Anne Applebaum: Hungary's Surreal, Post-Reality Campaign

Victor Orban is in the grand scheme of things not important at all. He's the leader of a very small country, less than ten million people, but he has taken on an outsize importance. to the American and European far right because he has deliberately set himself up as a model. So he's somebody who, just for those who want a little bit even deeper history, who was an anti-communist back in the days when I was also an anti-communist.

he spoke at an at a event in nineteen eighty nine, attracted a lot of attention, founded a youth party, um, was considered a leading liberal. in Central and Eastern Europe, was friendly with all the other leading liberals, had a scholarship to Oxford paid for by George Soros. And over the years he discarded that persona and he decided that his political career would be better served by him moving to the right. And he moved first to the center right and then to the far right.

Um I actually wrote about him in a previous book called Twilight of Democracy, where I talked about this process of radicalization in Europe and elsewhere. The main thing to know about him is that when he took power sixteen years ago, having he was in power once before and then he lost. He took power sixteen years ago and he was determined he was never gonna lose another election. And so he set out changing the Hungarian political system.

But he played around with the constitution, he changed the way voting works, and he slowly took over all the institutions of the Hungarian state. So the judiciary, the bureaucracy, with the help of these oligarchic companies that he helped to create. took over the media, the television stations, radio stations. Also those companies control between depending on who you ask, between about twenty percent and thirty percent of the Hungarian economy. Um and he built a s kind of nepotistic

corrupt system that keeps his party in power and keeps him wealthy. He owns a kind of neo Baroque palace somewhere in the countryside with zebras in the garden and that kind of thing. I mean it's all just like in just like in novels about dictators.

who literally imported his ideas. Many of one much of what Project Twenty Twenty Five is is based on the experience of Orban, the Trump um administration's assault on universities and DEI, a lot of that comes from Orban as well. They saw him do it. um and they're copying it. And so he has taken this outsize importance on the, as I said, American and European far right.

He is now being finally challenged by a leader who is from his party, who came out of his movement, Fidesch, the name of his political party, but who is younger, more energetic, and has focused on the the corruption of the regime. So the corruption of the party, the corruption of Orban, as well as the failures, because one of the things that happens when you take over the state

is you um and you especially when you take over the judiciary and the legal system is and you make your system untransparent, which is what they all want to do, it becomes much easier to steal. And so The system has become very corrupt, the economy is stagnant, um, the healthcare system is terrible, you know, the lack of normal conversation and normal politics has begun to bug people, and Peter Magyar has been hammering all those things home.

And Magyar himself is a little bit of a he's a little bit of a wild card. He's a he's very energetic. He's very emotional. Um he's been running this very emotional campaign. Lots of Hungarian flags and patriotism.

I know some of the people around him and they are genuinely committed to making Hungary into a different country. I mean, I should say another thing that's important about Hungary is that in the recent years Orban has also played the role of Russian puppet in Europe, which I know is very strange and hard to get your mind around if you think of Hungary as fighting the Russians in nineteen fifty six and you think of Orban as an anti communist in nineteen eighty nine.

But Orban's decided to link his fortunes to Moscow. He has um gas deals with Moscow, probably some that benefit his party as well as his you know, less so his country. And he plays the role of blocking EU money for Ukraine, blocking EU sanctions on Russia. And Magyar is has said he will he will change all that and he will change Hungary's geopolitical direction as well as its economics.

to what could be coming for us here. And I think important to look at it through that lens. Uh you talk about this kind of post reality politics that they're living in. So Orban is now trying to run for this reelection, finally has a legitimate opponent. Economy is

shaky there. I like there are a lot you know, a lot of things in Hungary are, you know, not you know, he's not living up to the promises, maybe. I'm trying to think of the parallels to something that the Republicans might be going through soon, right? Conobey's not going well. He's not living up to a lot of his promises. And so the campaign they are running is just a full kind of earth to disinformation campaign to try to muddy the waters and denigrate Maggie.

