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The Hungarian people have shown us that autocracy is not inevitable. Despite Viktor Orban’s efforts—amplified and partially funded by Russia—to entrench his rule through a rigged electoral system, manipulated judiciary packed with loyalists, and controlled media, the Hungarian people turned out in massive numbers to send him and his Fidesz party packing. They voted in Peter Magyar and his Tisza party with a supermajority.
The change represents a massive upheaval, as Orban’s regime has played spoiler in Europe and provided a conduit for Russian influence in both Europe and the United States. For background, read these past Rants!👇
Here are my main takeaways from this truly historic election.
Massive Turnout Can Stop Democratic Backsliding And Autocracy
There is an important lesson here for the United States.
The Associated Press summarized Orban’s moves to consolidate power like this:
Orbán embraced what he dubbed “illiberal democracy,” building a barrier on Hungary’s southern border to block migrants from Africa and Asia who were moving northward through Europe. He and his party stifled LGBTQ+ rights, cracked down on freedom of the press and undermined judicial independence.
Orbán cemented his power when his Fidesz party won enough seats in Parliament during the 2010 global recession to rewrite the country’s constitution. They restructured the judiciary to funnel appointments to the bench through party loyalists, redrew legislative districts to make it much harder for Fidesz members to lose elections and helped push Hungary’s media companies to be sold to tycoons allied with Orban.
Does any of that sound familiar? Trump and his minions have been stacking the judiciary, gerrymandering, and using the power of the office and government to push or deny media sales involving Trump loyalists. Add to that the number of American oligarchs using their media and social media platforms to please the Dear Leader, and moves to consolidate power over the electoral process. ProPublica just published this piece about how Trump is looking to “take over” the midterms.
But even with such a tilted playing field, massive turnout can turn the tide, as it did in Hungary, where more than 80 percent of the electorate turned out to vote. For comparison, 65 percent of the electorate in the US voted in 2024.
An important point to remember about autocrats: their security and power depends on corruption. Contracts and policy benefits get handed out to a small group of loyalists. Corruption ensures that the government is only working for a select few, not for the people.
Eventually, regular people get angry. A leader can lie about prosperity, job growth, and lower prices to a certain extent, but individuals can see they can’t afford gas, food, or healthcare, and their wallets are empty. Indeed, this proved a winning message for Magyar (more on that in a minute) and stoked people to go out and vote against corruption.
We cannot accept the corruption we see in the US as normal. We cannot accept the lies as normal. We cannot accept the frenzied chaos and dementia-addled social media postings and press conferences that are fucking lunatic in nature as normal. We still have agency and we do not have to accept a corrupt government. There are more of us than them.
Fund Investigative Journalism
Investigative journalists played a pivotal role in calling out Orban’s corruption, at great peril to themselves.
Earlier this year, Hungarian journalist Panyi Szabolcs found evidence that Hungarian officials were sharing sensitive European documents with Russia. Orban’s government charged him with espionage for the revelation (which is funny because it was the Hungarian officials handing intelligence to Russia who were committing espionage). Panyi and a consortium of investigative journalists from VSquare, The Insider, Frontstory, Delfi Estonia, and the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak went on to reveal that Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjártó, was willingly being directed by Russia’s foreign minister to block certain sanctions in the EU.
It is in large part because of these journalists that Hungarians shouted “Russians go home!” as they celebrated Orban’s demise. Uncovering these operations was crucial, also in places like Moldova and Romania. Investigative journalists will continue to play a pivotal role now that Orban is out. All those corrupt networks must be investigated and the story of corruption told.
There are likely many politicians, journalists, businesspeople, and influencers out there right now a wee bit nervous about what information will come out about how they received funds through the Hungarian government and organizations funded by the state to carry out destabilization efforts on behalf of Russia.
Indeed, as Magyar was giving his acceptance speech, he received word that Szijjártó was at the Foreign Ministry destroying documents. Szijjártó understands any record of collaboration is dangerous to himself and to others. Who were the others? What did those collaborations look like? What were those deals? We need investigative journalists to help piece this together and hold those individuals to account.
Call Things What They Are
In a baller move, Magyar eviscerated Hungarian state media as a propaganda machine while on state tv. “This factory of lies will end once the Tisza government is formed... What has been going on here since 2010, which even Goebbels or the North Korean dictator would have been envious of, cannot continue,” he said during his appearance.
He later wrote on social media, “After a year and a half, I am back in the ‘public’ television studio. We have just witnessed the last days of a propaganda machine. After the formation of the TISZA government, we will suspend the news services of the ‘public’ media until its public service character is restored.”
