After Illiberalism?

It has been over three months now since Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party was swept out of power in Hungary and two months since Péter Magyar, the man who vanquished him, officially took over.

It was an ignominious end for a man who openly boasted about turning Hungary into an illiberal democracy. As he said in his infamous speech announcing this intention back in 2014…

…the Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organised, reinforced and in fact constructed. And so in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organisation, but instead includes a different, special, national approach.

His thesis seems to have been that liberal democracy had sapped the willpower of the West and left it prone to being overtaken by other states. An illiberal democracy was his prescription.

And what exactly WAS his illiberal democracy?

It seems to have been one in which the majority’s will was more important than safeguarding the rights of minorities, even if those safeguards merely protected those minorities rather than giving them even an imagined advantage over the electoral majority. The Orbán government infamously banned Pride marches, his government persecuted the Roma minority in the country and he himself condemned the ‘mixing of the races’.

It is one in which the purpose of the media is to support and amplify the message of the government elected by the majority of the population. Business people close to Orbán such as his childhood friend Lorinc Mészáros secured ownership of multiple media outlets and output either became skewed towards the governing party or were shut down altogether, often with a fig-leaf of justification, most notably with the Nepszabadsag paper in 2016. Public television channels became mouthpieces for the government, with opposition voices prevented from airing their views.

It is one in which the institutions of state had their neutrality dismantled and replaced with fidelity to the ruling party whether that was the Civil Service or the Judiciary itself. In an illiberal democracy institutions are not guardians of the state, but instruments of the will of the government empowered by the majority.

Collectively, the minorities, the Media, the Civil Service, the Judiciary as well as wider civil society and the European Union all formed a gigantic amorphous blob that Orbán could point at and label ‘the enemy’. And only Orbán and his party stood between ‘the Enemy’ and the people of Hungary.

Only they would dismantle the liberal state that fettered the Hungarian people and only they would restore sovereignty and power to the majority, which of course means the ruling party.

Now I am quite happy to admit I am certainly no expert on Hungarian politics or the intricacies of their system of government, but you don’t really need to be one to look at the dismantling of institutions, the scapegoating of the weak and the rapacious plunder of the state to understand that something repugnant was happening in the heart of Europe.

Illiberal democracy was the perversion of the ideals western democracies were founded upon. I believe you need strong institutions. The judgments of the courts must be rooted in law and not in the wishes of the government of the time. The civil service must be apolitical so as to effectively serve the government freely chosen by the people as the people may have markedly changed their minds between elections. The media must be free to report to hold the powerful to account and to inform the population. Orbán violated all of these, and more.

Orbán truly seems to have believed that illiberal democracy was the next iteration of governance, a competitive model for the 21^st century. It just also happened to be one that greatly empowered him and enriched his associates. The withering of accountability and the flourishing of cronyism, oligarchy and corruption were apparently acceptable consequences of making Hungary strong again.

But it didn’t make Hungary strong again. Hungary staggered and struggled under his rule and as it did so the weak point in an illiberal democracy became apparent. If you isolate a section of the electorate as hated enemies, then you must always deliver for the majority, a majority that has had a hard ceiling imposed upon it by your own actions. Fail to keep the bargain, and your power will evaporate.

Such was Orbán’s fate.

But what comes next, after the illiberal bubble pops?

Illiberalism, hopefully, is self-destructive in that the wanton damage inflicted on institutions is so transparently self-serving by the budding autocrats aspiring towards it that when the political wheel turns, as it always does, dismantling their power structures can lead to a restoration of true liberal democracy.

Let us assume for the moment that this is what is happening in Hungary, that Orbán has not been replaced by a man who will simply change the names of the targets and carry on as he did, but by a man who does intend to restore the rule of law.

Magyar has adopted a hardball approach towards the former government utilizing his super-majority (a super-majority that has been granted such wide powers under the constitution enacted by the former ruling party. Textbook irony).

The public television channels from which all opposition voices were banished save for the most fleeting of appearances? Shut down until such time as it can once again be a source of ‘independent and trustworthy’ information (and whether it is or not will be one way to judge Magyar’s intentions).

To prevent the emergence of another Orbán, an individual can only be Prime Minister for eight years. Furthermore, lawmakers can now only sit in the parliament for twelve years. The two laws, when combined, effectively end Orbán’s political career and while it can be argued both of them are meant to encourage good government, the removal of any prospect of Orbán coming back should be seen as a happy consequence in my opinion.

The government is also seeking to remove the Fidesz appointed President from office, arguing he failed in his role as caretaker of the constitution by turning a blind eye to Fidesz excesses as well as removing several judges appointed by Orbán on the constitutional court by setting a maximum age limit. They will probably win that fight.

Fidesz is, of course, outraged by each successive act that dismantles Orbán’s illiberal state. They have said that the President’s removal would ‘pave the way for tyranny’.

Does it though?

The Paradox of Tolerance has been exploited too many times throughout history. Determined to live up to their highest ideals, the tolerant in democracies extend toleration to the intolerant who clearly seek to destroy or corrupt those democracies. History has shown us that the boundaries of tolerance must be with the intolerant, and that intolerance is acceptable to those who would not extend the courtesy to everyone else.

Hungary was corrupted by Orbán’s illiberal regime. If Magyar is serious about restoring the rule of law, then using the tools Orbán fashioned to wield nearly unchecked power to rip out the system he built is surely a necessary first step in restoring the rule of law. Magyar has already promised that a new constitution will be in place before the next election, one in which he may voluntarily surrender the powers that Orbán accrued to his office but when he does so, the electoral playing field will hopefully have been levelled, new safeguards erected and the spectre of an imminent illiberal return driven back to the margins. On that he will ultimately be judged.

And again, this is not just the story of a small central European nation that fell under the sway of a would-be Putin and managed to oust him before things went too far. Things went way too far and with frightening speed. Hungary is now playing catch-up on the years wasted under Orbán and repairing the societal divisions he fueled as he sought an enemy on which to predicate his excuses for ever greater power.

It can happen anywhere. It has already happened in the United States under Trump, a man very much in the Orbán mode except with vastly more power and dealing vastly more damage.

It could happen next year in France if Marine Le Pen wins and governs according to her worst instincts.

And it could certainly happen in the United Kingdom if Nigel Farage wins his battle with a man who wears a bin on his head and then marches his party into Downing Street. It’s the same ideology, at different intensities and with local peculiarities but the same nonetheless.

Find an enemy, whip up just enough of the people against that enemy to give you the power to ‘sort it’, demolish any and all constraints on your rule and crush anyone who gets in your way.

Hungary may show that illiberalism doesn’t have to last forever; there is a way out. It also shows it is far better not to go down that road in the first place.