Déja vu

The trouble starts here: Viktor Orbán (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images)

If you think we've got problems in the US (and we do), you may need to invent a word for what Hungary's got.  A week ago, to no one's surprise, Hungary's morphing-into-a-dictator Viktor Orbán won his 3rd consecutive election by a landslide in a process that observers have called "Free but not entirely fair". The victory gives Orbán's Fidesz party and its allies two-thirds control over Parliament, and the ability to change the constitution to further cement its hold on the country.  According to the New York Times, Fidesz and its allies won 49% of the vote in a 50% turnout  -- "roughly the same as the seven largest opposition parties combined."  However, the Party "had used the resources of the state on a very large scale to bolster its chances of winning."

“Voters had a wide range of political options, but intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias, and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate,” said Douglas Wake, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E., mission in Hungary.

“The ubiquitous overlap between government information and ruling coalition campaigns, and other abuses of administrative resources blurred the line between state and party,” he said.

Having gotten much traction from his boldly unwelcoming stance on immigration in the European crisis of 2015, Orbán has turned in recent years to worrying his countrymen about the threat of George Soros and to encouraging paranoia about the intentions toward Hungary's ability for self-determination of the more Westerly members of the EU, also apparently to his advantage.  Not content to stop there, allies of Orbán had even ventured in recent weeks to risk alienating the Roma faction of their base with disparaging comments, traditionally the purview of their biggest rival the Jobbik party which came in second.   It does not seem to have hurt the outcome.  The parallels with the last American election are interesting, but if anything, the resonance of xenophobia with sizeable enough segments of the Hungarian population may be more accute due to Hungary's uniqueness in the center of an "Indo-European" Europe, a poignant precariousness which as one writer recently suggested may go some way toward explaining the affinity Hungarian politicians often express for Native Americans.

The billboard reads: Don't let Soros have the last laugh (NPR)

Regardless of the reason for voter susceptibility to Orbán's scary stories, Fidesz's delivery system of choice for its propaganda has traditionally been omnipresent placards. Yet while those have been effective, the main factor in Fidesz' success has undoubtedly been the silencing of media opposition, largely through the purchase and shuttering of independent news outlets by Orbán allies, and otherwise by depriving them of government advertising -- an important source of revenue.  The latest victim of this tactic has been the 80 year old center right Magyar Nemzet newspaper-- owned in recent years by former Orbán ally turned enemy,  Lajos Simiscka-- which closed within days of Orbán's victory.  Days afterward, the English language online news portal Budapest Beacon likewise voluntarily closed.  Its signoff statement is instructive reading on the Hungarian situation.

Bernadett Szabo/Reuters

In another parallel with the American election, tens of thousands of anti-Orbán protesters took to the streets across Hungary on Saturday, with promises of future events.

To any Hungarians reading this: Őszinte részvétem from one who has been in a similar place not too long ago (and face it still is).