In another post he wrote, “One of the first measures of the TISZA government will be the immediate suspension of the public media’s news services until all conditions for impartial and objective journalism are fully restored. The TISZA government will ensure press freedom, abolish censorship, and eliminate prohibited state subsidies.”
In another baller move, Magyar did not mince words in calling for the Hungarian president to resign. After meeting Tamas Sulyok, an Orban loyalist, at the presidential palace, Magyar posted a picture of him with the president and wrote, “I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary. @DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model. Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately.” He wrote that while posting a picture of them being cordial together.
Magyar also called out leaders of other countries. During a press conference, he said, “I know exactly what is going on in Serbia, know about the ties that exist between the Orbán government and Vučić-led Serbia, just as I know what connections exist between Slovakia's Fico and Orbán. I also have a general idea of who stands behind all this, who the godfather of those great friendships is.”
In case you didn’t get the reference, the godfather he is referring to is Putin.
Don’t Let The Other Side Set The Terms Of Debate
This is a corollary to calling things what they are. Don’t let the other side set the terms of debate. In fact, don’t debate at all. It lends legitimacy to the other side’s argument. Countering narratives is necessary up to a point. But setting your own narrative is more important. Magyar did that. He did not try to shoot down every narrative Orban raised. He did not try to counter every Russian lie amplified through the media. Rather, he stuck to a simple message when talking to ordinary Hungarians: Orban and his minions are part of a corrupt criminal organization and here is how that corruption is affecting you. He then promised a return of the rule of law. It’s a message that transcends party lines: These criminals are fucking all of us, left, right, and center.
Magyar also has vowed to hand over evidence to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate fraud, document electoral abuses, and restore an independent judiciary. This is also an important message and why civil society must continue to document abuses. While no single act will save us, each single action is important and valuable. Accountability will come one day. Corrupt leaders must know that. Voters must know that.
Russia Has Been Funding The Global Far-Right Movement Through Hungary
What does Orban’s ouster mean for the far-right movement generally? There is bound to be some impact, given that a lot of Russia’s funding for far-right groups has been funneled through Hungary.
One of the main conduits has been the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank that is funded using revenues from the Hungarian energy company MOL, which refines oil from Russia. Indeed, Russian influence and other subversion operations are often funded through energy schemes (see Class 8 about Italy’s Lega party, as well as Victor in Trouble for more). Then there’s the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a major GOP platform. Its Hungarian branch was funded with Hungarian taxpayer money.
To wit, Hungarian state money, supplemented with Russian funds laundered through energy deals, has funded CPAC, along with a host of other right wing infrastructure across the globe, including ultraconservatives in the United Kingdom and Marine LePen’s National Rally in France. That money has also funded the Danube Institute, which works closely in the US with the Heritage Foundation, and the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, which is run by a close friend of JD Vance. There is a long list of other think tanks and organizations that have been propping up the far-right movement using money funneled through Hungary. This piece lists many individuals in the US conservative movement who might be shitting their pants right about now.
Here, I give another shoutout to those investigative journalists. It is certain that some of our own politicians were aware of the schemes and willingly participated in spreading Russian influence in return for payment. Let’s reveal them, as those journalists did with Hungary’s Szijjártó.
Russia Isn’t Done With Its Fuckery
While Orban handled bureaucratic rigging to give himself the best chance to win, his buddies in Moscow launched information operations to boost his candidacy. Storm-1516 and Matryoshka, social media and media networks used to spread malign information, were implemented to spread narratives concocted by Russia’s Social Design Agency. Russian intelligence considered a fake assassination attempt to help build goodwill toward Orban.
These operations did not bring about the outcome the Kremlin was hoping for. Nor did similar campaigns succeed in Moldova and Romania. But the lesson here isn’t that Russian information operations don’t work. The lesson is: we must remain vigilant to the operations, build our resilience against them, and be prepared to set our own messaging.
Furthermore, I think it is important not to think of Russian information operations as individual operations, looking to sway a single election. The idea is to degrade the information space and destabilize democracy, making way for corruption. It is a constant drumbeat, not a single hit.
A roundup of things you should be reading and watching
An excellent discussion with John Sipher, Foreign Office by M.Weiss, Marc Polymeropoulos, and Christo Grozev
The Quiet War: Invisible Attacks (The Hayden Center for Intelligence)
The banality of Putin (by Andrew Chakhoyan for Kyiv Independent)
Trump Is Turning America Into a Psychotic State (NYT)
How the Internet Broke Everyone’s Bullshit Detectors (Wired)
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
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