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Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

612 points by r_sz 5y ago

poisonborz 5y ago
If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices and legal disputes that take years without a noteworthy resolution. Due to how alliances within the union work - Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself.
- paganel 5y ago
  > The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?
  - tiborsaas 5y ago
    While I wouldn't call if a fraud, but they skewed with the election system to bend it towards in their favour. They for example introduced monetary support for small parties in a way that made it really easy to commit fraud, which surprisingly did happen at a large scale. It also resulted in people voting for those fake parties and not on the opposition with real power. They won 2/3 power like this. "Belorussian-style regime", to name a few: - control of state media packed with non-stop propaganda - openly friendly towards dictators / other regimes - suppressive, openly anti-liberal laws
    - ReptileMan 5y ago
      Since liberal means nothing lately, anti liberal is the same. I have seen quite authoritarian tendencies about stripping people from basic rights after corona epidemic began from self proclaimed liberals.
      - tiborsaas 5y ago
        Sure, liberal is an umbrella term. Instead, imagine a country where we let people live their life however they want, do whatever they want to their bodies and think for themselves. This is not Hungary and we are heading towards the opposite direction.
        emteycz 5y ago
        Which country in EU is like that? I don't know of any. And there are much worse counter-examples than Hungary.
        ReptileMan 5y ago
        And after corona lockdowns, talking about stripping all kinds of rights from the unvaccinated which country in the world right now is moving in the right direction? Hungary is not worse than the rest.
    - wildmanx 5y ago
      US style, to name a few: > - openly friendly towards dictators / other regimes Trump cuddling with Kim-Jong Un and being a good buddy of Putins. > - suppressive, openly anti-liberal laws US Republicans are working on overturning Roe v. Wade, opening the door to more anti-liberal laws. Heck, in some states, women have to drive hundreds of miles to the next abortion clinic and risk getting intimidated by big guys with guns on their way in. Cause freedom. > - control of state media packed with non-stop propaganda I give you that, the non-stop propaganda in the US is privatized, e.g. Fox News, Washington Post, OANN, MSNBC, etc. Still propaganda.
  - dessant 5y ago
    People voting themselves right to the edge of a totalitarian regime does not make that criticism any less legitimate.
    - jsbdk 5y ago
      For many people, any political change that is not a move towards an even more liberal view of the world is automatically authoritarianism.
      - dessant 5y ago
        I think what's important is respecting human rights, not ideological affiliation, and in that sense Hungary has noticeably regressed in the past decade.
        jsbdk 5y ago
        "human rights" is a liberal construct.
        dessant 5y ago
        I guess you will change your views about human rights when you and your family will be the ones being specifically targeted by your own government.
        hyper_dynamics 5y ago
        No it's not.
        Dma54rhs 5y ago
        Human rights are a human construct and constantly change over time.
        huetius 5y ago
        If you deny any form of transcendence, which is the case in the positivist, technocratic culture of the West, then this is the inevitable conclusion.
  - mod50ack 5y ago
    Fidesz did win the last election. Part of this has to do with a number of scandals from the previous Socialist government (before 2010), part of this has to do with the hybrid electoral system (half gerrymandered FPTF, half proportional party-list) and part of this has to do with horrendous organization of all non-Fidesz parties. Now all the major opposition parties have united into a single electoral slate for the next election. Primary elections are being held for the first time to determine the compositions of the electoral slate. One minor problem is that the coalition would be very incongruous. But hey, still gonna vote for them (personal opinion). But while it is not a dictatorship, it is, as Orbán himself puts it, an "illiberal democracy". And the government's attitudes and laws create a ton of problems. And that's not even getting into the corruption and so on...
  - poisonborz 5y ago
    Sure they did. I also think Lukashenko would have also won most of his elections if they were democratic, losing maybe only the last one marginally. Same with the Chinese communist party. To no surprise - if your people sit on all levels of the government, if you control the media and the public discourse, if you persecute anyone having any chance against you, you win. This doesn't mean other countries need to support this. And voicing an opinion against these tactics isn't "meddling in national affairs" as these governments like to tout.
    - f6v 5y ago
      This sort of implies people can’t think for themselves. By this logic, the liberal countries are only liberal because the media tells the people to be liberal. Maybe you’re right.
      - krzyk 5y ago
        Nope, because there are different media available, and one can watch/listen/read those. In Orban like states you loose that free access to all media and you are forced into the state one. For those that are not aware countries that were under former Soviet boots all have a state television, which is the default source of information for older people (they are used to it), whichever party wins the elections sets up this TV broadcast to their liking. All other TV broadcasters need to have a special privilege approved by the state - do you see what can happen here?
        porkbrain 5y ago
        I'd like to stress the "_may happen_" in the parent's post. I'd argue that in Czech Republic the state TV (ČT) works well so far. One cannot filter out out biases from journalism completely, but in general the quality of production is a good indicator to me that they do have processes in place which try to address some biases. In my eyes on average ČT wins compared to the private TV stations in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Television#Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Television#Management
        5y ago
  - antman 5y ago
    There are military and there are civilian dictatorships. Taking control of the legal system, legally removing oversight, silencing the media, bribing etc does constitute fair elections. Your definition of fairness might need to expand its scope.
  - eperfa 5y ago
    It is true that Fidesz, his party, has won 2/3rds of the seats in the Parliament, though they only got 45.2% of the total votes. This victory was in part due to them significantly re-drawing the regions used during the elections to their favour, changing rules for voting from abroad (making it easier to vote from neighbouring regions where most of the people are traditionally their supporters, but more difficult from other parts of the world, where most of the population would like to see a change). It was also helped by using the state to fund and run their own campaign with virtually unlimited amount of money (they were the ruling party in the previous term as well), gradually taking control of all media outlets (especially traditional print and TV ones, further strengthening their base in more rural areas), etc. Since then they have taken even more control of the media, diverted the majority of EU and state funds to loyal businessmen (a regular gas-fitter became the wealthiest man in the country in a few short years, believed to be the straw man of Orban himself), filled all major positions with their own people (including most recently the high court), created laws directly against the civil society and LMBTQ+ people, stopped most of the funding to towns that have elected politicians from the opposition, taken control of all universities and actively worked on getting rid of CEU (one of the best, independent university, which was criticised due to being funded by George Soros), signed secret business deals for enormous amounts of money with Chinese and Russian interests that will almost certainly never be beneficial for Hungary, etc. The comparison to Belarus is not correct in the sense that in Hungary violence has not been used (fortunately), but apart from that the governing party has done everything else they can to keep their power and crush everyone else.
    - Nesze 5y ago
      > they only got 45.2% of the total votes Think the figures are somewhat higher: Party/FPTP: 49.27%/47.89% [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hungarian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hungarian_parliamentary_e...
      - ganafagol 5y ago
        That's more than what Trump got in 2016. Still nobody compared the U.S. to Belarus.
  - praptak 5y ago
    "Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively" AFAIK Lukashenko also has some no-fraud elections under his belt. You don't need an election fraud to go from a democracy to a dictatorship.
  - chx 5y ago
    > Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). You are partially right: they won the elections conclusively. However, their supermajority was due to fraud. I am not even sure whether that can even be called "allegations" at this point, it's more like "everyone knew on election night already but what could you do". I think the best description of the events in English can be found at https://www.unhackdemocracy.eu/en/investigation https://www.unhackdemocracy.eu/en/investigation Summary: > Unhack Democracy’s year-long investigation into the April 2018 Hungarian Parliamentary elections indicates Prime Minister Viktor Orbán secured his one-seat supermajority thanks to a combination of outright fraud, gerrymandering and by engineering the electoral system. > Our findings reveal extensive polling station irregularities including forged voter logs and intimidation of ballot counters; a suspicious ticket splitting rate twice as likely in areas where there we no opposition delegates; electoral clientelism involving large-scale vote buying and intimidation of voters, the unlawful transportation of voters from Ukraine, Romania and Serbia; missing absentee ballots; and a mysterious failure of national election software. And the full version goes into "fake" parties and more.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Democracy isn’t merely “majority rule”. It’s also the concept of everyone’s equal value regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, freedom of expression and so on. Merely getting 51% of votes by disregarding those values is neither acceptable nor democratic. And the EU can’t stand for it just like it could t stand for a regime that takes power through violence. “Belorussian style regime” I assume is in reference to freedom of press/expression/artists/minorities etc in the country.
    - gattilorenz 5y ago
      > Democracy isn’t merely “majority rule”. It’s also the concept of everyone’s equal value regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, freedom of expression and so on. As much as I would like this to be true, I don't think it is. In practice - and to a certain extent also in theory, if you at least add add some nuance - in every democratic country the majority has power to decide who's granted full rights and value, and who isn't (think of voting rights for inmates or immigrants, right to be elected, right to obtain a job etc.). Even when the constitution sets those rights "in stone", a vast majority has the legal right to change the constitution. Update: part of the nuance is that democracies won't technically change the value of a person, to use your term. But by removing their rights, the effects are hardly different.
      - ant6n 5y ago
        Modern democracies (i.e. the ones set up including the learnings from the Weimar Republic) should include minority protections and defenses of democratic institutions that can not be overridden by simple majorities.
  - chpatrick 5y ago
    The last election they won fair and square was 2010. After that, one of their first acts was to modify the previously proportional electoral system to ensure that they get a supermajority in parliament despite winning 40%. Since then, they've had full control over the constitution and the law despite 60% of the country not voting for them, and all "debate" has been pointless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Hungary#The_voting_system_after_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Hungary#The_votin...
  - majgr 5y ago
    If you only watch regime media, it is impossible to vote differently, only successes, no problems, no shady affairs, no nepotism. Opposition, on the other hand, is portrayed as the root of all evil.
  - Turms 5y ago
