskoj će uskoro svi članovi Ustavnog suda biti izabranici Viktora Orbana. Ako bi njihov mandat bio produžen sada, ovaj potez, zajedno sa drugim sličnim potezima, pomerio bi pravni status zemlje ka ireverzibilnom odnosu snaga u vlasti. Hiljade (ovaj broj nije preterivanje) diskretnih promena koje sve teku u istom smeru stvaraju novi sistem. Razumljivo je da neki dopisnik iz Budimpešte piše o samo jednoj skandaloznoj meri, van konteksta Orbanovog sistema. Međunarodne organizacije ili neka evropska vlada može opravdano da protestuje protiv neke određene mere mađarske vlade. Ovim tekstom pokušavam da plediram na sve one koji kreiraju međunarodno javno mnjenje da shvate da je u pitanju više od trenutnog događaja: formiran je sistem čija se osnovna svojstva ne mogu izmeniti parcijalnim promenama.
Još jedna intelektualna zabluda je pogrešna procena legitimiteta Orbanove vladavine: „Iako mi se ne dopada ono što se dešava u Mađarskoj, izgleda je to ono što Mađari žele“. Ovakvo mišljenje je dodatno utvrdila zvanična propaganda, koja tvrdi da je režim osvojio dvotrećinsku većinu u dva uzastopna ciklusa parlamentarnih izbora i da ne postoji nijedna vlada u Evropi koja uživa tako veliku podršku. Ipak, hajde da pogledamo činjenice.
Tabela 1. Rezultati parlamentarnih izbora 2010. i 2014. godine: udeo Fidesz-KDNP pristalica i mandata

"In the 1980s, Orban was a libertarian, which meant he wanted to be free of state constraints.  He still wants to be free of state constraints — this is why he has removed all checks on the power of the prime minister"

Hungary's Viktor Orban, the cunning leader who would keep refugees out of Europe
Q&A: Princeton prof Kim Lane Scheppele hones in on the former democracy activist's drive for power
Hungary's emergency migration law that came into effect Tuesday has underscored, if it wasn't clear already, that Viktor Orban is the leader who wants to keep Syrian refugees out of Europe.
 
In a speech in July, he declared that "there is a clear link between illegal migrants coming to Europe and the spread of terrorism" and "we would like to preserve Europe for Europeans."
 
But Hungary's prime minister — who some now call the "creeping dictator" of Europe, and who espouses an immigration policy of "Hungary for Hungarians" — was once, a long time ago, a star of the Western media and a pro-democracy activist who helped bring down communism in Eastern Europe.
 
Back in the 1980s, he was an idealistic law student and head of a nascent political party called Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats) that refused to accept members over age 35.
 
In 1989, the charismatic Orban grabbed headlines around the world when he took a podium in Budapest, calling for free elections and the end of communism in Hungary.
 
I interviewed him for CBC News in 1999 when he came to Canada as a fresh-faced prime minister. He spoke eloquently of his years as an activist and was exhilarated by his country's newfound freedoms and hopes for a brighter future.
 
Kim Lane Scheppele, a specialist in Hungarian politics and law and a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, also met a youthful Orban in 1995 and says she was struck by his charisma and intellectual power.
 
Today, a dogged chronicler of Hungary's abysmal human rights situation and deteriorating legal system, Scheppele has attracted ire from the Orban government. 
 
"In the 1980s, Orban was a libertarian, which meant he wanted to be free of state constraints.  He still wants to be free of state constraints — this is why he has removed all checks on the power of the prime minister," she said.
 
CBC News interviewed Scheppele about recent developments in Hungary, what they signal about Orban, and what they mean for Europe.
 
You're a legal scholar. What's the significance of Hungary's emergency law today?
 
With this measure, the government can start enforcing draconian new laws that criminalize crossing the border without proper documents. If refugees manage to cross into Hungary after the border is sealed, they will be charged with serious felonies and imprisoned until either their asylum claim is processed or until the criminal charges are resolved. 
 
Under the new laws, judges will work 24/7 processing asylum applications. If a refugee is found to have entered Hungary through a safe country — and Serbia is a safe country, according to this law — then the refugee can be expelled back across the border. The asylum procedures will work like kangaroo courts. Everyone expects all of the refugees to be deported after a nominal process.
 
