Facing a Serious Challenger, Orbán Moves Closer to Naked Authoritarianism
His friends get richer, his opponents get spied on, and the propaganda flows freely.
“IF IT KEEPS ON RAINING, [the] levee’s going to break”—these lines from Led Zeppelin’s classic could be used to convey the strain Viktor Orbán’s regime has come under since Péter Magyar emerged out of nowhere to reconfigure Hungarian politics. Independent polls consistently show Magyar’s new party, Tisza, leading Orbán’s Fidesz by at least several percentage points. This is unprecedented. Fidesz has trailed the collective opposition for only a few brief moments over the last fifteen years, and has never trailed a single party since Orbán returned to the premiership in 2010. Smart, tough, young, and indefatigable, Magyar has been dictating news cycles and shaping narratives for an entire year. In a way no previous opposition figure managed to do, he has been able to focus public attention on Hungary’s mounting problems and political failures.
After fifteen years of Orbán’s kleptocratic rule, Hungarians are starting to pay the costs with their skin. The economy is in a technical recession and inflation is high, a situation aggravated by ongoing depreciation of Hungary’s currency. The budget deficit remains above target levels despite austerity measures. Adding salt to the wound, the EU recently denied Hungary $1 billion in European funds for failing to address concerns over corruption. The household material welfare of Hungarians, measured in terms of individual consumption, is the lowest in the EU alongside Bulgaria. The poverty gap index in Hungary is among the EU’s highest.
Hungary spends less on healthcare per capita than the EU average and has one of the highest rates of preventable mortality. Hungarian hospitals are overwhelmed with debt; buildings are in disrepair; patients need to bring their own hand soap and, frequently, even toilet paper with them for overnight stays. The country suffers from a shortage of doctors and nurses.
The railway system is teetering on collapse. Railroad tracks in Hungary are so old that trains can’t travel on them at normal speeds. Last August, one train derailed while pulling into a station in Budapest at slow speed because of an old and unreplaced switch. Rail traffic was disrupted for several days while workers slowly fixed the problem. Meanwhile, Orbán borrowed billions of dollars from China at an unknown interest rate to build a railway line from Belgrade to Budapest that bypasses nearby Hungarian cities. If average Hungarians won’t benefit from this Chinese Belt and Road Initiative project, at least Orbán’s father will. His mining company was contracted to supply crushed stone for track ballast, and a company owned by Orbán’s childhood friend, the richest man in Hungary, built the line.
Public employees in Hungary are woefully underpaid. Forced to respond to massive teacher demonstrations, Orbán’s government has promised to raise teachers’ salaries by around 20 percent this year. But low salaries in other public sectors also need attention. Thanks to low pay, Hungary suffers from a shortage of policemen. Hungarian judges are remunerated so poorly that critics worry about judicial independence. Many court staff earn minimum wage. The situation has become so critical that last year Hungarian judges lodged numerous complaints with the European Commission.
As life in Hungary gets harder and palpably worse, Orbán and company have grown increasingly careless and cavalier about displaying their wealth. Orbán’s son-in-law, implicated in several corruption scandals, has become one of the richest men in Hungary. Orbán himself (technically his father) purchased and converted a former Habsburg palace into a sprawling, extravagant personal villa.
This kleptocratic cocktail of profligacy, mismanagement, and sagging national fortunes would doom just about any democratically elected government. But Hungary ceased to be a real democracy long ago, and whether even a political phenom like Péter Magyar can dislodge Orbán democratically remains very much an open question.
Many call Hungary a hybrid regime, a term intended to describe a system that fuses autocratic power with democratic trappings. Hybrid regimes establish legitimacy through democratic mechanisms like free elections, but the rules of the game are heavily managed to ensure desired outcomes. Even so, hybrid regimes seek popular legitimation. They need support from a sizable portion of the population in order to function. If the regime loses that support and the population turns against it, its rulers must employ more naked forms of violence and repression to stay in power. A hybrid regime in trouble may convert to open dictatorship.
Viktor Orbán’s kleptocratic hybrid regime has hit choppy waters, and he and his country may be nearing a moment of truth. Orbán’s family and closest allies are so deeply implicated in crimes and corruption that were Fidesz ever to lose an election, they would almost certainly face a legal reckoning. That makes holding on to power an existential matter. More is at stake than early retirement, which is why the threat Péter Magyar poses has Fidesz panicked.