    Sorry, but that is totally factually incorrect. I am a Hungarian citizen and there are many well known and worrisome circumstances about Fidesz's electoral victories: - The election system has been changed in a way that overcompensates the winner. Fidesz is supported by about 50% of the voting population, yet it has a 2/3-s supermajority which enables them to pass any law they wish without any resistance. - Fidesz has built up a MASSIVE database of the voting population over the years, basically they can tell the voting preferences for each home address. There is video evidence of this, I am not talking out of my ass. - Based on this database large scale gerrymandering took place in the past years. - The governing body overseeing the elections is run by long standing Fidesz cadres. Many polling districts especially in rural areas only had Fidesz-affiliated polling-clerks during the last election. - Thousands if not tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens (many of whom have Hungarian ancestry, but many do not) have been registered in the Eastern part of the country with voting rights. They are eligible for pensions multiple times the amount they would receive from the Ukrainian government because of an old agreement made bw the Soviet Union and Hungary. In exchange they are voting for Fidesz. Again, this may sound like bullshit, but it is a documented fact. - Small cities are told that they won't get any EU funding from the government if they elect a non-Fidesz mayor. - There is a massive amount of very poor people dependent on government distributed "public work" in the countryside. It's basically modern day servitude. These people are also often threatened that if they vote the "wrong way" they will not get work. - Most of the relevant news outlets (TV, Radio, Newspapers, online media) are owned by Fidesz-frienly businesspeople and they are in 24-7 propaganda mode. I am talking about 1950-s style Stalinist propaganda, not some kind of "pro-government bias". There have been by now basically one TV station and a handful of small websites left that are not controlled by Fidesz. - And add to that that any opposition leader, any journalist critical towards Fidesz or any businessman who is not part of their circles can be monitored by these spy softwares and then you will understand what the term "hybrid regime" stands for. Yes there are elections every four years, but they are just for show.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  There were thin provisions against member states getting out of hand, but they became useless the second Poland conspired with Hungary. I'm not sure if I would've liked en EU with stricter punitive measures over its member states before all this, but it's clear that the measures to prevent situations like these have all failed.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    I'm not sure if conspired is the right word. Poland just has very strong sympathy for Hungary as a country and its people. Poland has nothing to do with Orban and wants nothing to do with Orban. Unfortunately we have our own populists that like Orban wants to remodel our country to be easier for them to rule as they please. And results are similar as with Orban in Hungary and threats to that from EU are the same so cooperation against EU safeguards is kind of natural and spontaneous.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki, i do szabli, i do szklanki." (Pole and Hungarian — two brothers, good for saber and for glass.) Some countries in the EU have better relations than others. Czechs and Slovaks, the three Baltic nations, and Poland and Hungary. Things must get really bad before they will stop having each other's back on the international scene. This is a historical and diplomatic fact that must be taken into account when conflicts arise.
      - b0rsuk 5y ago
        Poland has common geopolitical interests with nordic countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. Hungarian strategy of playing both sides can work because Hungary is not between the hammer and the anvil. And the languages are radically different. "Gulasz" and "Dobosz" are not enough. If you ask 100 Poles on the street, you won't find 1 that can count to ten in Hungarian. Finnish is an equally hard language and there are common values and sentiments between Poland and Finland, for example wars against Russia. Simo Hayha is pretty well known.
- underscore_ku 5y ago
  EU is as helpless as USA. what would US of A do with a rogue Texas? nothing
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nix23 5y ago
    The EU is not a state...thank god for that, and that it never happens.
    - johnnycerberus 5y ago
      But it can be a federation of states. Hopefully, that will happen.
      - nix23 5y ago
        Depends how much the states have their own freedom and power (financial marketplace, and military), remember Russia is a federation too.
      - bluthund 5y ago
        Hopefully that never happens. Hopefully more Hungary's emerge. Hopefully more Western countries start actually serving their people Hopefully nationalism crushes this perverse anti Western virus which has taken over the once greatest nations in the world
        egeozcan 5y ago
        In this day and age, don't people like you read/watch some world history? What you are saying seems so narrow-minded (ignoring the racist undertone), it makes me confused.
        bluthund 5y ago
        It's precisely a studying and understanding of history which makes me so. Perhaps people like you would do better to engage in conversation where you might learn something you don't know rather than throw out your classic epithets
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > EU is completely helpless against rouge states There is a point where politics depend on good intent. It does not matter if it is the EU, USA or China. If there is a part of the population that is radicalized and hate rhetoric is used that will destabilize any society. The main defense against this situation is that it does not work to improve citizens lives. It only benefits a small part of society and it will make the rest suffer. Hate calls for win-lose deals and an unproductive zero sum mentality. Hungarian business will suffer, and Hungarian workers will suffer. That is not sustainable long term. EU can be improved, but if millions of citizens support a far-right government there is little to be done. Orbán is a problem, but that people follows him is another one. It will only make Hungary poorer and the EU poorer and more dangerous.
  - hyper_dynamics 5y ago
    They should be expelled, but that's not possible. So the EU is indeed kinda helpless against member states gone rouge
    - pmontra 5y ago
      I don't recommended this scenario but: the other states could join a new union and leave Hungary and possibly other states outside (the usual split into a good company and a bad one.) Lots of legal disputes but in international law the strongest party always makes the law and shrugs problems away. BTW, is it rouge (as in French for red) or rogue?
      - Darmody 5y ago
        No, they can't make a new union, that's just stupid. It took decades to build the EU as it is now. Building something new isn't feasible. Just look at the Brexit shitshow and that was only a country leaving. And besides that, the EU has never been about controlling national governments. The common values thing it's something new they brought to the table because they want to expand their powers.
        5y ago
- rini17 5y ago
  "Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4" Oversimplified view. There was common interest of V4 against accepting refugees, but Czech & Slovak rep. generally support EU's side in judicial and media independence issues. Elsewhere, German automakers have vast investments in the eastern EU and they have been holding Merkel back against Orban, together with conservative faction of CDU.
  - js8 5y ago
    > Czech & Slovak rep. generally support EU's side in judicial and media independence issues In Czechia, I wish that was true, but our current prime minister Andrej Babis is actually openly admiring Orban, and playing up the same nationalistic politics (before the upcoming elections in October). I am not sure he would necessarily support media and judicial independence if it came down to that.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      And here in Poland we already have problems since few years, people that oppose judicial and media independence are in charge, elected mostly by elderly and eastern parts of the country.
    - rini17 5y ago
      Oh, same with recent Slovak governments, they say one thing at home and another toward EU. But it is only populism as usual that the EU could eventually work out. So far.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - peteretep 5y ago
    > German automakers ... have been holding Merkel back against Orban Between this, Nord Stream 2, etc, Germany's commercial elite are having more and more to answer for...
- sharikone 5y ago
  It has actually elicited a response. Through many mechanisms now big countries in Europe have gained much more power than before, when the model was very egalitarian. And you can look at it in a very different light if you see it as Hungary becoming a small vassal state of Germany (an autocracy helps it to stay that way, and German manufacturers want the situation to remain like this) rather than a "rogue fascist" state. Just follow the money. If you look at things this way you expect to see a war of sphere of influence of big countries in the near future. I think the Balkans will be the next soft battlefield between German and Italian influence.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    As Italian I've got very few doubts about the outcome of a struggle between German and Italian influence. Maybe Italy vs France as it happened in Libya but not against Germany. As you wrote, "follow the money" and Germany has much more of that and can buy out Italy together with France at any time.
  - jq-r 5y ago
    If you put it that way, the "war" has already been won by Germany/Austria here in Croatia. There is next to no Italian influence (only in one small region). Everything else is German/Austrian owned. Banks, Telecoms, big business, construction etc. Most of the houses on the coast and islands are theirs as well. EU needs our country just to be minimally stable. Stable enough so millions of foreigners can come to their villas each summer, and as poor as possible so their money is worth more here. Whatever happens outside summer, that's not their problem. That includes tolerating far right politics, Christian fundamentalists and other lobbying groups, super corrupt politicians (better to say whole governments), huge government incurred debt, no freedom of the press or speech, and pretty much non-existing economy. I'm sorry to say, but I'm sure that trouble is coming to this part of EU, maybe not in couple of years, but eventually surely will. The seeds of radicalization, corruption and all that nasty "us vs them" mentality were planted 20 years ago already. Only now they are starting to bear fruits.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      As someone living in Austria, I noticed this as well. Rich Austrians own all big businesses and all desirable properties in Croatia. I wonder what will happen to Croatia, politically, in the future, when the young there find themselves priced out of their own country by richer foreigners. Seems like uncontrolled capitalism has enabled a form of economic colonialism, as proven further by the money printer let loose during Coving, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, to which the response is always "that's just how the free market works".
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  EU is primarily an economic bloc and economic interests will carry the day any time, or at least 99 per cent of the time. Orbán has integrated Hungarian industry deep into German supply chains and milks this fact as much as he can.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Agree with "primarily an economic bloc." On that note though, I don't think German-Hungarian industrial integration is all that weighty. Hungary's economy isn't big enough to make it compelling. The EU just doesn't have a political culture where Hungarian press freedom is "our problem." It's more of a "very unfortunate, next" kind of issue. No more of an EU concern than Uzbek press freedom. This doesn't compute. I agree. The EU clearly is a very political union. But that's how it is. Press freedoms, human rights or minority freedoms outside of the EU are more likely to become politically hot than inside it. Maybe this will change over time, but the EU has a weird trajectory. I have no idea where it's going. For the most part, "culture war" issues don't seem to have a grasp on it... as they do on most polities.
- antman 5y ago
  Orban was actively supported by the EU center-right wing parties. Do not assume morality, no one was angry they were in fact joking about it. Actions are reserved for countries with left wing governments. Funniest moment, if it wasn't so tragic for hungary: https://youtu.be/1hl83Jpd_OI https://youtu.be/1hl83Jpd_OI
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  What do you want the EU to do? Kick Hungary out? EU offers a lot to the Hungarian people in terms of travel, freedom of business, employment etc. In 10 years Orban likely will be gone. In the long run the liberal values of Europe will prevail.
  - diegocg 5y ago
    Orban didn't become president by himself. There is social support for his platform and this platform will generate new leaders that will be like him or worse
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      He has similar platform to what you will find in many other european countries. Le Pen in France. AFD in Germany. Dansk folkeparti in Denmark. How does EU "fight" that? By playing for the long run: freedom of movement, cultural exchange, freedom of business. In the long term this leads to a more liberal society, regardless of counter movements.
      - alkonaut 5y ago
        If there ever comes a time when AfD creates a board to “review” Supreme Court justices, or moves to remove “foreign influence” on media in Germany and so on - then the same discussion will return there. The difference is that conservative nationalism can’t get that type of foothold in Western Europe and the mistake was to include countries in the EU that even had a risk of having a nationalist majority. We should have “tiers” of membership with a legal/political inner union of liberal states that can have a common foreign policy, and a wider less tightly coupled trade Union with the EEA that doesn’t necessarily need to agree on such things.