One week from now, another new law will take effect giving the military the power to use rubber bullets, tear gas, nets and dogs to keep refugees out of Hungary, with the use of deadly force if a soldier feels his life is threatened. Police and soldiers will be able to stop and search cars, cordon off sensitive zones, prevent free movement around the country and, most alarmingly, "use force" and "restrict liberty." Hungary may soon be a police state, where the police determine the rules and the law gives little guidance.
 
What's the strategy with the fences along the Serbian border, specifically?
 
Serbia is a non-EU country, so when refugees cross the border from Serbia into Hungary, they enter the European Union at that point. And under EU law (the "Dublin regulation"), it's the first EU member state that bears responsibility for caring for the refugee and processing the asylum claim. Hungary doesn't want to take responsibility for any of these refugees, so it built the fence to prevent them from crossing into Hungary, encouraging them to enter the EU through Croatia first. Croatia would then be on the hook for their care and processing.
 
In short, the fence was designed for burden-shifting. Many of these refugees actually entered the EU through Greece, which would normally have the obligation to register them, care for them and then process their asylum claims. But the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2014 that conditions in Greece, due to the austerity programs, were so bad that Greece could no longer be considered a "safe state." 
 
You met Viktor Orban early on in his political life. Describe his trajectory since 1989, when he was a pro-democracy activist.
 
Viktor Orban is a man of relatively little ideology but someone who is a keen analyst of power. In 1989, he argued that the dissidents should negotiate not with the current government but with the Communist Party, because that was where the power lay.
 
The party he created in 1989, Fidesz, was originally libertarian, but moved to the right — because that's where the voters were. Orban understood that to get and keep power, it was easier to appeal to voters' prejudices than to try to erase those prejudices. So he became a nationalist, claiming "Hungary for Hungarians." He is playing a xenophobic nationalist because his biggest domestic challenger is a far-right party. If the left were stronger in Hungary, he would probably tack left to undercut them. I think that Orban is a political chameleon motivated by one thing: the drive to gain and keep power. 
 
What motivates his anti-refugee "Hungary for Hungarians" philosophy?
 
For almost a year, Orban has used the government-friendly media to claim that the refugees were economic migrants, trying to steal Hungarians' jobs. Then, the refugees were security risks — terrorists wanting to destroy "Christian Europe." Then, the refugees were carrying contagious diseases! In fact, you can still see Hungarian police wearing surgical masks and gloves when they deal with the refugees, something that creates a powerful impression on TV.   
 
To what degree is this government line a reflection of what Hungarians actually feel?
 
Not surprisingly, given this year-long media barrage, Hungarians were opposed to allowing the refugees to settle in Hungary. But in the last weeks, as more Hungarians have had personal experience with them, opinion softened. Some recent polls say that as many as 40 per cent of Hungarians now want the country to take in refugees.  
 
Does Orban make a fair point when he says Germany and Europe's messages to the refugees have been mixed and confusing?
 
It's true that when Chancellor Angela Merkel says that refugees will be safe in Germany, these refugees have to pass through many other countries to get there. Her cry of compassion therefore puts a greater burden on these other countries. So I can see why the states on the way to Germany felt that Merkel was irresponsible in doing what she did. But the fault is not really Merkel's. What we can now see is that the Dublin regulation created a broken system in which refugees must be handled by the very countries in the EU least able to shoulder the burden. The countries most willing to take in refugees are not the front-line states.
 
Now that the EU is stalled on a plan about how to distribute the refugees, and Hungary is blocking them at its border, what might happen next?
 
It will take many summits of member-state leaders to decide whether the European project — in this case open borders — is worth saving or whether the ability of each country to separately determine its own immigration rules is more important. I suspect that open borders will win in the end, but frankly I don't see how we're going to get there in the near term.
 
The EU is talking about mass internment camps in Italy and Greece. What do you think of this idea?
 
The EU wants to create "hot spots" where EU officials process asylum claims and handle the refugee crisis entirely within an EU framework. But ultimately, any admitted refugee will have to live somewhere, and given the resistance to quotas, it is unclear how the EU — which controls no territory that is not in a member state — can guarantee that an admitted refugee would have a place to go. So then we're thrown back into the same quagmire: If many countries' doors are closed, the EU doesn't have the power to open them.
 
Orban came of age during the era of the pro-democracy movement in communist Eastern Europe and fought for individual freedoms and human rights. How do we square this with his policies today?  
 
