What a Post-Orbán Hungary Means for Hungarians and Europe

You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs. My name is Ryan Evans, and I'm the founder of Warren The Rocks. In this episode, I spoke to my new friend Sandor Isak. He's an attorney practicing in Budapest, Hungary. He's also a blogger and an activist for democratic causes. He has a substack called the Hungarian vogue. Muse, which you should read and subscribe to. He also has his own podcast. We spoke about Peter Péter Magyar's victory over Viktor Orban, who ruled Hungary as prime minister for 16 years, what it means for Hungary

vetoed the sanction packages. He tried to get Russian billionaires off the sanction lists. And he was a pain in the neck in the European politics. And he grew really. And he grew real authoritarian tendencies back at home. And he managed to completely ruin the Hungarian economy. So after 16 years, the situation was ripe for a new opposition party to emerge and led by a former member of Viktor Orban's party. And no, that opposition party finally toppled him. And Péter Magyar was a former member of Viktor Orban's own party. Yes, he was. He held positions in the background, like Viktor Orban's party is called Fides. So he was like CEO of Fidesz-related companies. His wife or ex-wife was the justice minister and later the leader of the Fidesz party list on

the European parliamentary elections. He left Fidesz after a big scandal two years ago. It's called the pardon scandal or the pedophile scandal. It was about an orphanage where the director of the orphanage abused the kids. His deputy, try to cover it up. I mean, he tried to convince the kids not to testify in court, but he was also convicted for this, and he was somehow related with someone in Viktor Orban's close circles, and the president of Hungary pardoned him, but in order to do that in Hungary, you knew the signature from the justice minister. So, both the president of Hungary and the justice minister was forced to resign, basically to say Viktor Orban's skin. And many say that that was the motivation for this new guy, Peter Mogher,

because the way they treated the ex-wife. So he was no longer in politics when this happened. He was never in front-line politics. He was always on the background. And many say that the reason why he stepped up is because the way they treated the ex-wife, the mother of their three children. What are his politics? What's his political ideology? I mean, I assume he's conservative. I've read that he's conservative given his background in Fides. Most of his political messages resembles Viktor Orban's political messaging for 2008 or 2007, because Viktor Orban had a switch from this moderate, pro-Western conservative thoughts towards this Putinist eastern conservative line. Péter Magyar's messaging is basically a revival of the old pro-Western conservative line of Viktor Orban, which is quite

popular because the Hungarian society tends to be more conservative. So probably the divide is not like 50-50 percent, but like 65 to 35 towards conservatism. Could you tell us how political life and social life changed in Hungary under Viktor Orban? You mentioned authoritarian. You know, there's quite a few people in America on the conservative side have argued, well, Marjor won the election, so Viktor Orban was never an authoritarian. We worried too much. What do you say to that?

If you compare Viktor Orban with people like Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Vladimir Putin, yes, he was a soft authoritarian. Most of his success was based on the fact that Hungary received a lot of money from the EU. And like in the first eight years of his rule, like the very good international financial environment, so the quantitative easing, lots of cheap loans. And basically he convinced Hungarians that he is the source of this money and not the EU and the international markets. And when he lost that money, he started to reform the election laws. You know, subtle changes, but those subtle changes ensure that the opposition parties were always divided and they couldn't integrate in a comprehensive, large opposition movement. But when the

Hungarian economy became really bad and there were big troubles, those old opposition parties completely lost their relevance. And it basically the time... Is that because of the reforms that Viktor Orban made or something else? They couldn't. In the 2022 elections, they even held an opposition primary to find the guy who will lead them. The primary took place, but they never backed the guy they elected. So they became ridiculous, discredited. So the Hungarian voters were looking for a new opposition. And this is what Madjars sold them or sold for us, that this is a new, unified, credible opposition power.

And the whole election system was designed for this disintegrated small parties. Viktor Orban never thought that party of equal power will emerge from that. Interesting. So he did create changes to the system that made it less free and less fair, but it was targeted at keeping the smaller opponents small and divided. Yes. The EU said that the Hungarian elections are free but not fair. And how did the media landscape change during his rule?

Because there was a lot of consolidation. Yes, there was a lot of consolidation. also a lot of subtle legislative changes. For example, no company who wanted any state-related contract advertised with independent media. So that turned independent media towards subscriber income and click-based advertisement. So basically, the message was sent out, or was it a law that... It was just a message, informal message. If you advertise with these media outlets, you're going to lose your business.