        rwmj 5y ago
        > The difference is that conservative nationalism can’t get that type of foothold in Western Europe UK says hi!
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Orban exists because of EU overreach. If the Brussels set weren’t intent on turning the EU into a federal United States of Europe, none of these “rogue states” (a completely absurd label for Hungary, btw) would have any political interest in Fidesz/PiS/etc.
  - jq-r 5y ago
    Wrong. EU is the boogeyman for the governments in Eastern Europe. Whatever unpopular move they make, EU gets blamed for it. It is easy to blame some entity everyone knows exits, but at the same time, that entity is more like a group which doesn't fight back against it. Even if they fight back and criticize the government here and there, the latter own the media and that becomes a non-story. Right wing governments always need a boogeyman to rally against. Today it is EU, LGBT+ groups, Roma etc. Tomorrow it might be you and me.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      Sorry but this is a caricature. These countries were dying to join the West 30 years ago. Orban himself was one of the most prominent pro-West figures in the 90s. The only reason these countries are now “hostile” is because the EU and the West have changed.
      - dathos 5y ago
        I feel like you're missing a few key points that have also changed. I think almost everything is different from 30 years ago, not just the west and EU.
        ceilingcorner 5y ago
        Of course but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the “problem” EU countries are quite happy with a 1990s vision of Europe, while the West isn’t.
      - jq-r 5y ago
        So what's your point then? Of course stuff changes in 20 or 30 years. Everyone wanted to join the EU. They've joined, and for the last 20 years the elites are reaping the benefits. And that doesn't change the fact that there is a very strong anti EU sentiment among the Eastern European population. Did the EU screw them? They did not. Who did? Those same politicians now blaming EU for 30 years of their own corruption, suppression of freedoms, stalling and maintaining status quo. Here we had war which ended 26 fucking years ago. No war can do as much damage as corruption and incompetence. And somehow EU gets blamed for it. I understand that EU is no saint, but what we have here is a disaster happening in slow motion.
- mlang23 5y ago
  Which is an indication that the whole system is simply too weak. EU was originally founded to make trade easier. Even the temporary removal of borders for EU citizens was only done to fasciliate trade, the free travel amongst EU states was a nice side effect which could also be used to lure the citizens into believing the EU was actually more. The social apsect was originally only a side effect of fasciliatating trade. And now that it starts to show that the different member states have different political agendas, and not everything can be pacified by just making commerce happy, the system starts to crumble. I still remember the biggest fear of EU when brexit came up. That more member states could have a similar idea. That isn't particularily showing strength and confidence.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    Oh so you mean the people who like to call it "EUSSR" are full of it?
- TheFreim 5y ago
  > helpless against rouge states Is Hungary a rogue state?
  - b0rsuk 5y ago
    From the perspective of EU, it is a rogue state. It acts in concert with Putin and Kremlin to destabilize EU.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  The EU is still, at core, an economic/trade union, not a geopolitical actor. That's both cultural and structural. Meanwhile, european people's appetite for "international" politics is been mostly satisfied with world politics... especially US politics, which was good and saucy for the last few years. The most animating issues of recent years have been: Trump, BLM related US politics, Israel-Palestine conflicts & climate change. Most of what happens in EU parliament attracts very little interest in the greater citizenship-journalism-politics sphere. National politics is, by far, still the main political sphere. European politics rarely becomes primary news/politics "stories." That applies to both Hungary, within the Union and Belarus, an immediate neighbor. It also applies to Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which was largely about EU affiliation. Notable exceptions are Brexit, peek refugee migration and the Greek/Euro crisis... 12 years ago. The ironic exception to "EU politics doesn't exist" is the nationalist, eu-skeptical camp which has been developing an EU-wide audience. In any case, IDK if "helpless" is the right word. It's more like "uninterested." Hungarian freedom of the press and such just aren't on anyone's agenda. The fact that they're EU doesn't really mean much.
- ganafagol 5y ago
  > If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). Helpless and hypocritical. If Orban rolls out surveillance he is a dictator. If UK or Germany do it, it's the noble fight against terrorists, pedophiles and kids downloading moviez from the internet.
- gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
  I'd argue that it's in their interests. Right populist politics and bland status quo centrism need the other to justify themselves. Bland centrism needs the threat of the right to keep the left in their box (see Biden, Macron, Chirac), then through representing the interests of the status-quo and not addressing any systemic change they create the conditions for right populists.. and so it goes on.
- kristjank 5y ago
  True. But EU also repeatedly ignores a decent chunk of people that want a stable social state without LGBTQ agitprop and unlimited illegal immigration. I have a hunch that the western left wing would have much more support if they focused on the wellbeing of the common worker, not on the countless minorities. Instead the choice always seems to be between a reactionary right-wing degenerate and a hyper-progressive left-wing degenerate. And to think Americans call them communists. In communism most of the shit we see today from left and right politicians wouldn't fly at all.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    > But EU also repeatedly ignores a decent chunk of people that want a stable social state without LGBTQ agitprop and unlimited illegal immigration Can you give me some examples of the EU doing this? My understanding is that nothing has happened on migration because there is no agreement.
    - kristjank 5y ago
      The most obvious example is Merkel's flooding of the bordering european states with economic immigrants and "refugees" of disputed international validity. Not only EU states like Hungary, Italy, France or Slovenia, but also non-EU territories like Croatia, Bosnia etc. It's a difference that is showing if you like me live as a student in a Schengen-border state. Ignoring the major changes of public opinion and trying to arrange no compromises at all is (IMO) a common pattern with the EU law- and decisionmaking. Saying that a whole international union with will somehow deal with and accept an overwhelming influx of non-integrated, traumatized, not-fit-for-work population is peak bourgeoisie. At the end of the day, social state is (at least in my god-forsaken old-school commie eyes) there to provide the future productive members of society with an education, housing, stipends etc. for the betterment of the nation/state/collective/whatever. I see little sense in promotion of influx of cheap, abusable, low-skill labour or even worse, perpetual social system abusers.
      - trasz 5y ago
        So how is it different from a similar influx of migrants from Eastern Europe? (Disclaimer: I’m from Eastern Europe myself.)
- deleted 5y ago
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- mcosta 5y ago
  EU can't do anything because many other countries are doing the same.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  Don't underestimate the EU. It's a slow beast but it can bear a grudge. The language used to address Hungary is slowly becoming more and more aggressive. A head of state from a small EU country explicitly called for Hungary to leave. You also have to remember that the EU is an union of sovereign countries. Plenty can be done by EU members where the EU is powerless. History shows that messing with France and Germany can be costly.
  - hypocry12 5y ago
    History also shows that when Germany messes about with east europe it can get messy rather quickly. And sadly hungary is in bed with russia. The eu should just cut funding for hungary and let everything else play out from there. Anything more that that is pure suicide for an already declining eu.
    - dmix 5y ago
      History as in 80+ years ago?
      - hypocry12 5y ago
        AFAIK last time it was when the eu and germany pushed for ukraine regime change. ended up with ukraine getting invaded and loosing territory. so germany better stay out of east europe and so should the eu. the only way to win is by economics. thats how the us eventually won the cold war. also germany is not particularly popular, considering its bullying tactics and it being one of europes largest polluters, eu corruption it supports and so on. all i want is to make sure the most effective tools are used against hungary, as that country is a symptom of a much deeper problem. germany should let established powers deal with hungary and get into it before it messes things up again.
- dreen 5y ago
  > Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 this is not going to last forever, its already diminished a lot since 2015
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > rouge states States that wear lots of lipstick? It's a word often mis-spelt.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I think the issue is that EU was founded with an idea that they can copy US creation pattern, but without sufficient consideration of the simple fact that there is a thousand plus years of history that is being crammed into respective citizens' heads including, but not limited to wars with neighbors. It is hard to forget blood; especially if survivors still have a state. Do not get me wrong. I like the idea of EU. I see its benefits, but the idea ignores lessons of creating new federations. Apart from everything else, I doubt EU would be willing to do the same things US did to maintain its grip.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    > I doubt EU would be willing to do the same things US did to maintain its grip. I think you meant war. I think the EU is unwilling to make even non-bloody sacrifices, like the US did in the beginning at the Connecticut Compromise (1787). Basically as early as 11 years after the independence, the large US states relinquished a lot of power to the smaller states. With that compromise they gave 2 senators to each state, no matter how big or small it was. I really don't see Germany relinquishing that much power, or France for that matter. Also the EU cannot function like the US without the absolutely massive transfer of cash from rich to poor states. A poor state in the US receives as much as 10k per person NET from the federal government https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid... Imagine giving out 200 billions to Romania alone every year... At best we get 10 billions a year, but only for a limited time. In the previous budget we got like 3-5 billions a year. For those funds, the richer countries expect a lot of obedience in return, always dangling the threat of cutting the funds if we "don't behave".
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      War, civil war or re-education of local populations. Note that either of these would be unlikely to succeed. Just about every EU state has survived numerous occupations; some partitions; some ceased to be nation states. How can you possibly hope to force them to see themselves as Europeans first and nation A second? If anything, force or even threat of force will likely result further digging in. Overall, I agree with your post though. I personally think both France and Germany simply use EU framework for their own purposes ( Germany actually just had an interesting case that may finally shed some light over whether EU law is above German law -- that should be fun to watch - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/eu-launches-legal-case-against-germany-over-alleged-breach-of-eu-law-primacy-principle https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/eu-launches-le...).
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself. Countries can only be kicked out of the EU with unanimity of all states except the one being kicked out. But Poland and Hungary have a pact to support each other, so that can't happen. I suspect though that if Hungary and Poland pissed off the EU in a big way, the other states would all leave and simultaneously form a new EU2021.
- bwb 5y ago
  It takes time, good systems move slow :)
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Is it better to shatter itself, or to have this within it? Do you want the EU to be smaller, or to be a bloc without ideals?
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Orbán is a cancer on Europe, i really the EU has a decent response this time.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Sure, and Orban would have never been able to have so much power if EU wouldn't give so much free money to him without verifying where that money goes.
- dstick 5y ago
  I read in the newspaper today that the EU issued an ultimatum to Poland: get rid of the unlawful special court that deems itself above the EU law, or face repercussions. Finally they're growing some teeth. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-commission-intends-to-set-ultimatum-for-poland/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/europea... However, after Googling for an online source, I came across this article about another ultimatum for justice reform in 2017, and things only got worse after that :-/ https://euobserver.com/justice/138627 https://euobserver.com/justice/138627