But Orman has now run out of enemies because the migrant thing that he used for so many years, which I by the way had a had a seriously fake aspect to it as well, just isn't working anymore. There aren't any migrants in Hungary and there aren't any who want to go there.

you know, the LGBT threat, you know, that isn't really working either. You know, people just aren't that scared of of gay people. And so he's creating a new threat and he has to create it literally from scratch. And so there are these AI videos of Zelensky snorting cocaine on a golden toilet or Hungarian soldiers being shot in the head by presumably, I don't know, Ukrainian snipers. I mean that's a

completely post reality campaign. So it creates an absolutely fake world um for people to live in. And that's what he's been campaigning on. Magyar is trying to run a campaign that's about housing economy, you know, healthcare, but you know, and of course corruption, and trying to focus it on Maggie is running this very

grassroots campaign as well. The opposition doesn't have access to any mainstream media, any media actually, or in even billboard space they can't control because that's somehow owned by the government or owned by by the ruling party. And so they're running this intense grassroots campaign. Maggie is doing like six public meetings every day. I got a list of them actually for the last few days of the campaign, and it's very intense.

And Orbon is running this campaign that's like based as you say it in Earth tube.

m it was more than one truck. It was a and it was a group of people, injected one of them with truth serum or something and he had some kind of bad reaction and passed out. You know, but it was a crazy uh again, an attempt to create a fake incident that would convince people that there was some bad Ukrainian thing happening in Hungary. And actually since then there's been another incident where the Hungarians claim to have found

explosives on a pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. And the bizarre thing about this was I heard that that exact scenario was flagged like three weeks in advance before it happened. And people in Budapest were already talking, oh, this is what Orbot is going to do. And it was already being publicized and discussed as there will be this false flag operation, and then they did it anyway, as if no one knew what it would be, and I'm told it had very little impact.

th you know, they keep trying to create incidents and create stories and use use the police or use the army in order to create some image of of threat and danger so that people will say, Well, we better unite behind the leader.

you know, where many, many people can register at the same house. It's kinda funny'cause it's what the MAGA folks say is happening here. Right. Um, but they're they're actually doing it in Hungary. And so I I mean that's basically the the plan, right? Like that they can put their thumb on the scale of the system, having people fr from maybe Serbia uh across the border voting in Hungary, combine that with this disinformation campaign, Romania, excuse me.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh combine that with the disinformation campaign and like that's that's what they've got left. Which and so which is in some ways it's it's ominous, but it's also maybe encouraging that they're backed into this corner that that's you know, that's what they're left to do strategically.

there's already built into the system the way the electoral system works and the constituencies worked, you know, the the opposition party would already have to have something like fifty five percent of the vote in order to have a majority because it's already tilted in the direction of Fidesz. So there are a lot of things that are already

you know, as I said, built into the system to help Fidesh win. And those have worked for them so far. I mean, they worked for them for the last several elections. And we'll see. I mean, Magir is getting these huge crowds. And as I said, it's this very

very grassroots campaign. And people said to me, look, we we know we can't reach people through media. We know that, you know, people are live in alternate worlds online. And so we're trying to reach them in real life. And it's a small enough country that maybe they can do it.

You have to have faith that that is gonna happen and you have to work to help real reality reassert itself. But I do think that that ends up being, you know, kind of this weakness of these authoritarian regimes. Like if you rely too much on propaganda and fake news. Like that it works obviously to a point, but eventually there's like a level of suffering or a level of betrayal among the electorate.

where there may be a backlash and and hopefully we'll see that this weekend in Hungary. I do have something on that. I do want to play the JD Vance clips as well because I think that's pretty important.

in this battle against a party that is pushing for rule of law and and reunification with Europe. Like what what is Western civilization if not that?

Russia and China and Iran are trying to destroy. And the countries who are defending Western civilization are the democracies. Democratic civilization is Western civilization and the fact that

Orbana's aligned with forces who want to destroy democratic civilization, I would think would be an obvious reason for an American not to support it. But you're right. I mean, they twist words and they twist language. Vance described He used language describing it sounded like he was describing Orban's opponents as a small band of radicals, you know, as if there were some small Marxist groups that were trying to, I don't know, destroy marriage or something or, you know

you know, rape children, you know. But Magyar's movement is, you know, at the very least it's half of Hungary and and probably more. And they're all Hungarians and and they're all participating in public life and they're waving Hungarian flags and they're singing the Hungarian national anthem. You know, to mischaracterize it as a small band of radicals is also as you say, gaslighting.

