Hungary is facing an election in just two months. Common sense would dictate that Viktor Orbán stay in power. But recent years have become famous for everything except common sense.
We see young people who’ve never missed a single iPhone launch cheering for Marxist and socialist ideologies. We see barricades and checkpoints thrown up against ICE in Minnesota, oh, the irony, geez. We see crowds shivering for hours in the cold to protest for Gazans, whose majority backs Hamas, a designated terrorist group. And the list, sadly, goes on and on.
Hungary is thankfully still lagging behind in the woke madness, but it is not immune to it. These indoctrinations and plain stupidity are seeping in. There is now a generation for whom the Soviet Union, communism, and socialism feel as distant as they do to Americans who only read about them in textbooks. Add a generation whose actual parenting was outsourced to TikTok and Snapchat, and boom: they’re ready to vote for a man who allegedly beat his wife, secretly recorded her in the privacy of their own home and marriage, and whose only real achievement so far is being a social media influencer. His strongest base is the younger generation, exactly the same crowd that fuels Zohran Mamdani in NYC. The so-called educated elite.
The arrogance pouring out of this first-voter generation is almost unbelievable until you remember the social-media sewer and trends they were force-fed growing up: detach from your parents, all your trauma comes from them, your parents are old and clueless. Or the utopian fairy tale sold to millions of Gen Zs: work is beneath you, life’s purpose is to get famous overnight, get rich overnight, and retire by 30 without ever really working.
Hungary is not perfect. The idea that any country ever is amounts to a dead end. As a Hungarian patriot, my only goal is to make Hungary better. That’s exactly why what I see around me is so worrying.
When I tell a 22-year-old to show a little humility, I’m not age-shaming. Age by itself doesn’t guarantee wisdom. But it takes real intelligence to grasp that at 22, you probably don’t know enough, haven’t seen enough, haven’t experienced enough. The same age group pumps out TikTok content dripping with contempt for the elderly, meaning, indirectly, their own parents, using the most obscene, degrading language. To them, anyone over 35 should just “shut up.” Their words, not mine. And if, God forbid, you’re retired, you should just die. Again, their words, not mine.
Videos go viral where they mock the retired as cowards, always afraid of something: afraid of war, afraid of this, afraid of that. Did no one ever teach these kids history? Hungary only regained its freedom less than 40 years ago. Our parents and grandparents lived through one or two world wars. They were oppressed, abused, and far too often raped by Soviet soldiers. And now 20-year-olds stroll in and dismiss that raw, living memory, erasing, in the process, millions of Hungarians’ actual lives.
Rebellion is normal in your teens and twenties. Wanting change isn’t automatically bad. Many of our greatest Hungarian heroes were that young when they led revolutions for sovereignty. But there is something profoundly disturbing about the intellectual and moral chasm between those real heroes and today’s pretend, wannabe revolutionaries.
The pattern is identical in the USA, in Hungary, everywhere in between. This is the first generation in Western democracies to grow up in the greatest material well-being and comfort humanity has ever known, yet never face war or real existential fear. Sure, prices are insane, inflation hurts, and starting adult life is tougher than in the 1960s. But still: our Millennial and Gen Z generations have experienced no war, no occupation (unless we call Europe’s Islamization that), no rape as a weapon of an invading army.
I’ve lived in five countries. I can tell you straight: eggs, milk, and bread are expensive everywhere. Teachers and nurses are underpaid everywhere. Inflation is brutal everywhere. Housing is a nightmare everywhere.
Hungary had decades of catching up to do. Left-liberal interludes only made the lag worse. Now, finally, we’re at a point where Hungary is strong and has a geopolitical presence. It became a country that the biggest global players actually have to reckon with, instead of forgetting our name exists. As so often in history, Hungary is shielding Europe: first from the Turks, then the Soviets, then the illegal migrant waves, and now from the risk of a third world war. Hungary remains the last bastion holding the EU to what it was supposed to be according to the acquis.
No government is flawless, Orbán’s included. There are legitimate questions about the former head of the National Bank, for example. But unlike in so many other countries, here he was removed immediately, and there is an ongoing case to find out what actually happened.
You don’t have to like Orbán. But one fact is undeniable: he isn’t attacked because he’s a bad leader. He’s attacked because his leadership directly defies the globalist script.
And that’s exactly where Gen Z’s inexperience becomes dangerous. They chase a utopian fantasy that requires trampling traditions, family, nation, and sovereignty. They want a world that doesn’t exist: one where everyone owes you everything, but you owe nothing to the common good; where only your instant desires matter, and complicated things from the long-term matrix, like retirement, simply vanish; where a slick social-media persona is somehow proof of leadership quality.
Let me warn everyone clearly: you are not looking for a buddy, a friend, a cool party champ, all of which Péter Magyar (or Zohran Mamdani) delivers perfectly. You are looking for a leader who will keep you safe from threats you either refuse to see or cannot yet see because you simply haven’t lived long enough.
