Hungary’s elections earlier this week marked a seismic shift after 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s dominance, as Peter Magyar’s opposition Tisza party won with over half the vote and a supermajority in the legislature.
The attention focused on this small Central European country may seem disproportionate—but Orbán attracted not only the active support of the Trump Administration, with Vice President Vance flying out to rally for him in person, but also equally strenuous opposition from the American Left and its allies in Brussels. In the wake of Orbán’s defeat, left-wing luminaries Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Alex Soros (son of Hungarian native and Orbán arch-nemesis George and inheritor of his left-wing activist empire) were among those sending out celebratory tweets.
“We didn’t go because we expected Viktor Orban to cruise to an election victory,” Vance later told Fox News. “We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.”
I have some personal familiarity with Hungary, having made two multi-week visits as a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank that was broadly aligned with (though occasionally critical of) Orbán’s government.