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    It’s hard to issue these ultimatums when in Germany the constitution is supreme too and the courts would and do take it over EU law when there is conflict.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Except they don't. Please don't spread polish government's propaganda.
      - dogma1138 5y ago
        Except they do https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-against-germany-over-ecb-ruling/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-aga... Overall the EU has about the same number of procedures open against Germany as they do against Poland, both are pretty high on the list Germany is #5 Poland is #4.
xiphias2 5y ago
Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Cue the Orbanites saying how the EU wants to interfere in "matters of their country" This (and the events of January 6th) are a good reminder that the law is worth the paper it's printed on if no one acts on it.
- bkovacev 5y ago
  China has already targeted Serbia and Montenegro - infrastructure mainly. I can't find the source now, but I have heard they already started investing in Hungary.
  - erk__ 5y ago
    A good example of that is the Fudan university campus https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653
  - chpatrick 5y ago
    Orban wants to build a massive Chinese university campus in Budapest, with a loan from China. https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-university-budapest-orban-viktor-gergely-karacsony https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-univ...
- Dah00n 5y ago
  I don't know much about Hungary so could you provide a reason why it is bad "if EU lets China come into Hungary"? Unless it is because China Bad, then I'm not interested, but I'm hoping for something more interesting than that. Personally I would hate to see EU close in on itself and so it needs to align with outsiders. China seems just as good a partner as the other big markets to me.
  - 5y ago
bwb 5y ago
I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more. I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?
- raverbashing 5y ago
  You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example) The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.
  - johnnycerberus 5y ago
    Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.
  - pferde 5y ago
    Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.
- pydry 5y ago
  Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances. Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group. Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.
deleted 5y ago
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mola 5y ago
All of Netanyahu's allies in the world seem to have profited from this relationship by obtaining military grade surveillance inorder to suppress human rights of journalists and opposition. This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. I'm convince pegasus was used against Israeli journalists, opposition leaders and law enforcement officials. Too bad our political system is still under his thumb and doesn't shed light on this crap even now that he's no longer PM.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Hungary aside, most of Israel's allies in the region are dictatorships, actaully all of them: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco (arguably, let's agree it's not a liberal democracy) and so on and so on. There are zero democracies in the area. So it's easy to see Israel's interest in supplying technology to those regimes and assuring good relations; it's not like the oppositions to these dictators are any better, the Muslim Brotherhood is appalling. Now Hungary isn't really important to Israel and is part of the EU, may have been wiser to not do that. > This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia?
  - mola 5y ago
    In the area, I agree. But Netanyahu chose to spurn democratic European allies and allign Israel with Hungary and Poland. Basically he made western Europe an enemy of Israel because he chose settlements over a peace process, to alleviate the foreign pressure he alligned Israel with Hungary and Poland, also helping Russia with its cold European conflict. > Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia? How's that relevant? If you're fishing for hypocrisy, be assured I dislike the US take on democracy and it's leaders of late no less than Netanyahu. But At least the US has a constitution, checks and balances. And a tradition of freedom and democracy. Israel has a growing population, the parts that grow are mostly lacking any sense of democratic values or tradition. Guess which electorate Netanyahu spurned and which he focused his Messiyah propaganda on.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
zsellera 5y ago
So far Orban's regime is the only eu/western government involved in this scandal. I see that no surprise. There is no need of official government approval to conduct such surveillance. It's enough to have weak access contol to such technologies, political roles within the agencies, and poor work ethics in civil servants: there alway will be someone with will and motive to act in favor of the system, off the record. Orban deliberately shaped the government this way.
immmmmm 5y ago
a friend of mine had written an interesting piece of investigation journalism on this topic https://medium.com/@maribst https://medium.com/@maribst
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
I perceive this as an example why allowing privacy violation for one group for the "sake of greater good" does not work. Usually the same tools will be used with oppressive regimes. In the beginning it will start with pretext that "we are using this tools to find terrorists, pedophiles and protect children" but more often it will end up prosecuting journalist, silencing whistleblowers and undermining political opponents creating perpetual state of oppression and corruption.
alexseman 5y ago
Haha so many comments from the SV & Bruxelles globo-homo bubble. Hungary is a sovereign nation with a freely elected body of leaders who uphold the national, traditional & Christian values on which it is founded and which allowed this nation's continuity throughout history. Get over it.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account since it has only been using HN for ideological battle. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (and no, we don't care what your ideology is)
  - AKSucks 5y ago
    > (and no, we don't care what your ideology is) Unless you happen to present a articulate, reasoned objection to the use of the term "sex worker" to describe camgirls, in which case your comments go "poof!"
iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
Does anyone have any idea how Pegasus actually works? I haven't found any teardowns or even a clear description of what the iMessage says. This is some kind of code injection attack that can go through a text message?
- est31 5y ago
  From my understanding, the attack can happen through multiple ways. Companies like NSO purchase vulnerabilities for this step and probably have a set of them on their disposal, ready to deploy ones as they get discovered. Pegasus is the rootkit which is installed once the attack is successful, and allows spying on the user. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
- nuker 5y ago
  iOS iMessage bugs parsing images, I recall
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    From the Amnesty report shown by another commentator, there were a bunch of compromised Apple services.
- abhiminator 5y ago
  This article from Amnesty International's Security Lab is a good primer on the attack vector used by the Pegasus exploit https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
- swiley 5y ago
  The iMessage exploit sounds like a Null terminated string issue. The rest of it sounds like a Metasploit-esque framework along with some telemetry tools.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Pegasus is a name for their attack repertoire of the day plus whatever next stage payloads are run upon a successful compromise.
mayank_vashisht 5y ago
It’d be interesting to learn how the NSO group's marketing worked. Did NSO go knocking on the doors of all these despotic regimes? Or was it the other way around? And what was the hand of the Israeli government in the deal-making? For instance, reports state that the spying in India began right after the India’s PM met with Netanyahu in 2017 [1] So was NSO actively backed by the government? Sigh. So many questions. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-rahul-gandhi-among-indian-targets-of-nso-client https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-...
Vaderv 5y ago
Thank you tje country that made it
saagarjha 5y ago
> The son and one of the closest confidants of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. They were both selected as targets before the Hungarian national election of April 2018. Back then, Simicska was the owner of a media empire, and he was openly waging war against the Orbán government. (It would have been futile to target Simicska with this spyware as he did not use smartphones.) There's literally no winning here. You can literally disconnect from the internet and they'll just target the people around you…
londons_explore 5y ago
Where is this list of phone numbers? I want to check if my numbers on it or anyone I know...
janjones 5y ago
Here is a technical report about the exploits: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Holy shit, there's literally a dozen of Apple products exploited. It's not a single "Apple music exploit", it's dozens of separate services. Music, messenger, safari, iOS, etc... I never want to hear Apple cares about security again. I could forgive 1 mistake, but this seems like negligence. (Don't put me down as a defender of MS or Android, but at least they don't use "Security" in their marketing)
  - t-c-h 5y ago
    If you would have actually read the report, you would have known the attacks are not specifically device or mobile OS bound. They simply say that iOS leaves behind more useable traces. From paragraph 10: Much of the targeting outlined in this report involves Pegasus attacks targeting iOS devices. It is important to note that this does not necessarily reflect the relative security of iOS devices compared to Android devices, or other operating systems and phone manufacturers. In Amnesty International’s experience there are significantly more forensic traces accessible to investigators on Apple iOS devices than on stock Android devices, therefore our methodology is focused on the former. As a result, most recent cases of confirmed Pegasus infections have involved iPhones.
    - deregulateMed 5y ago
      The article doesn't mention android again. And I'm not even defending android, I'm attacking Apples unethical marketing practices of claiming security and privacy, but failing.
  - ohashi 5y ago
    That seems dramatic. It's a billion dollar ex-spy run company catering towards governments with seemingly no ethics. No offense to Apple but this is near state level actor as a threat and with enough motivation ($$$$$$$$) they will find ways to exploit Apple's software no matter what.
germandiago 5y ago
I came to the conclusion that politicians are a big problem. Not sure we can get rid of them but they are. FWIW I just see them use the money of others for their own purposes coactively and provoke a lot of polarization. Many times with bad intention for selfish interests. I am talking about ALL of them. I think people should be able (Hungarian case at hand) to choose whether they want certain contents to be taught at certain age for their kids. No matter which ones. It should be a free to choose thing. The minimum stuff we must all agree upon should be not killing, discriminating, etc. in legal terms. But when you try to force people to like or dislike something, instead of respecting others (whether they like or not other people ideas) then you have this highly polarized environment because you will always find the other half resisting, since it is imposed contents highly ideological. I think that things could be way better with fewer of these people.
re-al 5y ago
"Pegasus takes advantage of so-called zero-day vulnerabilities of software running on mobile phones, meaning built-in flaws that not even developers and manufacturers are aware of." Vulnerabilities, eh - 'flaws'? Or backdoors there by design? What's in a name?
haspok 5y ago
TL;DR: the government hacking into private mobile phones is completely legal practice according to Hungarian laws and nobody can be held responsible for it.
giorgioz 5y ago
Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus: https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-spyware-attacks/167909/ https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s... Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?
- ignoramous 5y ago
  That's a PR piece by an upstart that sells MDM (mobile device management) suite to enterprises. There are many entrenched MDMs that can very well do as much, if not more.
freakynit 5y ago
Fuc** dictator assholes. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.
freakynit 5y ago
Fuc** inhumane dictators. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gypsyharlot 5y ago
When you don't do the EU's bidding, their propaganda machinery will work so hard that even Goebbels would be impressed. Then comes the sanctions and other bullying approaches to force your ways. God I hope more countries follow the UK and leave the world's fattest bureaucracy.
known 5y ago
No privacy = No democracy

