OpinionMichelle Goldberg

He Was ‘Trump Before Trump.’ Now He’s in Trouble.

Credit...András Zoltai for The New York Times

Opinion Columnist, writing from Budapest

The Danube Institute, located in a refurbished villa in Budapest’s wealthy castle district, is one of several government-supported think tanks and foundations in Hungary that cater to foreign conservatives. At a panel discussion on Thursday evening, three days before Hungary’s elections, the mood was grim. The speakers, a mix of Americans and Europeans, hadn’t abandoned hope that Prime Minister Viktor Orban might eke out a victory, but all agreed that his party, Fidesz, was facing the most serious challenge to its rule in the 16 years since Orban returned to power.

“Here’s the problem,” said John Fund, a writer for National Review. “You have to have some kind of positive campaign.”

Orban, seeking a fifth term amid an economy widely seen as terrible — with high unemployment, virtually no growth and threadbare social services — is running on fear. Much of his pitch revolves around the fantastical claim that his center-right opponent, Peter Magyar, is going to drag Hungary to war in Ukraine.

Hungary’s capital, Budapest, is blanketed with posters of side-by-side mug-shot-style photos of Magyar and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with the words “They Are Dangerous! Stop Them!” In the past, Orban has succeeded by positioning himself against demonized opponents — he pioneered many of the right-wing conspiracy theories about George Soros — but this time, it doesn’t seem to be working. “You have to strain to see an idealistic, positive message about, let’s say, the economy, that Fidesz is putting forward,” said Fund.

Heading into the election, most polls show Magyar’s Tisza Party well ahead, and some indicate it’s on track for a landslide. As the speakers at the Danube Institute understood, an Orban defeat would have serious implications for the conservative movement worldwide. Ralph Schoellhammer, an Austrian political scientist with a post at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a lavishly funded Hungarian educational foundation close to the Orban regime, pointed out that Hungarian taxpayers, “for which I’m eternally grateful,” financed “a conservative ecosystem that did not exist in Europe.”

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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

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