By Máté Hekfusz
The colour orange has gained a new figurehead a couple years ago in the United States. This marked what seemed to be the second prominent association of a country with the color after the Netherlands, whose close connection to it goes back centuries. In reality, there is a lesser-known state in Central Europe, which has also been riding on the orange train since 2010.
This map shows the results of the 2018 parliamentary elections in Hungary. Orange represents the counties won by the incumbent party: Fidesz. In the past, they have already won three elections, including the two preceding ones. In 2018, they secured a two-thirds majority in the Parliament, essentially giving them carte blanche to govern Hungary as they saw fit. Their leader, Viktor Orbán, was also elected for his third term in a row as Prime Minister, equalling the record of most consecutive terms in Hungary. Orbán has been instrumental to shaping the party’s image and policies over the last three decades, and he seems to have captured Hungary for his own. How did he do it? How did Fidesz come to dominate Hungarian politics? How did they win the 2018 elections, which saw record-high turnout?
Fidesz, like many prominent Hungarian parties, has its roots in the 1980s. Founded in 1988 on the brink of the fall of the Soviet Union and with it, the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, it was originally a liberal youth party. Their name still carries that legacy: “Fidesz” was an abbreviation of Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, meaning “Alliance of Young Democrats.” After disappointing electoral results in the first free elections in 1990 and 1994, the party made a 180-turn, stepping to the conservative side of the political aisle. The dramatic switch brought them their first victory in 1998, which also marked Viktor Orbán’s first prime ministership. They have stayed on the right ever since, dropping the original legacy with the new name “Fidesz — Hungarian Civic Alliance” and championing conservative values with a good dose of Euroscepticism. Slowly but surely, the party has moved farther right over the years.
This slow process sped up considerably when the refugee crisis struck Europe in 2015.
As the map shows, refugees took three main paths into Europe. Their numbers crossed a million in 2015 alone. Both the Western Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean routes went through Hungary, which then, along with Greece and Italy, became one of the focal points of the crisis. The Hungarian government, led by a Fidesz supermajority, took an immediate hard-line stance: Orbán, speaking in the European Parliament, opposed the proposed quota system, stating that “Hungary needs to protect its laws and borders” against the incoming refugees. His words translated into actions, and Hungary built a border fence on its southern border with Croatia and Serbia, with further expansion planned on the border with Romania. Meanwhile, Fidesz and its leaders kept pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric, building the entire party platform on the issue for the 2018 elections, where they retained their supermajority.
What is curious, however, is that by 2018, the overall number of refugees had dropped drastically across the board, returning to pre-crisis levels. By numbers alone, this should not have been an election-deciding issue in Hungary, where there are several more pressing issues: the weak currency, the unemployment, the aging population, etc. Yet it was. How did Fidesz manage to keep riding a wave that had already hit the shore?
As it appears, reality is more malleable than it seems, especially when it comes to international events. Global affairs are just that: global, complex, and intricate, often discussed by lawmakers in houses of policy that are countries or even continents away. People cannot be present at every happening — so they rely on news media to inform them. This is what Fidesz realised: if they control the media that informs the populace, they control the reality of the populace, of the voters who allow them to hold onto and retain power every four years.
And, really, who else matters?
Since 2015, the Fidesz government has aggressively expanded its control over the media. They opened new state TV channels, doled out newspapers and radio shows to people close to the party, and launched online news sites with clear narratives. Today, the more than 500 media entities directly or indirectly in government hands stand as one of their prime achievements. With these many outlets comes unparalleled control over messaging: the day before the 2018 elections, for example, every county newspaper used the exact same headlines, urging with an image of Orbán to vote for Fidesz.
Even if one were to swear off all news media, they would not be free from the Fidesz messaging. During the migrant crisis and in the lead-up to the election, thousands of billboards and signs popped up all around Hungary, with a call to action against Hungarian-American businessman and worldwide right-wing bogeyman George Soros.
The message here, which translates to “Do not let Soros have the last laugh!” was but one of the popular ‘slogans’ used in the Fidesz campaign. Some made mention of Brussels as a faceless entity that must be stopped, and more recent ones targeted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The central message — and the intended takeaway — from all of these is the same: there is an international conspiracy going on that wants to undermine Hungary, and only Fidesz can stop it. This message has been passed down with startling cohesion through the 500+ channels and drilled into people’s heads daily for three years. Perhaps it is then no surprise that the result of this massive and coordinated media campaign is an orange country.
While their hold on national opinion might be ironclad, international circles are not nearly as easy to sway. Fidesz has recently come under fire in the European Union — with the aforementioned Juncker poster breaking the camel’s back — which resulted in the party becoming suspended from the largest block in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP). The suspension effectively forbids them from participating in EPP meetings and, in general, limits their ability to influence EU policy. As the Union keeps heading into a direction different than what Fidesz envisioned, the dissonance between Hungary and the rest of the member states is bound to grow.
In other news, the Hungarian government secretly took in Venezuelan refugees, giving them free plane tickets, free accommodation, and free Hungarian language courses. A very warm welcome — and an equally large departure from Fidesz’s official rhetoric. Then again, it does not seem to matter to them if two different realities exist — as long as the voters believe in the party-approved version.