IN EARLY NOVEMBER, Magyar convened a sudden press conference to reveal what he called the Hungarian “Watergate” scandal. He claimed that over the past months, as he was building his party and campaigning in elections, his girlfriend had secretly been recording their conversations. She later approached Magyar and the Tisza leadership, demanding the equivalent of around $80,000 to keep quiet about the recordings. When they refused the extortion, she handed the recordings over to a Fidesz oligarch who owns several large IT companies. Magyar alleged the recordings were altered through artificial intelligence and were about to be released on a newly constructed webpage. His former girlfriend, Magyar claimed, was living in an apartment owned by the IT oligarch in central Budapest and receiving a monthly allowance of around $14,000.
Magyar then played a secret recording of his own, a conversation in which his ex-girlfriend clearly attempts to extort money from someone affiliated with Tisza: “I’m asking for the money and bye. Bye to everyone. . . . I don’t want to be a skunk, but whether I can be, that’s a different question.” Magyar claimed, further, that all his past girlfriends and many current colleagues had been approached by mysterious persons offering money in exchange for compromising information about him.
Even worse, Magyar said he had been warned by people connected to Hungary’s secret police that he and his party were under surveillance. Spyware had rendered his phone unrepairable, he said, and Tisza party’s offices and automobiles as well as his own personal apartment had all been bugged.
These were serious allegations. But Magyar had obviously convened the emergency press conference to preempt an imminent Fidesz smear campaign about which he had been tipped off—presumably from someone inside the government. Might Magyar be spreading his own disinformation to parry the coming attack?
The information about his ex-girlfriend’s relationship with the IT oligarch and the plan to publish damaging material on the internet were quickly corroborated by reporters, but the other allegations have proved difficult to verify. In subsequent weeks, unflattering audio recordings of Magyar were indeed leaked to the press. The first was quickly subjected to AI analysis. One company concluded the audio was fake; another concluded it was authentic. Additional analysis produced similarly contradictory results.
To corroborate his allegation about government surveillance, Magyar showed the press a “spy pen” found in one of the Tisza party’s conference rooms. Magyar admitted, however, that this was not the kind of sophisticated equipment one would expect the Hungarian government to use.
Even so, Magyar’s suspicions about domestic spying are highly plausible. Several years ago the Hungarian government was caught installing spyware bought from Israel on the phones of opposition politicians and journalists. The Hungarian government has also been credibly accused of spying on EU officials when they visit Hungary. Most suspicious of all is the outsized role played in Orbán’s government by a shadowy figure named Antal Rogán, implicated in countless corruption scandals, who was recently placed on the U.S. sanctions list.
Rogán is Orbán’s chief of staff, but his primary responsibility is to supervise government-controlled media and oversee communication strategy. He’s regularly referred to in Hungary as Orbán’s “propaganda minister.” In 2022, Rogán was also given oversight of the domestic secret police, which was moved to his portfolio from the Ministry of the Interior. The fact that Hungary has an alleged propaganda minister is already disturbing, but that the same person should also oversee the secret police is downright distressing. What other purpose can this serve but to spy on political opponents in order to uncover damaging material?
In any case, the smear campaign with the audio tapes fizzled flat. In the released recordings, Magyar makes derogatory comments about members of his party, elderly voters, and journalists. Embarrassing, perhaps, but hardly scandalous, especially since one can’t be sure that the most insulting comments are authentic. The propaganda ministry decided to try something else.
IN DECEMBER MAGYAR ANNOUNCED he was launching a charity program, collecting and delivering food and gifts to people in need throughout the country. He also visited a number of orphanages, posting photos on social media that exposed their miserable state of disrepair. Increasingly flummoxed, the government directed orphanages to deny Magyar access to their premises. This put conditions in place for a confrontation intended to undermine Magyar’s stature and credibility.
Knowing he might be denied entrance, Magyar attempted to visit an orphanage as cameras and reporters looked on. Suddenly, a high-ranking member of Fidesz, a man named Tamás Menczer, approached Magyar, seemingly out of nowhere. On the video, Menczer’s speech appears labored, as if he has been drinking. Walking up to Magyar, he says, “I came here for you. . . . I’ve been looking forward to this meeting very much.” When Magyar tries to enter the orphanage, Menczer stands in front of him and says, “Look at me. It’s just us two. You and me. No one else, no one else can help you. . . . It’s time you finally met a man.”
The harangue continues for many, many minutes. Menczer repeatedly refers to Magyar as a “twerp” (kicsi), getting up in his face. Magyar tries not to engage, but grows visibly irritated after Menczer starts talking about his children.