Orban really hasn't changed so much. He went from being a universal libertarian — libertarianism for all! — to being a personal libertarian: freedom for him alone!

Hungary: ‘Sorry About Our Prime Minister’

Jan-Werner Müller

Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Budapest, Hungary, March 2014

Visitors to Budapest this past July were greeted by large billboards, sponsored by an opposition group, saying: “Sorry about our prime minister.” A few weeks later, ugly images from Hungary began circulating around the world: Hungarian prison laborers, soldiers, and jobless men in workfare programs all mobilized to build a razor-wire fence at the border with Serbia in record time; Syrian families prevented from boarding carriages at Budapest train stations; police firing tear gas on refugees trying to cross the border from Serbia; government leaders warning of a “United European Caliphate” if the Muslim masses aren’t stopped in time. Yet the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, clearly thinks there’s no reason for him to be sorry, let alone for Hungarians to feel ashamed of him. He gleefully points out that he is merely applying European rules that require him to secure the EU’s external borders. And in Brussels and at the UN, he has been shopping around his proposal to close Europe and send refugees elsewhere—what he calls a system of “global quotas.”

Many Europeans don’t like what Orbán says, but concede that he seems the only politician who knows what he wants; others, especially on the center-right, don’t yet dare to admit that they find some of his ideas congenial. What none of them seem to understand is that Orbán’s policies are driven by competition with the far-right inside Hungary: Orbán’s Fidesz party has been vying for support with Jobbik (“Movement for a Better Hungary”), an openly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma party aligning itself with Iran and Russia. While Fidesz is officially a member of the “European People’s Party,” the supranational association of Christian Democrats and moderate conservatives, the Orbán administration constitutes in fact—if not in name—the first far-right government in post-war European history. Now, as Orbán explained in a speech to party faithful last month, the refugee crisis has given him a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to destroy Europe’s “liberal identity” and replace it with his preferred “Christian, national” one. This is a project that should disturb anyone who cares about the future of democracy in the European Union.

Hungary’s successful self-portrayal in recent weeks as the “last defender of Europe” constitutes an extraordinary reversal of fortune for Orbán. Earlier this year, he looked vulnerable for the first time since 2010, when his Fidesz party crushed a scandal-ridden left-wing government and secured two thirds of the seats in parliament, a supermajority allowing him to push through sweeping laws to perpetuate his power. Orbán weakened independent courts, clamped down on media pluralism, and, under the pretext of fighting evil European multinationals, handed much of the economy over to cronies. He introduced a new (Christian and national) constitution, before re-engineering election rules so that, in the April 2014 parliamentary poll, Fidesz again secured a supermajority in parliament, despite a dramatic decline in its share of the vote. At the time, Orbán felt confident enough to trumpet his plan to create what he called an “illiberal new state based on national foundations”—citing Russia, Turkey, and China as examples to follow.


Orbán’s concept of the illiberal state has remained somewhat mysterious. Alluding to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous remark, Orbán once compared it to pornography: he could not explain what an illiberal state was, but he knew it when he saw one. As he came under attack from the West—US foreign policy thinkers in particular—for officially abandoning liberal democracy, Fidesz intellectuals rushed to clarify that Orbán was merely against a state making economic freedom sacrosanct. Economic freedom, according to Orbán, results in the law of the jungle (so that European multinationals can crush small Hungarian businesses). Instead, he wants a more nationalized economy and a “workfare state” that requires people to join the labor force in order to receive benefits, and that is predicated on a strong national, family- and faith-based community (the result being that prisoners and many Roma can end up in workfare programs). One other consequence of Orbán’s efforts to promote a new nationalist ideology—reminiscent of Vichy France’s motto of “Work, Family, Fatherland”—was a reorientation of Hungary towards Russia, which extended a huge loan to Budapest last year. Orbán, faithful to a classic literary image of Hungary as a “ferry-boat” between East and West, was cleverly able to play—and get cash from—both sides (Hungary remains one of the largest net beneficiaries of EU subsidies).