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So in addition to framing Orban as being on the side of God and Western civilization and all this other nonsense, JD Vans actively participated in this disinformation campaign and this alternate reality campaign that you're talking about pret with regards to the Ukrainians. I wanna play a clip of his conversation. When he was over there, he did the campaign speech, but he also I did an interview at uh Matthias College there. Let's let's take a listen.

leaders of foreign countries and Vance himself is sitting in a foreign country playing a role in their campaign while saying it's very bad to play roles and, you know, to be involved in other people's campaigns. There's this level of surreality that's very hard to

They've never conceded that Zelensky is the legitimate leader of Ukraine. You know, none of this has ever happened. And Ukrainians have been continually pressured by the Trump administration to give up territory to Russia. And the Ukrainians keep saying, What will we get in return? How do we know if we give up territory the war will end? And the answer is they don't. You know, they there's nothing. No one has given them anything.

Uh and the territory they're being asked to give up is heavily fortified territory. This is like fortress towns that have you know that have been protected and fought over for years and years, places where Ukrainians live. You know, you're not just giving up territory or giving up you know a protective zone. If you gave it up, you would then m enable the Russians to move further.

I mean, I suppose it's because they don't want to understand it. You know, what they want to do is they want a quick business deal between the United States and Russia and they want to move on and the war is in their way. And so they keep talking about it like it's some trivial you know, trivial problem that, you know, Zelensky's just blocking it and if he would just step out of the way we could solve it. It's just a profound kind of arrogance and ignorance and hubris wrapped into one.

You know, this this is a really big war. It's a it's a war about European civilization, the same civilization they say they care about. It's about whether

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I wonder back into the Iran stuff with just a couple of the other uh little news items um related to how we're engaging with our European friends and allies uh as we engage that war. Um and then we'll get to the ceasefire itself. This is the craziest story.

And I just think it's an interesting pairing with what we saw in Hungary with JD Vance, you know, talking about how you should not be threatening allies in any way. Also, one of your colleagues at the Atlantic wrote a great story about uh Glad and Poppin. There's like this American Catholic integralist type who's now an Orban advisor who wants Melania to rule as Queen of America and to their and JD Vance's new book is about his Catholicism. It's like all of this like

they're trying to tie their Catholicism and and the religion into the nationalism in a very real way. Simultaneously to that, we had a story that broke yesterday This is from my buddy that writes letters from Leo. It's a good substack about about Pope Leo. Uh in January behind closed doors at the Pentagon.

Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Pope Leo's then ambassador to the US, and delivered a lecture. America, Colby and his colleagues told the Cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants. The Catholic Church had better take its side. As tempers rose, one US official reached for a fourteenth century weapon and invoked the Avong papacy.

the period when the French crown used military force to bend the Bishop of Rome to its will. Like we literally brought the ambassador from the Holy See to the Pentagon and told them Popleo's gotta get in line. All right. We're gonna do some invasions and we're gonna need Pop Leo on our side.

from America and you know, and the th and the threat turns out to have been a real threat. The ambassador from the Holy See inviting him to the Pentagon and a Pentagon American military official threatening him and saying, you know, the Pope better shape up and support us or else he's in trouble. I mean again, it's this level of sort of arrogance and

uh failure to understand reality and also the failure to understand what American influence is and can be. You know, American influence in the past never worked through military threat. At least not in Allied countries, you know, work through the power of persuasion and example. And the idea that you can threaten the Pope and that that's

You know, I mean, anyway, I I many have observed that what's really impressive about the story is that someone in the Pentagon or in the Trump administration knew what the Avignon Papacy was. I mean that's kind of

To the ambassador from the Holy See. Um, similarly on threats uh to NATO over Iran, just two bleats from the president over the past twenty four hours. All caps, NATO wasn't there when we needed them, and they won't be there if we need them again. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run piece of ice.

And then posted this morning, none of these people, including our own, very disappointing NATO, understood anything unless they have pressure placed upon them. I think he's trying to say that they don't understand anything unless they have pressure placed upon them.