612 points by r_sz 5y ago

If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices and legal disputes that take years without a noteworthy resolution. Due to how alliances within the union work - Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself.

paganel 5y ago
> The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  While I wouldn't call if a fraud, but they skewed with the election system to bend it towards in their favour. They for example introduced monetary support for small parties in a way that made it really easy to commit fraud, which surprisingly did happen at a large scale. It also resulted in people voting for those fake parties and not on the opposition with real power. They won 2/3 power like this. "Belorussian-style regime", to name a few: - control of state media packed with non-stop propaganda - openly friendly towards dictators / other regimes - suppressive, openly anti-liberal laws
  - ReptileMan 5y ago
    Since liberal means nothing lately, anti liberal is the same. I have seen quite authoritarian tendencies about stripping people from basic rights after corona epidemic began from self proclaimed liberals.
    - tiborsaas 5y ago
      Sure, liberal is an umbrella term. Instead, imagine a country where we let people live their life however they want, do whatever they want to their bodies and think for themselves. This is not Hungary and we are heading towards the opposite direction.
      - emteycz 5y ago
        Which country in EU is like that? I don't know of any. And there are much worse counter-examples than Hungary.
      - ReptileMan 5y ago
        And after corona lockdowns, talking about stripping all kinds of rights from the unvaccinated which country in the world right now is moving in the right direction? Hungary is not worse than the rest.
  - wildmanx 5y ago
    US style, to name a few: > - openly friendly towards dictators / other regimes Trump cuddling with Kim-Jong Un and being a good buddy of Putins. > - suppressive, openly anti-liberal laws US Republicans are working on overturning Roe v. Wade, opening the door to more anti-liberal laws. Heck, in some states, women have to drive hundreds of miles to the next abortion clinic and risk getting intimidated by big guys with guns on their way in. Cause freedom. > - control of state media packed with non-stop propaganda I give you that, the non-stop propaganda in the US is privatized, e.g. Fox News, Washington Post, OANN, MSNBC, etc. Still propaganda.
- dessant 5y ago
  People voting themselves right to the edge of a totalitarian regime does not make that criticism any less legitimate.
  - jsbdk 5y ago
    For many people, any political change that is not a move towards an even more liberal view of the world is automatically authoritarianism.
    - dessant 5y ago
      I think what's important is respecting human rights, not ideological affiliation, and in that sense Hungary has noticeably regressed in the past decade.
      - jsbdk 5y ago
        "human rights" is a liberal construct.
        dessant 5y ago
        I guess you will change your views about human rights when you and your family will be the ones being specifically targeted by your own government.
        hyper_dynamics 5y ago
        No it's not.
      - Dma54rhs 5y ago
        Human rights are a human construct and constantly change over time.
        huetius 5y ago
        If you deny any form of transcendence, which is the case in the positivist, technocratic culture of the West, then this is the inevitable conclusion.
- mod50ack 5y ago
  Fidesz did win the last election. Part of this has to do with a number of scandals from the previous Socialist government (before 2010), part of this has to do with the hybrid electoral system (half gerrymandered FPTF, half proportional party-list) and part of this has to do with horrendous organization of all non-Fidesz parties. Now all the major opposition parties have united into a single electoral slate for the next election. Primary elections are being held for the first time to determine the compositions of the electoral slate. One minor problem is that the coalition would be very incongruous. But hey, still gonna vote for them (personal opinion). But while it is not a dictatorship, it is, as Orbán himself puts it, an "illiberal democracy". And the government's attitudes and laws create a ton of problems. And that's not even getting into the corruption and so on...
- poisonborz 5y ago
  Sure they did. I also think Lukashenko would have also won most of his elections if they were democratic, losing maybe only the last one marginally. Same with the Chinese communist party. To no surprise - if your people sit on all levels of the government, if you control the media and the public discourse, if you persecute anyone having any chance against you, you win. This doesn't mean other countries need to support this. And voicing an opinion against these tactics isn't "meddling in national affairs" as these governments like to tout.
  - f6v 5y ago
    This sort of implies people can’t think for themselves. By this logic, the liberal countries are only liberal because the media tells the people to be liberal. Maybe you’re right.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      Nope, because there are different media available, and one can watch/listen/read those. In Orban like states you loose that free access to all media and you are forced into the state one. For those that are not aware countries that were under former Soviet boots all have a state television, which is the default source of information for older people (they are used to it), whichever party wins the elections sets up this TV broadcast to their liking. All other TV broadcasters need to have a special privilege approved by the state - do you see what can happen here?
      - porkbrain 5y ago
        I'd like to stress the "_may happen_" in the parent's post. I'd argue that in Czech Republic the state TV (ČT) works well so far. One cannot filter out out biases from journalism completely, but in general the quality of production is a good indicator to me that they do have processes in place which try to address some biases. In my eyes on average ČT wins compared to the private TV stations in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Television#Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Television#Management
      - 5y ago
- antman 5y ago
  There are military and there are civilian dictatorships. Taking control of the legal system, legally removing oversight, silencing the media, bribing etc does constitute fair elections. Your definition of fairness might need to expand its scope.
- eperfa 5y ago
  It is true that Fidesz, his party, has won 2/3rds of the seats in the Parliament, though they only got 45.2% of the total votes. This victory was in part due to them significantly re-drawing the regions used during the elections to their favour, changing rules for voting from abroad (making it easier to vote from neighbouring regions where most of the people are traditionally their supporters, but more difficult from other parts of the world, where most of the population would like to see a change). It was also helped by using the state to fund and run their own campaign with virtually unlimited amount of money (they were the ruling party in the previous term as well), gradually taking control of all media outlets (especially traditional print and TV ones, further strengthening their base in more rural areas), etc. Since then they have taken even more control of the media, diverted the majority of EU and state funds to loyal businessmen (a regular gas-fitter became the wealthiest man in the country in a few short years, believed to be the straw man of Orban himself), filled all major positions with their own people (including most recently the high court), created laws directly against the civil society and LMBTQ+ people, stopped most of the funding to towns that have elected politicians from the opposition, taken control of all universities and actively worked on getting rid of CEU (one of the best, independent university, which was criticised due to being funded by George Soros), signed secret business deals for enormous amounts of money with Chinese and Russian interests that will almost certainly never be beneficial for Hungary, etc. The comparison to Belarus is not correct in the sense that in Hungary violence has not been used (fortunately), but apart from that the governing party has done everything else they can to keep their power and crush everyone else.
  - Nesze 5y ago
    > they only got 45.2% of the total votes Think the figures are somewhat higher: Party/FPTP: 49.27%/47.89% [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hungarian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hungarian_parliamentary_e...
    - ganafagol 5y ago
      That's more than what Trump got in 2016. Still nobody compared the U.S. to Belarus.
- praptak 5y ago
  "Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively" AFAIK Lukashenko also has some no-fraud elections under his belt. You don't need an election fraud to go from a democracy to a dictatorship.
- chx 5y ago
  > Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). You are partially right: they won the elections conclusively. However, their supermajority was due to fraud. I am not even sure whether that can even be called "allegations" at this point, it's more like "everyone knew on election night already but what could you do". I think the best description of the events in English can be found at https://www.unhackdemocracy.eu/en/investigation https://www.unhackdemocracy.eu/en/investigation Summary: > Unhack Democracy’s year-long investigation into the April 2018 Hungarian Parliamentary elections indicates Prime Minister Viktor Orbán secured his one-seat supermajority thanks to a combination of outright fraud, gerrymandering and by engineering the electoral system. > Our findings reveal extensive polling station irregularities including forged voter logs and intimidation of ballot counters; a suspicious ticket splitting rate twice as likely in areas where there we no opposition delegates; electoral clientelism involving large-scale vote buying and intimidation of voters, the unlawful transportation of voters from Ukraine, Romania and Serbia; missing absentee ballots; and a mysterious failure of national election software. And the full version goes into "fake" parties and more.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Democracy isn’t merely “majority rule”. It’s also the concept of everyone’s equal value regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, freedom of expression and so on. Merely getting 51% of votes by disregarding those values is neither acceptable nor democratic. And the EU can’t stand for it just like it could t stand for a regime that takes power through violence. “Belorussian style regime” I assume is in reference to freedom of press/expression/artists/minorities etc in the country.
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    > Democracy isn’t merely “majority rule”. It’s also the concept of everyone’s equal value regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, freedom of expression and so on. As much as I would like this to be true, I don't think it is. In practice - and to a certain extent also in theory, if you at least add add some nuance - in every democratic country the majority has power to decide who's granted full rights and value, and who isn't (think of voting rights for inmates or immigrants, right to be elected, right to obtain a job etc.). Even when the constitution sets those rights "in stone", a vast majority has the legal right to change the constitution. Update: part of the nuance is that democracies won't technically change the value of a person, to use your term. But by removing their rights, the effects are hardly different.
    - ant6n 5y ago
      Modern democracies (i.e. the ones set up including the learnings from the Weimar Republic) should include minority protections and defenses of democratic institutions that can not be overridden by simple majorities.
- chpatrick 5y ago
  The last election they won fair and square was 2010. After that, one of their first acts was to modify the previously proportional electoral system to ensure that they get a supermajority in parliament despite winning 40%. Since then, they've had full control over the constitution and the law despite 60% of the country not voting for them, and all "debate" has been pointless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Hungary#The_voting_system_after_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Hungary#The_votin...
- majgr 5y ago
  If you only watch regime media, it is impossible to vote differently, only successes, no problems, no shady affairs, no nepotism. Opposition, on the other hand, is portrayed as the root of all evil.
- Turms 5y ago