“Mr. State Secretary,” Magyar says, “why don’t you brush your teeth?”
“You can keep smelling my breath for a little while, twerp.”
“Mr. State Secretary, your mouth is frothing. That’s a serious condition. But I’d still recommend brushing your teeth.”
The whole bizarre scene, involving a high-ranking member of Fidesz acting like a drunken bully, must have been concocted in the propaganda ministry. It aimed to provoke Magyar into losing his temper and doing something stupid, thereby discrediting himself as a serious statesman. But like everything else the government has tried against Magyar, this, too, boomeranged. It wasn’t Magyar but the Fidesz politician who looked unqualified for public office. Hungarian YouTube influencers had a field day. “There was always something coming out of [Menczer’s] mouth,” one of them said, “sometimes even words.”
But other commentators expressed alarm. They worried that the clearly violent subtext of the confrontation, coming from a high-ranking member of the governing party, crossed a new and dangerous threshold. And indeed, one worries about Magyar’s physical safety. He moves so freely among people and crowds, and he is present in public so frequently, that a would-be assassin might find him an easy target.
IF THE PROPAGANDA MINISTRY can’t get the job done, Orbán has plenty of other resources at his disposal. For example, he can change the country’s election laws at will and a moment’s notice. Just this past November, Parliament revamped the electoral map, depriving Budapest of two parliamentary mandates and heavily gerrymandering its districts. Depending on what future polls reveal about Tisza’s strength, many expect Orbán to modify electoral laws again.
Asked on a podcast whether defeating Orbán in elections was even possible, Magyar insisted that it was. He acknowledged the electoral system was skewed, but added that tricks and manipulations only come into play when the race is close. His task, Magyar said, is to win big. A tall order, although after witnessing what Magyar has achieved over the past year, it can’t be ruled out. Still, to win in a landslide, Magyar probably needs to beat Orbán’s party by 10 to 15 percentage points. According to the most optimistic polls, Tisza’s support is currently 42 percent, while Fidesz’s support is 36 percent. Elections will be held no later than 2026.
An astute Hungarian-Italian observer, Stefano Bottoni, worries that if Magyar proves unstoppable, Orbán will outlaw Magyar’s party. The groundwork for such a move may have already been laid. Last year Hungary created a “Sovereignty Protection Office,” putatively for the purpose of protecting Hungarian sovereignty from foreign interference. Since being constituted, however, the office has investigated Transparency International, Átlátszó (an anti-corruption investigative news outlet), and other civil society organizations. A report issued by the office last May identified a “business-political interest group” seeking to interfere with Hungarian sovereignty that included figures like Wesley Clark, Eric Koch, Charles Gati, Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama, and a reporter from the New York Times.
Over the last year Orbán’s political rhetoric has grown more aggressive and authoritarian. He regularly refers to Magyar as an agent of foreign interests and a tool of Brussels. In the context of the Sovereignty Protection Office, this is more than heated speech. These are allegations of crimes. If the Tisza party is an agent of foreign interests, it has already run afoul of the law and can be outlawed. Indeed, the Sovereignty Protection Office has already initiated at least two investigations into Magyar’s activities. Bottani notes that outlawing a party for undermining national sovereignty would not be unprecedented in the EU. Romania recently barred a troublesome political candidate from running for president.
Magyar’s situation, however, differs from the Romanian one in that the Tisza party is affiliated with the EPP, a mainstream center-right European party group that holds the largest number of seats in the European Parliament. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also belongs to the EPP. Outlawing Tisza in Hungary would therefore constitute a major escalation with the European Union. But who knows for certain what Europe would do? Orbán has been working for years to establish a bloc of illiberal countries within the EU that might obstruct measures directed against him. He currently has an ally in Slovakia and is likely to acquire another in Czechia when elections are held there later this year. Orbán’s friend Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right FPÖ in Austria, looks set to become that country’s next chancellor. A bloc of four illiberal countries might give Orbán enough room to maneuver within the European Union, enabling him to outlaw political opponents and embrace open dictatorship with impunity.
All one can predict with certainty is that as long as Orbán remains in power, corruption in Hungary will continue unabated, public infrastructure will suffer neglect, standards of living will continue to decline, and the population will grow increasingly frustrated.
Every political career follows an arc, and Orbán’s has passed its zenith. Only dictators rule until their deathbed. If Orbán plans to reign that long, he will need to become one. If he can’t hold on to power, he may be hurtling toward an ignominious end.
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