So that's it. I mean he's getting he's like threatening L Greenland obliquely, threatening NATO again, upset that they did not join us in the war of choice in Iran that we did not ask them to be a part of or brief them on or include them in in any way.

We didn't tell them we were going to invade Iran or whatever we did to Iran bomb Iran. We didn't involve them in it. And if you look at the kind of the timeline of Trump's comments about Europe, you know, he first he says we don't need you, then we do need you and then we don't need you.

and then the British say they're gonna send some ships, I think, to defend some interests in the Gulf or in Cyprus and then you it's too late to send ships, we've already won the war. You know, in this kind of stream of insults and invective, which I think comes from the fact that, I mean, Trump I think he's now at the point I don't know whether it's psychological or physical deterioration, I just I'm not able to explain it.

He does he no longer seem to connect the events of one day with the next day. You know, and what he says, he doesn't he acts like it won't have any impact. You know, when you insult the leader of a country, that is heard in that country and that affects how you are perceived by that country and these are democracies. Trump is unbelievably unpopular all across Europe. You know, in Denmark it's like ninety percent unpopularity. This war in Iran is unbelievably unpopular in most of Europe.

And they're not gonna leap to the defense of an unpopular president fighting an unpopular war, especially when they know that if they did, that would be forgotten the next day too. I mean what you know, you helped Trump and then so what? You know, he doesn't remember. I mean he's He's insulted the countries who sent troops to Afghanistan and and the people who died there.

You know, Vance said something about Afghanistan that was a long time ago. We don't care about that anymore. You know, the only time that Article five of NATO, this is the the thing in the treaty that says, you know, an attack on one is more or less an attack on all. The only time it's ever been invoked was after nine eleven. And the only countries who've ever fought on behalf of another country are Europeans fighting for the United States.

The other thing is, you know, it's it's also just not true. I mean, that the US has been using European bases all the way through this conflict. That plane that went down in Iran took off from a British base. You know, the German bases are in constant use. you know, the US would have no ability to fight in the Middle East if it wasn't for the European bases. It's unreal, it's detached from reality. I I mean the only th other thing I can think is that it's his

You know, the war isn't going the way he thought it would. He needs somebody to blame, you know, he doesn't want to blame the Russians, you know, because they're his friends, and so he's looking for some kind of target. You know, it's NATO's fault.

I we are kind of at war with Russia right now, too. And yet the we're on their side everywhere else.

Something that has worked for Trump politically, but like we're seeing the weakness of of this trait. But like back in 2016 on the debate stage, like Trump would be on stage and like talk about how Jeb's wife is an illegal immigrant, and that's why Jeb likes

illegal immigrant drug trafficking killers or whatever. And then they would leave stage and on the way back he'd be like, What's going on this weekend? You wanna go golfing? You wanna come by the club? Right? Like it was all just fake. It was all you know, it's all performance, right? Trump perceives all of this like he perceives the apprentice.

Right, or WWE. And so for him, it's like, yeah, I can whatever, threaten Greenland one day and then the next day say, Hey, we need you guys to send us some troops and put them at risk. And I think that like he literally either is incapable of making that connection or like that type of attitude has worked for him for so long that he just assumes that that it will work and everyone will bend to his will and everyone is kind of like him in a way. They just don't admit.

The Danes are still talking about it. So the Danes got ready for for a variety of reasons, public and private statements made by Trump. They got ready. They were prepared for an American invasion. So that meant They went through the thought process. What will we do? Will we shoot down American planes?

you know, will our soldiers shoot American soldiers? Will they shoot us? What what are gonna be the economic consequences of that? And other European countries were involved in that conversation too, you know, the Germans and the French and Poles and others.

