It’s been 21 years since Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was invited to the United States in an official capacity. On Monday, Orban, who was shunned from state visits by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, met with President Donald Trump in a meeting that was aimed at deepening American engagement in Eastern Europe, according to the White House.
Orban, who was once looked at as a shimmering hope for democracy in post-Soviet Eastern Europe in 1998, has now become a stark example of a brand of right-wing populist authoritarianism that is slowly rearing its head in various parts of the globe, such as the Philippines and Brazil.
“This guy has been a slide back on democracy. He’s asserting himself with more authority and power,” said WGBH News Analyst and CEO of the GroundTruth Project Charlie Sennott during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday. “He’s locking up his opposition and media, and he’s cracking down on them. He’s literally turning healthy news organizations into government-run outlets.”
Though Hungary is part of the European Union, Orban has alienated other members like France and Germany with a tight grip of the nation’s press and fiery rhetoric that has vowed to “defend [Hungary’s] Christian European Culture” and not “yield the terrain to multiculturalism.” So concerned is Orban with preserving Hungary’s ethnic majority that he has embraced unorthodox approaches to accomplish this, such as eliminating the income tax for any Hungarian woman with four or more children.
Orban’s implementation of ethnocentric policies and firm grip on the Hungarian press grew so severe that in March, the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest transnational political party in the European Parliament, suspended Orban’s national party, Fidsez, while an EPP delegation reviews whether Orban’s policies align with the values of the EPP.
Democratic critics of Trump were quick to pounce on Orban’s visit, which they said implied a tacit approval of Orban’s policies.
“Prime Minister Orbán represents so many things that are antithetical to core American values. He has overseen a rollback of democracy in his country, used anti-Semitic and xenophobic tropes in his political messaging, and cozied up to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin,” a letter penned by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), co-chair of the Congressional Hungarian Caucus, read. “Therefore, we urge you not to meet with Prime Minister Orbán in the coming days and to postpone this meeting until Prime Minister Orbán returns his country to the path of democracy and respect for human rights.”
Sennott has a similar perspective to the Democratic lawmakers. He says that Trump's invitation to Orban is more evidence of a pattern of the president embracing authoritarian leaders across the globe rather than working with them at an arm's length, like a majority of his predecessors.
“Why does he say Kim Jong-Un is his dear friend and they share love letters? Why does he say such nice things about Putin? Why is he playing footsie with Duterte in the Philippines? Why is he doing the same with Al-Sisi in Egypt?” Sennott said. “These are autocratic regimes that are populist driven, and that are disturbingly on the rise around the world, and why is our White House giving countenance to those regimes?”
One reason, Sennott believes, is because while Trump is ostensibly the standard bearer of the liberal-democratic world order that emerged following World War II, he personally shares more in common with people like Orban and Duterte.
“It is very scary what they share in terms of peddling and fear: Fear of immigrants, fear of the other, fear of a future in which a white majority is somehow threatened by this incoming class, and old anti-Semitic canards about people like George Soros who [he says] operate the global economy against us,” Sennott said. “The dark shadow of Trump is in Hungary.”