But then things began to go wrong for the seemingly invincible “Viktator.” The country’s most important oligarch, Lajos Simicska, a lifelong friend and more than once a financial savior for Fidesz, was apparently unhappy with the “opening to the East.” He also felt that the government had been increasingly freezing him out since Orbán’s re-election in April 2014: his media companies were being deprived of state advertising and his huge construction company cut off from the enormous EU funds earmarked for improving infrastructure. Like Putin, Orbán seemed to fear being dependent on oligarchs. In response, Simicska declared “total war” on the prime minister, calling him names in public and threatening to reveal unpleasant truths about his former college roommate’s past. From one day to the next, Simicska’s media empire turned against Orbán, who was now accused by Simicska of building a dictatorship. Meanwhile, new scandals engulfed leading Fidesz politicians, some of whom appeared to be enriching themselves by selling off state property and taking a cut in the largely secret deals with Russia.


Partly as a result, some disenchanted Fidesz supporters shifted their allegiance to the xenophobic Jobbik party, which had actually toned down some its extremist rhetoric precisely to appeal to such voters. Jobbik is now the strongest opposition force and the only major party never to have been in government. (Fidesz rejected coalitions with them, but, in any case, had no need for Jobbik, as long as it enjoyed a supermajority in parliament.) The fact that the party remains untainted by corruption makes it attractive in the eyes of some voters who might not share the party’s prejudices but wish to register protest. By April, when Jobbik won its first direct district in a by-election in Western Hungary (which is generally more affluent than Jobbik’s stronghold, the Northeast), Fidesz had lost its two-thirds majority. Orbán needed to act.

In a 2014 survey, only 3 percent of Hungarians identified immigration as among the two most important issues facing the country (unemployment and the general economic situation were seen as the real problems). In early 2015, Orbán set out to change this perception. While other leaders, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, linked arms in the streets of Paris and called for tolerance, Orbán used his stage in France to tell Hungarian state television that “recent events” should lead Europe to restrict immigration, especially of those with “different cultural characteristics.” In May, the government mailed out questionnaires to 8 million citizens for a “national consultation” on what it called “Immigration and Terrorism.” The survey contained questions such as “Did you know that economic migrants cross the Hungarian border illegally, and that recently the number of immigrants in Hungary has increased twentyfold?” It also encouraged citizens to agree with the opinion that “mismanagement of the immigration question by Brussels may have something to do with increased terrorism.”


A month later, billboards with stern warnings went up: “If you come to Hungary, don’t take Hungarians’ jobs!” or “If you come to Hungary, you have to obey our laws!” These government-sponsored ads were all in Hungarian and thus obviously aimed at a domestic audience—it is unlikely that migrants had picked up one of the world’s most notoriously difficult languages en route. In any case, there were no foreigners eager to snatch jobs from Hungarians; those coming on the now famous “Western Balkans route” were desperate to go further west to Austria and Germany as fast as possible. The same has in fact been true of numerous Hungarians: at least 500,000 citizens have left the country since 2010, seeking work in London, Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere. Many find the political climate at home unbearable, or have realized that Hungarian jobs are not in fact for Hungarians in general, but for those with proven friendliness towards Fidesz. (One of the unintended side effects of freedom of movement courtesy of European integration and the Schengen system has been that, unlike during the Cold War, oppressive governments can easily get rid of domestic discontent.)

By summer, it was far from obvious that Orbán’s anti-immigrant campaign was having any of the intended effects. The response rate to the questionnaire was low; another survey done around the same time showed that a clear majority thought that emigration, not immigration, was the problem, in view of the country’s declining population. While opposition parties on the left remained weak and divided, creative minds from within civil society got busy. The leaders of the satirical “Two-tailed Dog Party” crowdsourced a campaign with billboards looking exactly like official government ones. These were the posters that said, “Sorry about our prime minister,” and featured announcements such as “If you are the prime minister of Hungary, you have to obey our laws!” or “Come to Hungary, we’ve got jobs in London!”

Stringer Shanghai/Reuters/Corbis Riot police in front of a holding area for refugees in Röszke, Hungary, September 4, 2015

Meanwhile, the decision in mid-June—even before the “national consultation” officially closed— to build the fence along the border with Serbia was beginning to have an effect: it increased the number of refugees rushing to Hungary, as complete closure of the Balkans route now appeared to be only a matter of time. Refugees became much more visible around the main train stations in Budapest and elsewhere. Rather than letting them pass through, the government started to enforce EU law and insist that refugees register in the country of first arrival in the EU. Whoever might not have agreed with the views propounded in “Immigration and Terrorism” now got the message: “economic migrants” brought with them chaos and possibly violence—even if the dramatic scenes in Budapest and elsewhere were actually caused by government incompetence or, for that matter, by what appeared to be an effort to make being in Hungary as unpleasant as possible (the government refused help from the UNHCR).


