Migration, gender ideology, war—these are the three things the Hungarian opposition supports, in conjunction with the Brussels political elite, according to the ruling conservative party Fidesz. The party of prime minister Viktor Orbán has placed these threats at the centre of its campaign for the European and local elections on June 9th.
Billboards and posters are in abundance in Hungary’s capital Budapest, mostly with smiling faces looking back at bypassers—politicians, mayors, local councillors hoping to get elected or reelected to the European Parliament or one of Budapest’s district councils.
But the main attractions are the billboards of Fidesz, a party that has never been shy of being explicit and discourteous, criticising those it sees as a threat to Hungary. Its previous election posters featured pictures of billionaire George Soros and former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker—drawing the ire of liberals all around Europe.
Juncker’s successor Ursula von der Leyen has also appeared on billboards as a negative figure overseeing the withholding of hundreds of millions of euros of EU funds owed to Hungary. She is once again at centre stage, as someone to whom Hungarian opposition leaders are subservient.
Opposition support from abroad
Indeed, former socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, his wife Klára Dobrev, and Budapest’s liberal Mayor Gergely Karácsony—who all appear on the same billboard as von der Leyen—have expressed their support for the EU’s current federalist course. Dobrev, the leader of the Demokratikus Koalíció party, and her fellow MEPs in the European Parliament regularly vote for federalist policies and any resolution condemning Hungary. She recently argued in favour of a United States of Europe “that is able to take care of its own citizens and can ensure prosperity for us, Hungarians as well, because it benefits us.”
“The Hungarian leftist parties are not nationalist-minded but internationalist. They don’t have enough support domestically, that’s why they keep looking for outside support—the U.S. Democrats and Brussels,” says Zoltán Kiszelly, Director of the Centre for Political Analysis at the conservative Századvég think tank in Budapest. He tells The European Conservative that the feeling in Brussels is mutual: EU institutions want to topple the sovereigntist Hungarian government, but so-called rule-of-law procedures and the freezing of EU funds have not decreased Fidesz’s popularity; therefore they feel it is necessary to support the activities of the Left.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democrats also like to meddle in Hungarian domestic affairs, having covertly financed opposition parties with millions of dollars.
Peace, not war
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party have been consistently vocal in their criticism of the EU’s pro-migration and pro-LGBT policies, but Hungary has also gone against the mainstream tide of thinking regarding the war in Ukraine. The Budapest government has been calling for peace talks and has been the only EU member state that has refused to send any weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, believing such steps only fan the flames of war. Viktor Orbán recently said in an interview that Hungary had been dragged into both the First and Second World Wars, and he doesn’t want history to repeat itself. An organisation with strong ties to Fidesz, Civil Összefogás Fórum is organising a rally for peace on June 1st which is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people.
“There are big forces behind the pro-war politicians, behind the pro-war position in general, from the Soros empire to the arms industry, the lenders, big shots, and big powerful power centres, all with a vested interest in seeing this war continue and even expand,” Viktor Orbán said, adding that “the elections in Europe will decide, together with the U.S. elections, the question of war and peace in Europe.”
The opposition has criticised Orbán for suggesting they are pro-war, saying they only want to support Ukraine and stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from winning. “Ukraine is also fighting for us,” Anna Donáth, an MEP for the liberal Momentum party recently said. Opposition figures have on many occasions voiced their support for sending weapons to Ukraine, even soldiers within a NATO framework—something also recently suggested by French President Emmanuel Macron.
“We see that Macron wants to send soldiers, so the war is a real problem, not a made-up one. That is why Fidesz is putting the choice between war and peace at the centre of its campaign,” says Zoltán Kiszelly, who believes putting the real concerns of people—the costs of war, energy prices, migration—at the forefront of its policies is the reason for the party’s popularity.
Fidesz has won every parliamentary, European, and local election since coming to power in 2010, and is set to do so again, as polls give it around 40-45% of voters’ support.
Challenger with his own challenges
However, it is having to contend with a rising star in the opposition, the ex-husband of former Fidesz Justice Minister Judit Varga. Péter Magyar held various positions in Fidesz-era state companies and ministries and is now campaigning as a disgruntled former apparatchik. Despite being a morally dubious choice—he is accused of mentally and physically abusing his former wife, and recorded private conversations with her—Magyar has hacked off a large chunk of the opposition’s support, and taken away a share of Fidesz’s voters too. His newly founded Tisza Party is polling at 20-25%, making it the second strongest party in Hungary, with the Demokratikus Koalíció-led leftist alliance at 17%.
“Péter Magyar and his party are not a new phenomenon. We see this all across Europe: when people are unhappy with the current state of affairs, they fall in love with something new. This was the case with Frank Stronach in Austria, Igor Matovič and his Olano party in Slovakia, Gordon Bajnai and Péter Márki-Zay in Hungary. In Hungary, it is the opposition people are unhappy with, because the government’s popularity is stable. Péter Magyar has managed to restructure the opposition and taken votes away from them, even from the [right-wing] Our Homeland [Mi Hazánk] Movement. Voters look at him as someone who could radically change things. But this is still the honeymoon period. We haven’t heard anything about his policies,” says Zoltán Kiszelly.
Fidesz clearly sees a threat in Péter Magyar, and has included him on the party’s election posters: he stands alongside other opposition leaders as a servant of Ursula von der Leyen and also features on a new billboard next to George Soros, Gergely Karácsony and Ferenc Gyurcsány, that reads: “Stop the war!”
While Péter Magyar is seemingly trying to distance himself from other opposition politicians, he has surrounded himself with figures from previous leftist governments, and it is still a mystery where he gets his financing from, with pro-government media uncovering ties to Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Facebook, a criminal organisation, and a company linked to former socialist Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai.
Whether Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party can turn themselves into a considerable political force for the future remains to be seen, but Fidesz may have to divert some of its attention from its war with the EU institutions to a new battlefront on the domestic political scene.