  Sorry, but that is totally factually incorrect. I am a Hungarian citizen and there are many well known and worrisome circumstances about Fidesz's electoral victories: - The election system has been changed in a way that overcompensates the winner. Fidesz is supported by about 50% of the voting population, yet it has a 2/3-s supermajority which enables them to pass any law they wish without any resistance. - Fidesz has built up a MASSIVE database of the voting population over the years, basically they can tell the voting preferences for each home address. There is video evidence of this, I am not talking out of my ass. - Based on this database large scale gerrymandering took place in the past years. - The governing body overseeing the elections is run by long standing Fidesz cadres. Many polling districts especially in rural areas only had Fidesz-affiliated polling-clerks during the last election. - Thousands if not tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens (many of whom have Hungarian ancestry, but many do not) have been registered in the Eastern part of the country with voting rights. They are eligible for pensions multiple times the amount they would receive from the Ukrainian government because of an old agreement made bw the Soviet Union and Hungary. In exchange they are voting for Fidesz. Again, this may sound like bullshit, but it is a documented fact. - Small cities are told that they won't get any EU funding from the government if they elect a non-Fidesz mayor. - There is a massive amount of very poor people dependent on government distributed "public work" in the countryside. It's basically modern day servitude. These people are also often threatened that if they vote the "wrong way" they will not get work. - Most of the relevant news outlets (TV, Radio, Newspapers, online media) are owned by Fidesz-frienly businesspeople and they are in 24-7 propaganda mode. I am talking about 1950-s style Stalinist propaganda, not some kind of "pro-government bias". There have been by now basically one TV station and a handful of small websites left that are not controlled by Fidesz. - And add to that that any opposition leader, any journalist critical towards Fidesz or any businessman who is not part of their circles can be monitored by these spy softwares and then you will understand what the term "hybrid regime" stands for. Yes there are elections every four years, but they are just for show.
jeroenhd 5y ago
There were thin provisions against member states getting out of hand, but they became useless the second Poland conspired with Hungary. I'm not sure if I would've liked en EU with stricter punitive measures over its member states before all this, but it's clear that the measures to prevent situations like these have all failed.
- scotty79 5y ago
  I'm not sure if conspired is the right word. Poland just has very strong sympathy for Hungary as a country and its people. Poland has nothing to do with Orban and wants nothing to do with Orban. Unfortunately we have our own populists that like Orban wants to remodel our country to be easier for them to rule as they please. And results are similar as with Orban in Hungary and threats to that from EU are the same so cooperation against EU safeguards is kind of natural and spontaneous.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki, i do szabli, i do szklanki." (Pole and Hungarian — two brothers, good for saber and for glass.) Some countries in the EU have better relations than others. Czechs and Slovaks, the three Baltic nations, and Poland and Hungary. Things must get really bad before they will stop having each other's back on the international scene. This is a historical and diplomatic fact that must be taken into account when conflicts arise.
    - b0rsuk 5y ago
      Poland has common geopolitical interests with nordic countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. Hungarian strategy of playing both sides can work because Hungary is not between the hammer and the anvil. And the languages are radically different. "Gulasz" and "Dobosz" are not enough. If you ask 100 Poles on the street, you won't find 1 that can count to ten in Hungarian. Finnish is an equally hard language and there are common values and sentiments between Poland and Finland, for example wars against Russia. Simo Hayha is pretty well known.
underscore_ku 5y ago
EU is as helpless as USA. what would US of A do with a rogue Texas? nothing
- deleted 5y ago
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- nix23 5y ago
  The EU is not a state...thank god for that, and that it never happens.
  - johnnycerberus 5y ago
    But it can be a federation of states. Hopefully, that will happen.
    - nix23 5y ago
      Depends how much the states have their own freedom and power (financial marketplace, and military), remember Russia is a federation too.
    - bluthund 5y ago
      Hopefully that never happens. Hopefully more Hungary's emerge. Hopefully more Western countries start actually serving their people Hopefully nationalism crushes this perverse anti Western virus which has taken over the once greatest nations in the world
      - egeozcan 5y ago
        In this day and age, don't people like you read/watch some world history? What you are saying seems so narrow-minded (ignoring the racist undertone), it makes me confused.
        bluthund 5y ago
        It's precisely a studying and understanding of history which makes me so. Perhaps people like you would do better to engage in conversation where you might learn something you don't know rather than throw out your classic epithets
Hokusai 5y ago
> EU is completely helpless against rouge states There is a point where politics depend on good intent. It does not matter if it is the EU, USA or China. If there is a part of the population that is radicalized and hate rhetoric is used that will destabilize any society. The main defense against this situation is that it does not work to improve citizens lives. It only benefits a small part of society and it will make the rest suffer. Hate calls for win-lose deals and an unproductive zero sum mentality. Hungarian business will suffer, and Hungarian workers will suffer. That is not sustainable long term. EU can be improved, but if millions of citizens support a far-right government there is little to be done. Orbán is a problem, but that people follows him is another one. It will only make Hungary poorer and the EU poorer and more dangerous.
- hyper_dynamics 5y ago
  They should be expelled, but that's not possible. So the EU is indeed kinda helpless against member states gone rouge
  - pmontra 5y ago
    I don't recommended this scenario but: the other states could join a new union and leave Hungary and possibly other states outside (the usual split into a good company and a bad one.) Lots of legal disputes but in international law the strongest party always makes the law and shrugs problems away. BTW, is it rouge (as in French for red) or rogue?
    - Darmody 5y ago
      No, they can't make a new union, that's just stupid. It took decades to build the EU as it is now. Building something new isn't feasible. Just look at the Brexit shitshow and that was only a country leaving. And besides that, the EU has never been about controlling national governments. The common values thing it's something new they brought to the table because they want to expand their powers.
      - 5y ago
rini17 5y ago
"Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4" Oversimplified view. There was common interest of V4 against accepting refugees, but Czech & Slovak rep. generally support EU's side in judicial and media independence issues. Elsewhere, German automakers have vast investments in the eastern EU and they have been holding Merkel back against Orban, together with conservative faction of CDU.
- js8 5y ago
  > Czech & Slovak rep. generally support EU's side in judicial and media independence issues In Czechia, I wish that was true, but our current prime minister Andrej Babis is actually openly admiring Orban, and playing up the same nationalistic politics (before the upcoming elections in October). I am not sure he would necessarily support media and judicial independence if it came down to that.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    And here in Poland we already have problems since few years, people that oppose judicial and media independence are in charge, elected mostly by elderly and eastern parts of the country.
  - rini17 5y ago
    Oh, same with recent Slovak governments, they say one thing at home and another toward EU. But it is only populism as usual that the EU could eventually work out. So far.
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- peteretep 5y ago
  > German automakers ... have been holding Merkel back against Orban Between this, Nord Stream 2, etc, Germany's commercial elite are having more and more to answer for...
sharikone 5y ago
It has actually elicited a response. Through many mechanisms now big countries in Europe have gained much more power than before, when the model was very egalitarian. And you can look at it in a very different light if you see it as Hungary becoming a small vassal state of Germany (an autocracy helps it to stay that way, and German manufacturers want the situation to remain like this) rather than a "rogue fascist" state. Just follow the money. If you look at things this way you expect to see a war of sphere of influence of big countries in the near future. I think the Balkans will be the next soft battlefield between German and Italian influence.
- pmontra 5y ago
  As Italian I've got very few doubts about the outcome of a struggle between German and Italian influence. Maybe Italy vs France as it happened in Libya but not against Germany. As you wrote, "follow the money" and Germany has much more of that and can buy out Italy together with France at any time.
- jq-r 5y ago
  If you put it that way, the "war" has already been won by Germany/Austria here in Croatia. There is next to no Italian influence (only in one small region). Everything else is German/Austrian owned. Banks, Telecoms, big business, construction etc. Most of the houses on the coast and islands are theirs as well. EU needs our country just to be minimally stable. Stable enough so millions of foreigners can come to their villas each summer, and as poor as possible so their money is worth more here. Whatever happens outside summer, that's not their problem. That includes tolerating far right politics, Christian fundamentalists and other lobbying groups, super corrupt politicians (better to say whole governments), huge government incurred debt, no freedom of the press or speech, and pretty much non-existing economy. I'm sorry to say, but I'm sure that trouble is coming to this part of EU, maybe not in couple of years, but eventually surely will. The seeds of radicalization, corruption and all that nasty "us vs them" mentality were planted 20 years ago already. Only now they are starting to bear fruits.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    As someone living in Austria, I noticed this as well. Rich Austrians own all big businesses and all desirable properties in Croatia. I wonder what will happen to Croatia, politically, in the future, when the young there find themselves priced out of their own country by richer foreigners. Seems like uncontrolled capitalism has enabled a form of economic colonialism, as proven further by the money printer let loose during Coving, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, to which the response is always "that's just how the free market works".
inglor_cz 5y ago
EU is primarily an economic bloc and economic interests will carry the day any time, or at least 99 per cent of the time. Orbán has integrated Hungarian industry deep into German supply chains and milks this fact as much as he can.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Agree with "primarily an economic bloc." On that note though, I don't think German-Hungarian industrial integration is all that weighty. Hungary's economy isn't big enough to make it compelling. The EU just doesn't have a political culture where Hungarian press freedom is "our problem." It's more of a "very unfortunate, next" kind of issue. No more of an EU concern than Uzbek press freedom. This doesn't compute. I agree. The EU clearly is a very political union. But that's how it is. Press freedoms, human rights or minority freedoms outside of the EU are more likely to become politically hot than inside it. Maybe this will change over time, but the EU has a weird trajectory. I have no idea where it's going. For the most part, "culture war" issues don't seem to have a grasp on it... as they do on most polities.
antman 5y ago
Orban was actively supported by the EU center-right wing parties. Do not assume morality, no one was angry they were in fact joking about it. Actions are reserved for countries with left wing governments. Funniest moment, if it wasn't so tragic for hungary: https://youtu.be/1hl83Jpd_OI https://youtu.be/1hl83Jpd_OI
throwaway4good 5y ago
What do you want the EU to do? Kick Hungary out? EU offers a lot to the Hungarian people in terms of travel, freedom of business, employment etc. In 10 years Orban likely will be gone. In the long run the liberal values of Europe will prevail.
- diegocg 5y ago
  Orban didn't become president by himself. There is social support for his platform and this platform will generate new leaders that will be like him or worse
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    He has similar platform to what you will find in many other european countries. Le Pen in France. AFD in Germany. Dansk folkeparti in Denmark. How does EU "fight" that? By playing for the long run: freedom of movement, cultural exchange, freedom of business. In the long term this leads to a more liberal society, regardless of counter movements.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      If there ever comes a time when AfD creates a board to “review” Supreme Court justices, or moves to remove “foreign influence” on media in Germany and so on - then the same discussion will return there. The difference is that conservative nationalism can’t get that type of foothold in Western Europe and the mistake was to include countries in the EU that even had a risk of having a nationalist majority. We should have “tiers” of membership with a legal/political inner union of liberal states that can have a common foreign policy, and a wider less tightly coupled trade Union with the EEA that doesn’t necessarily need to agree on such things.