Yes. Imagine being a media as a smaller podcast or blog, you can rely on subscriber contact, but on a nationwide level, you can't do that. So you need money from advertisement, income from advertisement. But it turned it into a machine where everyone was trying to get more clicks from like Google Adverts type of advertisement. And it created an echo chamber, which was always talking about Viktor Orban and not about the real problem. So it was good for Viktor Orban because everyone was talking about it. But it was it critical of Viktor Orban ever? Yeah, it was critical of Viktor Orban, but it worked like a drug because if you always talk about

Viktor Orban, it leads to a situation when Viktor Orban can feed you with talking points and you just never realize that you are basically amplifying Viktor Orban's message even when you criticize it. So it, it, it, they never realize that actually they shouldn't talk about Viktor Orban, they should talk about something else, and that was driven by the need of clicks and subscriber income. Was dissent ever directly punished? I mean, he never crossed the red line of jailing political opponents. But what about normal people who protested or dissented in some way? Were they ever persecuted directly? Or was it all indirect? No, no. He never crossed that line because the way Hungarians work and the Soviets had to learn it in a hard way back in 1956, that we can take almost

unlimited amount of soft power and soft oppression, but in the very moment when it turns hard, Hungarians go and do a revolution. So Viktor Orban very wisely refrained from hard dictatorship. Everything he did was soft and subtle. Everything you ask about it, I will have to go like a 10-minute explanation on how it exactly worked on the Hungarian people's mind. Viktor Orban was really good at reading Hungarian people's mind and reactions, and towards the end, he lost that. Was corruption a major problem? Oh, yes, it was. How does that manifest itself? Can you give us some examples? Aside from this sort of pardon that set off the scandal, which is obviously an example of corruption.

It started off as like classical corruption, but within six, eight years, it became a complete state capture. This was the main source of economic problems. One is because the EU cut the funding, but the other problem was that the system became so centralized that everyone was lining up for business at Viktor Orban. And in that situation, it's not only the companies who are there asking for business, but individuals asking for money. So in the last like three, four years, you couldn't tell whether if it's like it's a real business asking for just, you know,

getting a contract to build a road or something like that, or is it someone who just wants money by kissing Viktor Orban's, So I'm not going to ask you to predict the future, but I'd like to give our listeners the benefits of how you're thinking about the future. So I can see a number of different futures for where this goes next. Maybe he'll fulfill all of his campaign promises, crack down on corruption, reorient in a more friendly way towards the EU and the West, eliminate Russian influence. Hungary is riddled with Russian intelligence. But it could also go another way. He could use the system that Viktor Orban is built to his own advantage.

What do you expect? What are the signs we should look out for? Probably the most important thing is that Hungary is dependent on EU money. And the EU Commission have really detailed requirements for the Hungarian government. It's like a 27 point list. And Maguire has to fulfill those. Or what? There are like 18 billion euros frozen for Hungary.

And we desperately need that money because Hungarian economy is small, very small, compared to, it's like, I don't know, smaller. and probably the size of Iowa in terms of GDP. So we need that money. So the EU can keep Péter Magyar on a real short leash because they realized that they made a mistake when they didn't keep Viktor Orban on a short leash. So the EU will do that. I don't know the personality of Péter Magyar,

but his messaging so far is common sense politics. So he wants to return to a situation when the military is led by a soldier, the health care is led by a doctor, that kind of situation, which was not the case for the last five years of Viktor Orban when like political cronies were leading the ministries. So his main message is to return to common sense politics. What should we expect on Ukraine? You know, Hungary-Undauban has been hostile to Ukraine, running interference for Russia, all sorts of things related to energy and military supply sanctions. we expect any change? Did he talk, did Péter Magyar talk about any of this on the campaign trail?

No, on a campaign trail, Péter Magyar had a really tricky job to do because Viktor Orban's propaganda was sold out that it implanted a lot of ideas into the Hungarian minds. One of them being, anti-Ukraine, anti-LGBQ, anti-other things, he had to very carefully avoid those topics because otherwise he would have been bogged down in those debates. No, that he won, I think he still can't do that because Hungarians still have those ideas implanted by Viktor Orban's propaganda. But I think what he will do is simply not being an obstacle anymore. And I don't think that either Volodymyr Zelensky or the EU expects anything else. I mean, don't sabotage us. If you are passive, it's okay. If you don't come out like loving Ukraine,

it's okay. Just don't sabotage the efforts of the EU. And I think Maguari is more than ready to do that. Do we know if he's talked to Volodymyr Zelensky? Yes, and they they already talked briefly, but they will have more talks after he was sworn in two weeks from now. And what kind of government should we expect him to put together? And you mentioned a soldier, you know, people that know they're brief, but do you think, has he given, I know he's given quite a lot of long press conferences. I've read that his communications team gets quite stressed because he likes to speak off the cuff And at length, has he given any signals is he going to try to do some kind of a unity

government or is it all going to be people from his own party? Because he got quite a large proportion of the electorate. Yes. One of his main campaign messages was bringing experts in the government. So we already know nine or ten ministers out of the 16 he promised. We will have because Viktor Orban integrated ministries together. So he had like eight ministers or seven ministers sometimes. Madior will have 16.

