The Catholic conservative Peter Magyar, a former collaborator of Viktor Orban, won the April general elections, with a two-thirds majority. This will allow him, if he wishes and if he is allowed to do so, to dismantle the system put in place by the former pro-Putin nationalist president, who has conceded defeat.
In view of the results, triumphalist declarations are predictable: “We have liberated Hungary,” proclaimed Peter Magyar late in the evening, during jubilant demonstrations in Budapest. He was greeted by the cheers of tens of thousands of people, some of whom set off fireworks. “We have reconquered our homeland,” he added while waving the Hungarian flag.
Magyar’s party, Tisza, won 138 seats out of 199 with 53.56% of the vote, against 55 seats and 37.86% of the vote for Fidesz, Orban’s party. This was thanks in particular to a record turnout of 79.50%. Orban took note of the “painful but unequivocal” results and “congratulated the winning party”.
Two elements of this victory should be highlighted.
Celebrating the victory of a conservative
First, predatory capitalism has been in place in this country (and obviously not only in this country) for several decades. It seemed totally out of the question to contemplate any option, even if timidly left-wing, moderate or radical, which offered a perspective other than that. Today, all progressive and democratic Hungarians (and us too with them) are forced to rejoice in the victory of an ultra-conservative because he defeated a para-fascist.
It is a bit as if, from a hypothetical perspective, we should rejoice at a possible victory in Italy for the party of Marina Berlusconi and Antonio Tajani if they decide to oppose Giorgia Meloni… This is really a sign of the times and of the disaster of the Left.
Celebrating a defeat for the far right
And second, Orbán’s defeat is also a crushing defeat for Trump, Netanyahu, Meloni, Salvini, Le Pen, the German AfD, the Argentine Milei, and their entire neo-fascist clique. The entire global far right had openly and unanimously declared itself in favour of their Hungarian friend. It is no coincidence that, at least at the time of writing, they are all silent and act as if nothing has happened.
And let’s not forget (I don’t think our “radical left” wants to realise this) that this defeat is also, and in some respects especially, a defeat for Putin and his ambitions.
Behind the defeat of Orbán and his friends, scattered throughout the global far right, are the Ukrainian resistance, the revolt of young Serbs, the failure of Meloni’s referendum, and the American “No Kings” movement.
The youth may go further
On closer inspection, especially among the young people of Budapest and other cities in the country, this defeat represented a real wave of national dignity against Putin; its scale prevented the coup that Vance, Putin, and Orbán himself had envisaged, modelled on Capitol Hill in 2021.
Of course, Orbán’s oligarchic system, a brazen form of authoritarian and neoliberal capitalism, will not disappear on its own. Nor is this in the programme of Magyar, who wants to preserve the system while trying to reconcile it with the interests and working methods of the Orbán’s brazen Putinism. Peter Magyar, in fact, as we have pointed out on several occasions, is and remains a national-conservative. He has chosen to remain a nationalist, even if the logic of national conservatism has led him to distance himself from Orbán’s brazen Putinism.
The future of Hungary is in the hands of the thousands of young people who, since Sunday night, have invaded the streets of Budapest; in the civil society that is mobilising and organising; in the possibility that they will not stop there or be satisfied with Magyar’s victory. This may only be the beginning.
What happened in Budapest should encourage us all, because it shows us that there is no supposed invincibility of fascism 2.0, of the neo-reactionary current that Orban, Meloni, Trump, Putin and co. represent.
But it also shows us the depth of the crisis of the Left, of a truly radical, internationalist Left, intransigent on democracy, which does not exist in Hungary and, alas, not even in our country of Italy, further west.
Fabrizio Burattini is a trade unionist in the CGIL and has been active in the Italian section of the Fourth International since 1968.
*Featured Image by Steffen Prößdorf / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4