      - rwmj 5y ago
        > The difference is that conservative nationalism can’t get that type of foothold in Western Europe UK says hi!
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Orban exists because of EU overreach. If the Brussels set weren’t intent on turning the EU into a federal United States of Europe, none of these “rogue states” (a completely absurd label for Hungary, btw) would have any political interest in Fidesz/PiS/etc.
- jq-r 5y ago
  Wrong. EU is the boogeyman for the governments in Eastern Europe. Whatever unpopular move they make, EU gets blamed for it. It is easy to blame some entity everyone knows exits, but at the same time, that entity is more like a group which doesn't fight back against it. Even if they fight back and criticize the government here and there, the latter own the media and that becomes a non-story. Right wing governments always need a boogeyman to rally against. Today it is EU, LGBT+ groups, Roma etc. Tomorrow it might be you and me.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Sorry but this is a caricature. These countries were dying to join the West 30 years ago. Orban himself was one of the most prominent pro-West figures in the 90s. The only reason these countries are now “hostile” is because the EU and the West have changed.
    - dathos 5y ago
      I feel like you're missing a few key points that have also changed. I think almost everything is different from 30 years ago, not just the west and EU.
      - ceilingcorner 5y ago
        Of course but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the “problem” EU countries are quite happy with a 1990s vision of Europe, while the West isn’t.
    - jq-r 5y ago
      So what's your point then? Of course stuff changes in 20 or 30 years. Everyone wanted to join the EU. They've joined, and for the last 20 years the elites are reaping the benefits. And that doesn't change the fact that there is a very strong anti EU sentiment among the Eastern European population. Did the EU screw them? They did not. Who did? Those same politicians now blaming EU for 30 years of their own corruption, suppression of freedoms, stalling and maintaining status quo. Here we had war which ended 26 fucking years ago. No war can do as much damage as corruption and incompetence. And somehow EU gets blamed for it. I understand that EU is no saint, but what we have here is a disaster happening in slow motion.
mlang23 5y ago
Which is an indication that the whole system is simply too weak. EU was originally founded to make trade easier. Even the temporary removal of borders for EU citizens was only done to fasciliate trade, the free travel amongst EU states was a nice side effect which could also be used to lure the citizens into believing the EU was actually more. The social apsect was originally only a side effect of fasciliatating trade. And now that it starts to show that the different member states have different political agendas, and not everything can be pacified by just making commerce happy, the system starts to crumble. I still remember the biggest fear of EU when brexit came up. That more member states could have a similar idea. That isn't particularily showing strength and confidence.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Oh so you mean the people who like to call it "EUSSR" are full of it?
TheFreim 5y ago
> helpless against rouge states Is Hungary a rogue state?
- b0rsuk 5y ago
  From the perspective of EU, it is a rogue state. It acts in concert with Putin and Kremlin to destabilize EU.
dalbasal 5y ago
The EU is still, at core, an economic/trade union, not a geopolitical actor. That's both cultural and structural. Meanwhile, european people's appetite for "international" politics is been mostly satisfied with world politics... especially US politics, which was good and saucy for the last few years. The most animating issues of recent years have been: Trump, BLM related US politics, Israel-Palestine conflicts & climate change. Most of what happens in EU parliament attracts very little interest in the greater citizenship-journalism-politics sphere. National politics is, by far, still the main political sphere. European politics rarely becomes primary news/politics "stories." That applies to both Hungary, within the Union and Belarus, an immediate neighbor. It also applies to Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which was largely about EU affiliation. Notable exceptions are Brexit, peek refugee migration and the Greek/Euro crisis... 12 years ago. The ironic exception to "EU politics doesn't exist" is the nationalist, eu-skeptical camp which has been developing an EU-wide audience. In any case, IDK if "helpless" is the right word. It's more like "uninterested." Hungarian freedom of the press and such just aren't on anyone's agenda. The fact that they're EU doesn't really mean much.
ganafagol 5y ago
> If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). Helpless and hypocritical. If Orban rolls out surveillance he is a dictator. If UK or Germany do it, it's the noble fight against terrorists, pedophiles and kids downloading moviez from the internet.
gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
I'd argue that it's in their interests. Right populist politics and bland status quo centrism need the other to justify themselves. Bland centrism needs the threat of the right to keep the left in their box (see Biden, Macron, Chirac), then through representing the interests of the status-quo and not addressing any systemic change they create the conditions for right populists.. and so it goes on.
kristjank 5y ago
True. But EU also repeatedly ignores a decent chunk of people that want a stable social state without LGBTQ agitprop and unlimited illegal immigration. I have a hunch that the western left wing would have much more support if they focused on the wellbeing of the common worker, not on the countless minorities. Instead the choice always seems to be between a reactionary right-wing degenerate and a hyper-progressive left-wing degenerate. And to think Americans call them communists. In communism most of the shit we see today from left and right politicians wouldn't fly at all.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > But EU also repeatedly ignores a decent chunk of people that want a stable social state without LGBTQ agitprop and unlimited illegal immigration Can you give me some examples of the EU doing this? My understanding is that nothing has happened on migration because there is no agreement.
  - kristjank 5y ago
    The most obvious example is Merkel's flooding of the bordering european states with economic immigrants and "refugees" of disputed international validity. Not only EU states like Hungary, Italy, France or Slovenia, but also non-EU territories like Croatia, Bosnia etc. It's a difference that is showing if you like me live as a student in a Schengen-border state. Ignoring the major changes of public opinion and trying to arrange no compromises at all is (IMO) a common pattern with the EU law- and decisionmaking. Saying that a whole international union with will somehow deal with and accept an overwhelming influx of non-integrated, traumatized, not-fit-for-work population is peak bourgeoisie. At the end of the day, social state is (at least in my god-forsaken old-school commie eyes) there to provide the future productive members of society with an education, housing, stipends etc. for the betterment of the nation/state/collective/whatever. I see little sense in promotion of influx of cheap, abusable, low-skill labour or even worse, perpetual social system abusers.
    - trasz 5y ago
      So how is it different from a similar influx of migrants from Eastern Europe? (Disclaimer: I’m from Eastern Europe myself.)
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mcosta 5y ago
EU can't do anything because many other countries are doing the same.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
Don't underestimate the EU. It's a slow beast but it can bear a grudge. The language used to address Hungary is slowly becoming more and more aggressive. A head of state from a small EU country explicitly called for Hungary to leave. You also have to remember that the EU is an union of sovereign countries. Plenty can be done by EU members where the EU is powerless. History shows that messing with France and Germany can be costly.
- hypocry12 5y ago
  History also shows that when Germany messes about with east europe it can get messy rather quickly. And sadly hungary is in bed with russia. The eu should just cut funding for hungary and let everything else play out from there. Anything more that that is pure suicide for an already declining eu.
  - dmix 5y ago
    History as in 80+ years ago?
    - hypocry12 5y ago
      AFAIK last time it was when the eu and germany pushed for ukraine regime change. ended up with ukraine getting invaded and loosing territory. so germany better stay out of east europe and so should the eu. the only way to win is by economics. thats how the us eventually won the cold war. also germany is not particularly popular, considering its bullying tactics and it being one of europes largest polluters, eu corruption it supports and so on. all i want is to make sure the most effective tools are used against hungary, as that country is a symptom of a much deeper problem. germany should let established powers deal with hungary and get into it before it messes things up again.
dreen 5y ago
> Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 this is not going to last forever, its already diminished a lot since 2015
cabalamat 5y ago
> rouge states States that wear lots of lipstick? It's a word often mis-spelt.
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A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I think the issue is that EU was founded with an idea that they can copy US creation pattern, but without sufficient consideration of the simple fact that there is a thousand plus years of history that is being crammed into respective citizens' heads including, but not limited to wars with neighbors. It is hard to forget blood; especially if survivors still have a state. Do not get me wrong. I like the idea of EU. I see its benefits, but the idea ignores lessons of creating new federations. Apart from everything else, I doubt EU would be willing to do the same things US did to maintain its grip.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  > I doubt EU would be willing to do the same things US did to maintain its grip. I think you meant war. I think the EU is unwilling to make even non-bloody sacrifices, like the US did in the beginning at the Connecticut Compromise (1787). Basically as early as 11 years after the independence, the large US states relinquished a lot of power to the smaller states. With that compromise they gave 2 senators to each state, no matter how big or small it was. I really don't see Germany relinquishing that much power, or France for that matter. Also the EU cannot function like the US without the absolutely massive transfer of cash from rich to poor states. A poor state in the US receives as much as 10k per person NET from the federal government https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid... Imagine giving out 200 billions to Romania alone every year... At best we get 10 billions a year, but only for a limited time. In the previous budget we got like 3-5 billions a year. For those funds, the richer countries expect a lot of obedience in return, always dangling the threat of cutting the funds if we "don't behave".
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    War, civil war or re-education of local populations. Note that either of these would be unlikely to succeed. Just about every EU state has survived numerous occupations; some partitions; some ceased to be nation states. How can you possibly hope to force them to see themselves as Europeans first and nation A second? If anything, force or even threat of force will likely result further digging in. Overall, I agree with your post though. I personally think both France and Germany simply use EU framework for their own purposes ( Germany actually just had an interesting case that may finally shed some light over whether EU law is above German law -- that should be fun to watch - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/eu-launches-legal-case-against-germany-over-alleged-breach-of-eu-law-primacy-principle https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/eu-launches-le...).
cabalamat 5y ago
> Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself. Countries can only be kicked out of the EU with unanimity of all states except the one being kicked out. But Poland and Hungary have a pact to support each other, so that can't happen. I suspect though that if Hungary and Poland pissed off the EU in a big way, the other states would all leave and simultaneously form a new EU2021.
bwb 5y ago
It takes time, good systems move slow :)
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Is it better to shatter itself, or to have this within it? Do you want the EU to be smaller, or to be a bloc without ideals?