They knew there might be a war in Denmark between Den Denmark and the United States and everybody got ready for the catastrophic consequences of that. And then okay, Trump then went to Davos and he made a speech and he mixed up Greenland and Iceland a few times and he

sort of backed off and I you know, but do you think everybody forgot about that? You know, do you think the Danish military forgot that they had been through that exercise, or the Germans forgot that they were you know, nobody forgot, you know, and so You know, the fact that Trump forgets it doesn't mean that, you know, that it the slate is blank for for the rest of Europe. Everybody remembers, everybody knows that there's no there's no value in doing anything for Trump because he doesn't

You know, he doesn't remember or he doesn't or doesn't count. What only counts is what he cares about right now.

somehow Trump and his supporters insist that his threats to Iran are supposed to exist in some mythical space. where we on our side are permitted to discount them as not real, but they on their side are expected to take them deadly seriously. This is supposed to unlock for Trump

devastating levels of negotiating pressure that only he can access. I that's basically what Trump defenders have been saying about him for a long time. And there have been ways in which that is true. Like ways in which certain leaders have given him things because it they're like, it's just not worth dealing with the crazy guy.

Our great military is loading up and resting, looking forward to its next conquest. So like that's where we're at right now. We're like Trump made this big threat, presuming that the Iranians would buckle. And the Iranians, like, you know, paid him some lip service, cut a deal, but like, not really. I mean, the street is still being heavily monitored by them. They're making ships go through like along the Iranian shore and taking bribes from people. So that's the state of play right now.

somewhere deep inside in the country, probably underground somewhere. And you know, is that a reliable team of people to do business with? I mean, do they even control all of the all of their military units? I mean the IGRC, the the Revolutionary Guard supposedly had you know, after the leadership was killed, I think by plan had splintered. And so there are different groups now who are operating, maybe not even in contact with one another.

I mean, so it's not even clear like who is negotiating with who and are the right people even speaking to the other right people? And is there a deal even to be done? I mean, we've created this very bizarre situation where I mean the regime is still in place and uh you know and so on, but but the leadership is it's unclear who the real leaders are.

you know, hopefully you will come to the table, Mr Trump, you know, to try to save face. But we wrote the language that we sent to Pakistan to for them to put out, you know, Pakistan calling on Iran and and the US to come to the table for a ceasefire. So we asked them to do that and now we're trying to get a negotiation to happen in Islamabad while the strait is quasi closed and we're sending Vance

Who's who has, as you mentioned, no expertise. But the only advantage he has in this situation, in this negotiation, is that he doesn't want anything out of it. Like they can give Iran whatever they want. Like we have no goals. We have no objectives. Like basically all we want out of it is like letting the you know, letting global trade get back to some quasi normal place where maybe we can take some money.

which they never even really attempted. They didn't ever talk to the Iranian opposition. They didn't ever involve them anyone else in the conversation. They don't seem to have destroyed the Iranian military, which at some points was the goal. They don't seem to have destroyed

the Iranian nuclear program, which was sometimes also the goal. What did we achieve? I mean, well, I guess we destroyed a lot of Iranian military assets, but now the world is in a worse situation because the Iranians have first of all demonstrated that the Gulf states, all of which depend on this illusion of safety and freedom and desalinization plants in order to exist, has shown that they're more vulnerable than

anybody thought. So he's that's destabilized the region and and also Iran has now taken control of that strait and has said they're gonna, you know, make people pay to go through it. So I didn't understand what's been gained.

How can you go about that in a way that is effective, you know, that could be helpful with minimizing potential costs and risks? And so I just in order to be as fair as possible, I just this this blew me away this morning. And somebody that I follow on social media over the National Review who's been a supporter of the war, of the actions.

talked about the state of where we're we are at with the ceasefire. And I just want to read some of this. This has become a unilateral ceasefire with Washington alone abiding by its top line term. The consequences of letting this status quo persist are grave. The US would effectively cede its role as guarantor of global maritime navigation rights.

The world would make its own separate arrangements, spheres of influence would arise. The evidence that the modest or even theoretical application of force to a contested waterway can close it will tempt Beijing to test the premise. all but ensuring a soft or hard blockade of Taiwan. That's from somebody who thought this was good.