By contrast—as in other European countries—thousands of private citizens in Hungary have on their own tried to help refugees, in what may well be the greatest volunteer effort in modern Hungarian history. But it seems unlikely that anything like a political movement will emerge from this, as every attempt over the last five years to translate civil society activism into effective opposition to Fidesz has failed (like Putin, the government has repeatedly harassed civil society organizations and accused them of being “foreign agents”). In recent weeks, Orbán has deployed not only the police, but also the army and an elite anti-terror unit to confront what he describes as “young men from the Arab world who look like warriors.” Immigration and terrorism—there it is, finally plain for all to see. The legal changes required to use the army had to be approved by a two-thirds majority in parliament. Jobbik gladly supplied the necessary votes in late September, but overall it was Orbán’s Fidesz that benefited. Polls now show Fidesz up and Jobbik down.

For years, Orbán had been trying to convince conservatives elsewhere in Europe that his administration was the real thing: a Christian government devoted to traditional morality and a strong nation-state (never mind that even the most superficial understanding of Christianity would point to universalism—Christ, or at least the Good Samaritan, somehow seemed to have stopped in Serbia). Orbán was counting on there being many right-wingers disaffected by Christian Democrats’ willingness to surrender national sovereignty to the EU and throw in traditional marriage in favor of gay marriage for good measure. But other than at the fringes of a Spanish right, nostalgic for Franco, he found few takers.

In this respect as well, the refugee crisis proved a godsend. Take the German Christian Social Union (CSU)—the dominant party in Bavaria that is in permanent alliance with Merkel’s Christian Democrats, but whose own leader is also competing with the Chancellor for power within the German government. Seizing the opportunity to score points against a supposedly sentimental “Mama Merkel”—who had opened the borders for the refugees walking on the highway from Budapest to Vienna—the CSU invited Orbán to a high-profile meeting in a Bavarian monastery. While they celebrated the Hungarian leader as “Europe’s border guard captain,” Orbán took the occasion to accuse Merkel’s government of “moral imperialism.” He also charged Merkel with indirect responsibility for the death of refugees, as she had encouraged them to take the risky journey to Europe; and while Orbán initially appeared to be an outlier on this issue, it is now Merkel who is increasingly under attack in Germany for having gone too far in accommodating refugees. (Last week, in an internal meeting of the European People’s Party, Merkel shot back that she had saved Europe’s dignity by letting in the refugees and that as an “Eastern European” who had “lived behind a fence for long enough,” she knows that turning Europe into a fortress won’t work.)

Orbán, a man who thrives on confrontation, has made it clear that he wants to start a pan-European culture war. In the speech to his party last month, he announced that the refugee issue had created an “identity crisis” for “hypocritical” liberals—“the first good identity crisis” he had ever seen and the beginning of the end for “liberal babble.” He explained that “after having proclaimed… universal human rights, having forced our ideology on them…, having sent our celebrities into their homes, now we are surprised that they are knocking on our door.” Since liberals would also soon shut the door and thus be seen to abandon their principles, “national-Christian ideology” could regain dominance in Europe.

It’s been said many times: the refugee crisis is a major challenge to the EU and its declared “fundamental values,” human dignity and the rule of law. But so is a government that spends millions of dollars of taxpayer money on hate campaigns and mistreats the most vulnerable. (Hungarian state TV is not supposed to show women and children among the refugees; police have to wear masks, since the refugees are said to carry diseases—though officers often remove the masks as soon as cameras are gone.) Until the refugee crisis, leading European politicians had largely turned a blind eye to Orbán’s illiberalism, mostly out of cowardice, but also because they’ve been so absorbed by the EU economic crisis. The EU, according to a common perception, is already under attack for dictating to Eurozone members what their national budgets have to look like; it cannot possibly be seen as hectoring them on democracy as well.


All along, Orbán has been selling outsiders the story that it’s either him or the neo-Nazis—the Jobbik party. One result of Orbán’s militancy in the refugee crisis may be that, at last, other European leaders are beginning to see that in many ways there is now little difference between Fidesz and Jobbik (the fence had been the idea of a mayor with close ties to Jobbik, for instance). The EU, which Orbán variously accuses of colonialism or derides as “rich, but weak,” has the means to ostracize a country no longer observing its values: the other EU Member States can suspend the voting rights of an offending government, and Brussels can also cut off funds that at the moment perversely benefit Fidesz, an anti-European party (legally, a country cannot be kicked out of the EU as such; but members can leave the club voluntarily). If the Union fails to act now, its credibility will be permanently damaged. Orbán’s challenge goes to the moral core of the European project.
October 14, 2015, 3:39 p.m.

