Viktor Orbán’s defeat in the race for the Hungarian prime ministership is no less momentous for being totally unsurprising. Even the many Americans who were late to tune in—noticing Hungary’s election on Sunday only after J.D. Vance showed up last week to give his friends a boost—likely heard that Orbán’s days could be numbered. Now that he has lost to Péter Magyar, a former member of Orbán’s own party who ran on youth, anti-corruption, and the kind of economic liberalization that a younger Orbán once himself rallied for, the result is worth studying. It shows how things can eventually fall apart even for a leader who triumphs on his own terms. Orbán changed his country, and all of Europe along with it. Then his people tossed him out for the right reasons.
As an American who has lived and worked in Hungary for several years now—and not as one of the ideological tourists drawn here by the Orbán movement itself—I will say a few kind words about Viktor Orbán. The old battle-ax rose from a young anti-communist activist to prime minister to international political celebrity, no small feat for a kid from small-town Hungary. Much to the chagrin of liberal critics who wanted to use him as a symbol of everything around the world they disagreed with, Orbán was right about a few big issues, notably immigration and the importance of encouraging families to have more kids. One sign of his enduring influence is how widely his ideas have been copied: The European Parliament just passed tough new immigration enforcement measures slated to go into effect in June, and pro-natalism has gone from a fringe preoccupation to a thoroughly mainstream concern. Much of Orbánism’s program, it must be understood, has also been copied by the man who just defeated him. If Orbánism’s appeal for Hungarians remains, why was the man himself just tossed from power?