so stand-alone ministries for most areas. And we already know nine or ten names, and so far they are all experts. So it's part of the common sense messaging he does that most of or all of the names we know so far are names, a good HR department will choose. You know, someone with professional experience, leadership experience, no big scandals, the common sense guy who you would hire for your own business type of names. Most of them are new to politics. Madjior will have 141 seats out of 200 in the National Assembly. So a healthy majority. Yes, it's a super majority. So he can change the constitution if he wants to. And I think

he will. Most of those 140 names are new guys without prior political experience. You told me a story earlier that was quite shocking about what Viktor Orban's son wanted to do in Africa. Tell us that story. Yeah. It's quite wild. It was one of the big scandals before, like 10 days before the election. A military captain called Sylvester Palinkash came out to the press wearing full uniform. And he told two things, basically. One is the dire state of Hungarian armed forces, which is quite well known. We don't have a really good army. But the other story was that this is a big, guy, like six foot five muscular guy. He was a classmate of Viktor Orban's son in Sandhurst. And the Viktor Orban Son is an active duty army officer. Yeah. Basically, I think he was his bodyguard in

Sandhurst, but also graduated from Sandhurst. And he told this story about the planned Hungarian mission in Chad in Central Africa. It was in the news a couple of months ago and no one could tell why the hell would Hungary have a military mission in Chad? There is no international, there's not an international like NATO mission or EU mission. It's just a Wagner group. It's just a Wagner group there and some like tribal forces. Why would the Hungarian army go there with 200 soldiers? And it turned out that it was because of Gashpar, Viktor Orban Jr.'s religious views because he's a member of some kind of like neo-Christian cult and he thought that it is not Catholic. No. I mean, Viktor Orban's family is, Viktor Orban's wife is Catholic. Viktor Orban himself is Protestant, but this guy is a member of this sect.

And he believed that Hungary should actually, I don't think there's a better word to describe it, conduct a crusade in Chad to protect Christians in Chad. And the really shocking thing that this captain says was that Viktor Orban Jr. thought that a 50% casualty rate would be acceptable. And Viktor Orban senior signed off on this? Yeah. When the scandal broke out, they tried to deny it. But now after the election defeat, some documents were already made public. And it was real. They really wanted to send a contingent there. Why, I don't know. I mean, no one knows. And the only explanation is the one we know from this captain. And the Hungarians, you know, believed it because this Viktor Orban Jr. is a very controversial guy.

This brings up a larger question. Viktor Orban Jr. is obviously a major example of this, but the Hungarian security services and armed forces are, there's a major counterintelligence problem. One is a lot of Russian assets. Yes. And two, there's a lot of corruption. And a lot of people in the ranks and in the security services that are corrupt and have taken part in repression and illegal investigation of opponents, which Viktor Orban was engaging in

all the time. even if he wasn't putting opponents in jail, there was phone tapping scandals and all the electronic eavesdropping and all this other stuff. Now that you have Péter Magyar are in charge, assuming that he actually does take Hungary in a more democratic direction, as you predict he's most likely to, at least at first. He has to. Yeah, he has to because of the funding from the EU. How does Hungary rid itself of these kinds of people in a way that is still democratic and accountable? So it's not like a purge of people just because of their political beliefs, because it's not illegal, nor should. should it be to be a supporter of Viktor Orban or Fides in the security services.

But we're talking about the people that have engaged in corruption, have engaged in illegal activity, are assets of foreign powers. How does that happen in a way that is democratic and accountable? Well, you are overstating a problem a little bit here because we just have a fresh poll after the election by the same pollster who predicted the outcome within like 1%. And it shows that the support of Viktor Orban's party is already below 25%.

So you don't really find Viktor Orban supporters right now. Well, it doesn't take that many people in powerful positions like security services and the military to cause problems. And those people will be summarily replaced. You think so? Yes. The nature of the thing is that

just as you mentioned, you need like 10%, 15% in the right positions to control it. The rest is, you know, okay guys like everyday cops and and agents. They are more than ready to serve under Magyar, and they will just remove the others. I guess foreign services, mostly German and American, not Americans right now, but the Germans

will have some information about whom to remove from certain positions, and I guess it will happen. I mean, some of those guys are smart enough to leave before they ask to leave. I imagine there's going to be a lot of corruption investigations. So whoever Maggiara points to do this, he will have a list of names. And it won't be a really long list. And they will do it almost overnight. And last question I have for you.

You know, one of the many scandals leading up to the election is there was this transcript of this call between Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban leaked, where Viktor Orban was saying, let me help you. You're the lion. I'm the mouse removing the thorn from your power or whatever it is. Which is really just a lead in to me asking, what reaction? have we seen from Russia about the Hungarian election? Well, that was another leak about the foreign minister talking to... Oh, yeah, there was a traditional one as well.

Peter C. Arto, the Hungarian foreign minister, talking to Lavrov. And it was even more embarrassing because there's no better word he was simping in... And they were speaking in English, which I found funny, but I guess makes sense. Yeah. They're only common language. The Russians, I guess even before the elections, you know, because of the big penetration within the Hungarian government and secret services, I guess.

They've seen some genuine data about how the polls look like. So they expected this, probably not the scale of it, but they expected the fact that Viktor Orban will lose this office. They very quickly cut losses here. So some reporter asked Lavrov just days after the election, that what do you think about your friend, Viktor Orban? And Lavrov's answer was he's not a friend. Thank you for listening to this episode of War on the Rocks.

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