Jordan Rivers wrote:zatvor, pa proterivanje

Orbán’s Rhetoric: An Exchange

Réka Szemerkényi, reply by Jan-Werner Müller

The following letter from Réka Szemerkényi, the Hungarian Ambassador to the United States, responds to Jan-Werner Müller’s “Hungary: ‘Sorry About Our Prime Minister,’” published October 14, 2015.

 

Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Vienna, September 25, 2015

To the Editors:

Jan-Werner Müller paints a rather distorted picture of Hungary. While everyone is free in their particular selection of quotes and personal interpretations, factual correctness is not a matter of choice. The article unfortunately grossly misrepresents Hungary’s positions throughout the migration crisis. This is why it is my responsibility to call your and your readers’ attention to some basic facts.

The facts are that Hungary is the first border country of the EU facing the huge challenges of the massive migration pressure to have made a serious effort to strictly observe the European agreements, and to live up to the common European interests, while at the same time developing a comprehensive proposal to find international solutions. These are no small achievements.

The article correctly points out that Hungarian society responded with compassion, while at the same Hungary has from the beginning of this crisis advocated for answers addressing the root causes to the crisis, aiding and stabilizing the source countries and eliminating conditions that lead to the mass exodus.

Prime Minister Orbán’s rhetoric on immigration might not be popular with some commentators, but he bluntly states a simple truth: there is no democratic mandate to open our countries to such an extraordinary large influx of immigrants. Europe’s track record on integrating large immigrant populations has been mixed at best. Keeping in mind that the capacity of our democracies to integrate these people without harming social cohesion has its limits is a morally tenable—and correct—position. This political reality is becoming more and more clear to many others in Europe. The fact that, as Mr. Müller notes, Hungary’s position is increasingly being seen in Europe as in defense of Europe and European values themselves speaks to the validity of the fundamentals of Hungary’s position, even if this disturbs the author.

Mr. Müller’s efforts to paint Fidesz as a group of ideological hardliners feels like he using Hungary as a proxy to fight domestic ideological battles. The fact is the governing Fidesz party is center right, encompassing views from liberal-conservatives to traditionalists. Selective quotes will not hide the fact that the Hungarian government’s commitment to traditional European values are well within the mainstream of European politics.

Contrary to the alarmist fantasies presented by Mr. Müller Hungary is a medium size, ordinary European democracy facing extraordinary challenges. As the billboards Mr. Müller’s article (“Sorry About Our Prime Minister”) alludes to have shown, Hungary has a vibrant and pluralistic public space for political debate.

Dr. Réka Szemerkényi
Ambassador of Hungary to the United States


Jan-Werner Müller replies:

Ambassador Szemerkényi claims that my piece contains factual errors, but then fails to identify any. Instead, she attributes an argument to me that I did not make: I did not say that many Europeans think that Viktor Orbán is defending “European values,” only that they see him as acting decisively. Fortunately, most Europeans remain unlikely to associate their values with a man who initiates xenophobic poster campaigns, toys with the idea of re-introducing the death penalty, harasses NGOs, and attacks “activists” helping refugees—including, most recently, the investor and philanthropist George Soros, whom the Hungarian prime minister accused of seeking to undermine nation-states and the “traditional European lifestyle.”

It is such policies and statements from the very top that justify treating the Orbán government as de facto belonging to the far right; that his Fidesz party also contains moderate members, as stressed by Ambassador Szemerkényi, does not change this. Like many Hungarian state officials, she insinuates that criticism of the government she serves is motivated by party politics; the fact is that many highly respected non-partisan organizations, from the European Commission to the OSCE and the Council of Europe’s Commission for Democracy through Law (“Venice Commission”), have raised the alarm about Hungary’s move away from liberal democracy (without going so far as Senator John McCain—hardly a man of the left—who called Orbán a “neo-fascist dictator”).