Orbán, Gen Z, and the Dangerous Romance With Fake Revolution
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Hungary is facing an election in just two months. Common sense would dictate that Viktor Orbán stay in power. But recent years have become famous for everything except common sense.
We see young people who’ve never missed a single iPhone launch cheering for Marxist and socialist ideologies. We see barricades and checkpoints thrown up against ICE in Minnesota, oh, the irony, geez. We see crowds shivering for hours in the cold to protest for Gazans, whose majority backs Hamas, a designated terrorist group. And the list, sadly, goes on and on.
Hungary is thankfully still lagging behind in the woke madness, but it is not immune to it. These indoctrinations and plain stupidity are seeping in. There is now a generation for whom the Soviet Union, communism, and socialism feel as distant as they do to Americans who only read about them in textbooks. Add a generation whose actual parenting was outsourced to TikTok and Snapchat, and boom: they’re ready to vote for a man who allegedly beat his wife, secretly recorded her in the privacy of their own home and marriage, and whose only real achievement so far is being a social media influencer. His strongest base is the younger generation, exactly the same crowd that fuels Zohran Mamdani in NYC. The so-called educated elite.
The arrogance pouring out of this first-voter generation is almost unbelievable until you remember the social-media sewer and trends they were force-fed growing up: detach from your parents, all your trauma comes from them, your parents are old and clueless. Or the utopian fairy tale sold to millions of Gen Zs: work is beneath you, life’s purpose is to get famous overnight, get rich overnight, and retire by 30 without ever really working.
Hungary is not perfect. The idea that any country ever is amounts to a dead end. As a Hungarian patriot, my only goal is to make Hungary better. That’s exactly why what I see around me is so worrying.
When I tell a 22-year-old to show a little humility, I’m not age-shaming. Age by itself doesn’t guarantee wisdom. But it takes real intelligence to grasp that at 22, you probably don’t know enough, haven’t seen enough, haven’t experienced enough. The same age group pumps out TikTok content dripping with contempt for the elderly, meaning, indirectly, their own parents, using the most obscene, degrading language. To them, anyone over 35 should just “shut up.” Their words, not mine. And if, God forbid, you’re retired, you should just die. Again, their words, not mine.
Videos go viral where they mock the retired as cowards, always afraid of something: afraid of war, afraid of this, afraid of that. Did no one ever teach these kids history? Hungary only regained its freedom less than 40 years ago. Our parents and grandparents lived through one or two world wars. They were oppressed, abused, and far too often raped by Soviet soldiers. And now 20-year-olds stroll in and dismiss that raw, living memory, erasing, in the process, millions of Hungarians’ actual lives.
Rebellion is normal in your teens and twenties. Wanting change isn’t automatically bad. Many of our greatest Hungarian heroes were that young when they led revolutions for sovereignty. But there is something profoundly disturbing about the intellectual and moral chasm between those real heroes and today’s pretend, wannabe revolutionaries.
The pattern is identical in the USA, in Hungary, everywhere in between. This is the first generation in Western democracies to grow up in the greatest material well-being and comfort humanity has ever known, yet never face war or real existential fear. Sure, prices are insane, inflation hurts, and starting adult life is tougher than in the 1960s. But still: our Millennial and Gen Z generations have experienced no war, no occupation (unless we call Europe’s Islamization that), no rape as a weapon of an invading army.
I’ve lived in five countries. I can tell you straight: eggs, milk, and bread are expensive everywhere. Teachers and nurses are underpaid everywhere. Inflation is brutal everywhere. Housing is a nightmare everywhere.
Hungary had decades of catching up to do. Left-liberal interludes only made the lag worse. Now, finally, we’re at a point where Hungary is strong and has a geopolitical presence. It became a country that the biggest global players actually have to reckon with, instead of forgetting our name exists. As so often in history, Hungary is shielding Europe: first from the Turks, then the Soviets, then the illegal migrant waves, and now from the risk of a third world war. Hungary remains the last bastion holding the EU to what it was supposed to be according to the acquis.
No government is flawless, Orbán’s included. There are legitimate questions about the former head of the National Bank, for example. But unlike in so many other countries, here he was removed immediately, and there is an ongoing case to find out what actually happened.
You don’t have to like Orbán. But one fact is undeniable: he isn’t attacked because he’s a bad leader. He’s attacked because his leadership directly defies the globalist script.
And that’s exactly where Gen Z’s inexperience becomes dangerous. They chase a utopian fantasy that requires trampling traditions, family, nation, and sovereignty. They want a world that doesn’t exist: one where everyone owes you everything, but you owe nothing to the common good; where only your instant desires matter, and complicated things from the long-term matrix, like retirement, simply vanish; where a slick social-media persona is somehow proof of leadership quality.
Let me warn everyone clearly: you are not looking for a buddy, a friend, a cool party champ, all of which Péter Magyar (or Zohran Mamdani) delivers perfectly. You are looking for a leader who will keep you safe from threats you either refuse to see or cannot yet see because you simply haven’t lived long enough.
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