Updates from a Failing Democracy

[Korts]

As you may have heard, Hungary is circling the drain as a salvageable democracy. I've certainly been harassing scumchat with hilariously sad news of my country on an increasingly regular basis. This time, I'm giving all of MafiaScum the pleasure, because these are some genuinely great stories.

Spoiler: A Short History of Contemporary Hungarian Democracy and its Governing Party

As you may or may not care to know, Hungarian democracy will be 25 years old this October. I'm not sure what the outside world thinks, but we're pretty sure we single-handedly toppled communism over here - and our current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is pretty sure he single-handedly orchestrated our single-handedness. Long story short, he was the leading figure of the coalition of illegal opposition parties that negotiated the country's first free elections since the end of World War II, and he's been milking that ever since.

Here's what you need to know up to 2010: Orbán's party, FiDeSZ (the Young Democrats' Alliance, now almost exclusively populated by aging plutocrats) was initially a radical liberal party with a bunch of youthful vim and vigor. They got a decent amount of votes in the first election, but a more conservative party won. Then the second time around the socialists won. This must have felt like a big slap in the face to the guys who were much of the driving force behind the fall of communism in Hungary.

By the time the third elections rolled up, FiDeSZ must have realized that democracy isn't about principles, but about pandering to votes. They definitely noticed a power vacuum in the political right, and they capitalized on it in a big way. They gobbled up a bunch of smaller parties and formed a government with whoever remained in name. And then they began building their base.

Unfortunately, four years later the people changed their minds again. The socialist party came back into power over the next two terms, and it didn't go so well. First, there was a leaked recording of the then Prime Minister being way too honest about politics at a party conference, and there were some sound bites that of course when taken out of context sounded horribly offensive to anyone with the slightest sense of national pride. And then all the cumulative fuck-ups of a budding democracy with no experience in capitalism finally came crashing down as the recession hit just around the end of the second socialist term - so it was pretty inevitable that, without any other alternative, FiDeSZ would be given another shot.

And they won in 2010. Big time. Two thirds of the vote. Which gave them unlimited access to the constitution itself. And it didn't seem like a good idea, no, but it's been way worse and way more absurd than anyone could have predicted.

tl;dr: if you don't want to read the spoilers, the gist is this: our governing party is a bunch of power-crazed megalomaniacs and their crazy and/or greedy friends, who were given an all-access pass to the constitution in 2010 when they received two-thirds of the vote.

Since then, media freedom has been restricted in multiple ways, the economy is crumbling, practically every system of checks and balances has been stripped, and more.

And this thread is for the sad, maddening, hilarious things that our Beloved Leader and his friends' hubris leads them to do.

[Korts]

Today's story!

Our Prime Minister got VIP tickets to the World Cup Final. He got to sit in front of Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, among others. He was also the only person on the VVIP list who decided he was entitled to a plus one.



The young, moustached man in glasses is Gáspár Orbán, the Prime Minister's son and a recently signed football player in the team whose newly built stadium stands literally across the street from the PM's weekend house.

So !!444!!!, one of the few independent news sites that doesn't have to hold back for fear of retaliation, notes this, and they immediately get a letter from Gáspár Orbán asking them not to write about him because he isn't a public figure. And of course they publish this letter.

This was yesterday; all of today's articles on 444 have been exclusively about this since then.

[Korts]

Their name in English, by the way, would be !!111!!!

[Korts]

Tomorrow I'm going to tell you about the government's own magazine. That was a particularly funny one!

[Korts]

hey Korts the NC commune is recruiting

I have some unfinished business over here, but if the offer still stands in a year or two, I may just take you up on it.

[Korts]

So fun stuff today!

I haven't been following political events much lately, because I really don't need an aneurysm right now, but apparently submitting questions to a national referendum was not possible due to some bureaucratic shenanigans? I dunno. Anyway, the submission process was opened this morning, I guess.

So one of the most easily accessible complaints against the government is recent legislation that prohibits most stores from being open on Sundays, and the opposition party has been trying to bring this up for a long while.

And now they are physically being blocked from entering the government building where they can submit the question to a referendum, by concerned citizens who just so happen to be the same ex-con skinheads who have provided unofficial security at other protests, government functions, etc.

When asked if they minded the Sunday closings, one of the skinheads said that they like to diet.

Some GIFs from the occasion:

[Korts]

Oh hey, last week Fidesz suddenly decided that the Central European University (which was,

entirely coincidentally they swear

, founded by György Soros) is not in full compliance of the law.

The specific law that CEU in violation of, you ask? Oh, they hadn't passed it yet when they first brought up the violation. But they promised they would pass it as fast they can, to make sure that CEU is not allowed to operate illegally, which it isn't, because the law they are breaking didn't exist yet.

But today, the Parliament made it a reality. They rushed it through without any debate - though the President has yet to sign it, and may veto due to the unprecedented international pressure. The law would require universities with institutions in foreign nations (CEU is registered in New York and is thus accredited in the US) to have a contract between the governments of the two nations regarding the university's operation, an impossible ask given that the US federal government does not have the authority to make such a contract. There was also another impossible condition, but I forget, and I do not want to look it up, because I am angry enough.

CEU is the highest ranked university in not just Hungary, but the region. Multiple cities in other countries have already offered to take them in if they have to leave.

I feel like my country's leaders have officially declared war on the intelligentsia.

[Korts]

We just had some special elections in Hódmezővásárhely, a city that has been ruled by one of Fidesz's main guys for more fifteen years. The opposition candidate won 57-41.

This is the government propaganda machine's reaction:

Spoiler:

For reference, this is what he looks like:

Spoiler:

[Korts]

The lead of the article about the election results starts with "opposition hysteria has borne its fruit."

The next article is "Memorial Day for the Victims of Communism." The one after that is "Sentences about Communism by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn," with the first couple words of the lead "more destructive than communism."