Finally, as my piece explained, Orbán’s support has grown (although those opting for “don’t know/won’t vote” in polls far outnumber citizens intending to vote for Fidesz). But it is much more debatable to assert a “democratic mandate” against immigration under circumstances where the government has waged a relentless campaign to portray all refugees as economic parasites spreading terror and disease and as by definition incapable of sharing our “values,” while at the same time never properly disclosing the results of the manipulative consultation on “Immigration and Terrorism”; and where the country’s “press status” receives a shockingly low score of “partly free” from Freedom House. In any case, “immigration” is a misleading description of the issue. As recently shown by Amnesty International, Hungary is failing to fulfill its basic obligations to asylum seekers under international law.
November 7, 2015, 9:49 a.m.

nytimes.com
Why Poland Is Turning Away From the West

Contributing Op-Ed Writer

Sofia, Bulgaria — DURING the recent electoral campaign in Poland, a constant question raised by pundits and politicians was not whether the country would go right, but whether it would go wrong.
Would the conservative Law and Justice Party, the expected victors in the poll, go the way of Viktor Orban’s increasingly authoritarian Hungary, or would it stay closer to the center? Given the nationalist, anti-liberal slant of the party’s campaign platform, could Poland’s seemingly consolidated liberal institutions reverse course? Law and Justice won decisively, and after only three weeks we have an answer: a distressing yes.
The new government has pushed forward three staggering changes. The man chosen to oversee police and intelligence agencies is a party stalwart who received a three-year suspended sentence for abusing power in his previous role as head of the anti-corruption office, signaling that political loyalty is above the law.
The government has purged European Union flags from government press briefings, demonstrating that it sees Polish national interests in opposition to European values.
And it has weakened the country’s separation of powers by rejecting the previous Parliament’s nominees to the constitutional court — and instead appointed its own candidates, provoking a constitutional crisis.
Why has Poland, the poster child of post-Communist success and Europe’s best economic performer of the last decade, suddenly taken an illiberal turn? Why, despite the profound public mistrust of politicians, are people ready to elect parties eager to dismantle any constraints on government’s power?
For one thing, the Law and Justice Party bet on a form of illiberal democracy because it succeeded in Hungary. The Orban model of rebuking the European Union while accepting billions in aid money has worked. So have Mr. Orban’s efforts to consolidate power by demonizing his political opponents. Hungary’s economy has not collapsed as critics predicted; nor did Mr. Orban’s party lose at the ballot box.
Of course, the more countries that follow Mr. Orban’s lead, the less successful his model will become: At some point there will be no European Union to blame. Indeed, Poland’s drift may result in a backlash by Western Europe; already, one hears rumblings in Paris and Berlin that it was a mistake to give the new, Eastern entrants the same power within the European Union as the established members of the eurozone.
But the core question is why Poles voted for a party that has a dismal governing record. After Law and Justice won its first term in 2005, its public standing dropped precipitously and it was forced into early elections two years later, and lost. (And Poles are hardly anti-democratic; a recent poll showed a majority are concerned that Polish democracy is in danger.)
The answer is simple, and it is a version of what we are seeing across Europe. Even a party as historically unpopular as Law and Justice can win these days by running not just against the left, but against liberal democracy. It is transparent in its aversion to independent institutions like the courts, the central bank and the media.
These populist and radical parties aren’t just parties; they are constitutional movements. They promise voters what liberal democracy cannot: a sense of victory where majorities — not just political majorities, but ethnic and religious ones, too — can do what they please.
The rise of these parties is symptomatic of the explosion of threatened majorities as a force in European politics. They blame the loss of control over their lives, real or imagined, on a conspiracy between cosmopolitan-minded elites and tribal-minded immigrants. They blame liberal ideas and institutions for weakening the national will and eroding national unity. They tend to see compromise as corruption and zealousness as conviction.
What makes anxious majorities most indignant is that while they believe that they are entitled to govern (they are the many after all), they never can have the final say. And so they are ready to blame the separation of powers and other inconvenient principles of liberal democracy for their frustration — and readily endorse parties like Law and Justice that run against those principles.
In a recent paper entitled “The Political Economy of Liberal Democracy,” the economists Sharun Mukand and Dani Rodrik argue that the question is not why so few democracies are liberal, but why liberal democracies exist at all. In the best of times, it’s an idle question. And maybe Poland will do the right thing, again, and throw the bums out after two years. Or perhaps the enigma of liberal democracy will cease to be an idle question, and become, for Europe, an existential one.

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and a contributing opinion writer.