His voters won't know about this. Government propaganda is in a different world. He just met with Zelinsky, Putin and the Chinese dictator, and couldn't achieve anything, obviously. In government media he is praised for trying to bring peace everywhere but the evil EU and US don't let him succeed, and we have to vote him otherwise Hungary will get pulled into the war.
Oh, there is Euro football match today, so everyone will hear about this. During the half time break there are not just ads, but also a little news segment where you can hear about his latest achievement. So those who are not interested in politics but football can hear about the adventures of our glorious leader.
Yeah, for sure. I just take comfort in knowing it bruised his ego a little.
As for getting rid of him it's going to take a lot more. Poland gives hope, but the situation there was not as bad as in Hungary.
I just hope that him trying to play an increasingly bigger role globally will lead to his downfall somehow. He clearly has a distorted image of himself and his abilities, which is not a great starting point of aspiring dictators.
I don't generally see videos of politicians, as I get my news primarily from written sources and I don't have much of an interest in rhetorics. It's fascinating to see his words are as idiotic as his actions.
I guess he manages to come across as more convincing in Hungarian.
It was probably one of those situations where the kidnappers had diplomatic immunity and the host country had no other option but to declare them persona non grata.
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I am fairly sure there are pretty intelligent supporters of fast-right leaders (too). And I think there are two angles here: One is how much you let irrational fears and bad instincts take ahold of you, the other is whether you are going out for personal gain.
Because Hungary had been strongly social democratic basically since WW2 (though much of that was behind the iron curtain), and they'd been hugely improving up to their entrance to the union, with only a little mistake of electing Orban once, before going back to a sane Premier.
And then 2010 arrived, and the entire country took a swing Hard Right and down shit street, but by that time they were already in.
The EU countries in general just cannot get over the right wing tendancies and xenophobia of which they are a deep cause. By exploiting developing countries and shitting toxins into the environment we make their countries worth fleeing from, and where else to flee than prosperous countries. They are only following the wealth that was extracted from their countries.
Our reaction is to act surprised and say "no room here, we're struggling too", after having voted for parties that will take the wealth and move it upwards away from the common people. So instead of using our "superior" education to vote for parties that want to redistribute wealth, we vote populist - people who find scapegoats in the poor. "Immigrants are the problem!", "Leftists are the problem".
I'll just add that Fidesz (the right wing governing party) started out centrist in 1990. In 2010 they'd moved towards the right, but in a lot people's minds they were one of the big, reasonable parties since the end of Soviet control. And also just in general "the opposition".
The social democratic governing party also was inept and admitted as such (see Őszöd sleech).
So what happened was the left side of the spectrum lost all support, and what in many people's minds was the centrist or centre-right opposition picked it all up. Just over half the votes gave them a supermajority and from that point they gradually attained complete control over all institutions as a result.
We in Europe have a similar problem in Slovakia at the moment with PM Fico with a similar autocratic (and pro-Russian) approach. Europe will have to adapt to the rise of the extremists from the right (and soon from the left too?) and other global development.
I mean yes it is part of the Russian way of war. After ww2 soviets made agreements about loot, so for example the soviet nuclear bomb program was fueled by uranium from Czechoslovakia.
I think the main issue I have, and likely many others too, is how strongly it is phrased. If he thinks he'll die in the next 5 or 10 years... fine, I guess? But that's unlikely, and with how things have shifted just in the past 25 years, making a statement like this seems arrogant.
Is that overanalysing a one line answer to a question? Probably, but that's what a politician gets and the effect of modern media.
Not to mention how the population and especially Labour supporters have turned pro-EU so he'll likely alienate that part of his base. Strong stances are seen as better, but I really feel sometimes he should take a softer approach.
That's surprising, it seemed like such a bad idea from the get-go, but who knew it would actually turn out that way? I'd say hopefully it can serve as a warning to other countries that might want to leave the EU, but the kind of people that would want to leave in the first place probably aren't the kind of people to actually consider evidence anyways. I'm sure we'll see this replay in other EU countries as these far-right, oddly Russian-friendly parties start getting into power and wanting to weaken the EU/NATO.
It did actually do that. The UK wasn't even the most Eurosceptic country around the time of 2015/2016. (I.e. the aftermath of the refugee crisis where the EU took a severe hit in popularity across the union).
Anti-EU sentiment was huge around that time particularly in the UK, Latvia, Hungary, France, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. Averaged across all members of the union, less than 50% looked at the EU favourably after removing "don't know" answers (Eurobarometer survey).
The UK (or rather more specifically, David Cameron), was just the only one stupid enough to pull that kind of reckless political brinkmanship.
He thought that by calling the referendum and having Remain win (which is what polling indicated, plus he probably didn't think Tory media would love Brexit so much considering he, the PM, was massively against it), UKIP would fall apart, anti-EU sentiment would subside, and the emergence of a competing right-wing party would be halted.
Logical, but a ridiculously high-risk game. He gambled the UK's international standing on political games to help his own party.
By 2019, after seeing the ensuing shitshow that the Tories handling Brexit was, as well as the refugee crisis becoming a memory not an ongoing event, the EU had rebounded and hit its highest approval rating since 1983.
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