Like and they're like we're risking a a permanent end to peaceful global maritime navigation. We saw uh um Joselle Donnelly's writing with this in the bulwark this morning. Like so the stakes and risks are just so high and like the geopolitical, you know, potential for things unraveling so great. And it's like for what?

people, you know, see what happens in one place and they draw conclusions in another place. Like he can't think like that at all. He can only think in terms of what's happening this minute and how do I solve this problem. And Iran is now this problem for him. He just wants it To go away. Like he wants the Ukrainian war to just go away. You know, if we just want to mag Abra Abracadabra disappear. He even said something like that.

you know, he tweeted something a few days ago saying, oh, the Strait of one day the Strait of Hormuz will just open. It will just magically open. You know, just like COVID would one day it would just magically disappear. You know, he he has these fantasies about problems just disappearing. And that's literally how he thinks.

I can't tell you how many people I've had this argument with is the Europeans and foreigners, you know, they like you know, there must be something else going on. It's impossible that the American president doesn't have a strategy and doesn't understand that, you know, if he breaks up with NATO, that will have an effect on Russia, or if he does something in Iran that will have an effect on China. It's impossible that he doesn't understand that. But he he genuinely doesn't.

the failure to include them in any conversation to understand to you know to to listen to people who are actually affected by this conflict, that drives me crazy. I don't understand why I mean even even Iraq, which you could argue was w despite all the planning and was also a disaster. I mean in Iraq we did talk to Iraqis and there was some attempt to understand what Iraqis might want. And here there's just nothing. And I think that's I think that's an important cause of the of the disaster.

'Cause it was in January. I know this is a it's pretty macabre laughter, but it was in January right when those protests were starting and the regime seemed And like this is the thing this is one of the things that frustrates me so much about this whole thing is like they all they all just keep lying about why we did this too.

And they they keep lying when they're creating post hoc new rationales for like the real purpose of this was degrading their navy or whatever. It's just like fuck you. Like we know what happened. Like the real purpose of this was they seemed weak. in January and Israel saw an opportunity. MBS saw an opportunity. And you know, we thought that, hey, maybe we c if we can just like knock over one block here, the whole thing will come tumbling down.

And like that was the initial point of doing this. And we're farther away from that than ever.

Radio Farda actually, which is in Iran, that's part of Radio Free Europe. Radio Free Asia, which broadcasts in in in Mandarin and Korean and North Korea, and actually was famously broke the story of the oppression of the Uyghur people in China. There are some very legit, very good journalists who've been part of

Uh you know, not all of it is excellent or wonderful, but a lot of it's very good and in some places it's really important. And she took over, I think initially thinking maybe she was gonna become a T V star by doing so. And then I don't know, inspired by Musk and some crazy people on on on X.

She decided actually her job was to destroy the whole thing. And so she literally set out to fire everybody and break up everything and and the whole thing. The journalists and the system fought back, people sued her. And what's happened m most recently is she started losing. lawsuits. And one judge has already said she needs to reinstate everybody that she fired at VOA. And there's also a bizarre legal question as to whether she is even legally in charge of USAGM.

whether she's even able to do it because she was appointed in a strange way and according to the law, she's not she we sh would need Senate confirmation, which she doesn't have. And on top of all this, like actually what she spends most of her day doing all the time is tweeting, you know, nonstop stuff about Trump and Rick Grinnell and the Trump Kennedy Center and

uh you know, so mostly what she does is promote herself all day long and meanwhile seek to destroy this agency which used to do good things. And I should say another piece of the story is has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in doing this. Hundreds of millions. You know, she fired a lot of people illegally and that meant their salaries were still being paid. She shut offices in such a way that she will have to pay fines for having shut them. You know, she broke contracts.

I mean almost everything she has literally trail of destruction behind her. And now it's not even clear she was even legally able to do that. Which I think's that's the good news. Courts fought back.

some World War Two military strategy book that I should read. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I I only have time for one Atlantic book club and it's Anne Applebaum's. And uh it's an informal one. You've previously suggested the Captive Mind. The Opermans, The Director, a Poem, a poem, that's nice. The Choice of Comrades, What We Can Know by Ian McEwen was the most recent suggestion. Anything else? Anything you're reading, watching, a TV, a streaming show?

Do you have anything anything bringing you joy that you'd like to add to the list of Anne Applebaum recommendations?

And uh then on Monday Sarah and Bill Kristol will be sitting in for me and then I'll be back on Tuesday. All right, everybody, appreciating Apple Bomb so much as always, and we'll see y'all back here tomorrow.