Mafiascum.net

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.