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Orbán is a cancer on Europe, i really the EU has a decent response this time.

xiphias2 5y ago
Sure, and Orban would have never been able to have so much power if EU wouldn't give so much free money to him without verifying where that money goes.
dstick 5y ago
I read in the newspaper today that the EU issued an ultimatum to Poland: get rid of the unlawful special court that deems itself above the EU law, or face repercussions. Finally they're growing some teeth. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-commission-intends-to-set-ultimatum-for-poland/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/europea... However, after Googling for an online source, I came across this article about another ultimatum for justice reform in 2017, and things only got worse after that :-/ https://euobserver.com/justice/138627 https://euobserver.com/justice/138627
- dogma1138 5y ago
  It’s hard to issue these ultimatums when in Germany the constitution is supreme too and the courts would and do take it over EU law when there is conflict.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Except they don't. Please don't spread polish government's propaganda.
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      Except they do https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-against-germany-over-ecb-ruling/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-aga... Overall the EU has about the same number of procedures open against Germany as they do against Poland, both are pretty high on the list Germany is #5 Poland is #4.

xiphias2 5y ago

Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.

raverbashing 5y ago
Cue the Orbanites saying how the EU wants to interfere in "matters of their country" This (and the events of January 6th) are a good reminder that the law is worth the paper it's printed on if no one acts on it.
bkovacev 5y ago
China has already targeted Serbia and Montenegro - infrastructure mainly. I can't find the source now, but I have heard they already started investing in Hungary.
- erk__ 5y ago
  A good example of that is the Fudan university campus https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653
- chpatrick 5y ago
  Orban wants to build a massive Chinese university campus in Budapest, with a loan from China. https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-university-budapest-orban-viktor-gergely-karacsony https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-univ...
Dah00n 5y ago
I don't know much about Hungary so could you provide a reason why it is bad "if EU lets China come into Hungary"? Unless it is because China Bad, then I'm not interested, but I'm hoping for something more interesting than that. Personally I would hate to see EU close in on itself and so it needs to align with outsiders. China seems just as good a partner as the other big markets to me.
- 5y ago

bwb 5y ago

I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more. I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?

raverbashing 5y ago
You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example) The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.
- johnnycerberus 5y ago
  Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.
- pferde 5y ago
  Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.
pydry 5y ago
Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances. Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group. Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.

deleted 5y ago

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mola 5y ago

All of Netanyahu's allies in the world seem to have profited from this relationship by obtaining military grade surveillance inorder to suppress human rights of journalists and opposition. This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. I'm convince pegasus was used against Israeli journalists, opposition leaders and law enforcement officials. Too bad our political system is still under his thumb and doesn't shed light on this crap even now that he's no longer PM.

joelbluminator 5y ago
Hungary aside, most of Israel's allies in the region are dictatorships, actaully all of them: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco (arguably, let's agree it's not a liberal democracy) and so on and so on. There are zero democracies in the area. So it's easy to see Israel's interest in supplying technology to those regimes and assuring good relations; it's not like the oppositions to these dictators are any better, the Muslim Brotherhood is appalling. Now Hungary isn't really important to Israel and is part of the EU, may have been wiser to not do that. > This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia?
- mola 5y ago
  In the area, I agree. But Netanyahu chose to spurn democratic European allies and allign Israel with Hungary and Poland. Basically he made western Europe an enemy of Israel because he chose settlements over a peace process, to alleviate the foreign pressure he alligned Israel with Hungary and Poland, also helping Russia with its cold European conflict. > Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia? How's that relevant? If you're fishing for hypocrisy, be assured I dislike the US take on democracy and it's leaders of late no less than Netanyahu. But At least the US has a constitution, checks and balances. And a tradition of freedom and democracy. Israel has a growing population, the parts that grow are mostly lacking any sense of democratic values or tradition. Guess which electorate Netanyahu spurned and which he focused his Messiyah propaganda on.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago

zsellera 5y ago

So far Orban's regime is the only eu/western government involved in this scandal. I see that no surprise. There is no need of official government approval to conduct such surveillance. It's enough to have weak access contol to such technologies, political roles within the agencies, and poor work ethics in civil servants: there alway will be someone with will and motive to act in favor of the system, off the record. Orban deliberately shaped the government this way.

immmmmm 5y ago

a friend of mine had written an interesting piece of investigation journalism on this topic https://medium.com/@maribst https://medium.com/@maribst

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

I perceive this as an example why allowing privacy violation for one group for the "sake of greater good" does not work. Usually the same tools will be used with oppressive regimes. In the beginning it will start with pretext that "we are using this tools to find terrorists, pedophiles and protect children" but more often it will end up prosecuting journalist, silencing whistleblowers and undermining political opponents creating perpetual state of oppression and corruption.

alexseman 5y ago

Haha so many comments from the SV & Bruxelles globo-homo bubble. Hungary is a sovereign nation with a freely elected body of leaders who uphold the national, traditional & Christian values on which it is founded and which allowed this nation's continuity throughout history. Get over it.

dang 5y ago
We've banned this account since it has only been using HN for ideological battle. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (and no, we don't care what your ideology is)
- AKSucks 5y ago
  > (and no, we don't care what your ideology is) Unless you happen to present a articulate, reasoned objection to the use of the term "sex worker" to describe camgirls, in which case your comments go "poof!"

iamnotwhoiam 5y ago

Does anyone have any idea how Pegasus actually works? I haven't found any teardowns or even a clear description of what the iMessage says. This is some kind of code injection attack that can go through a text message?

est31 5y ago
From my understanding, the attack can happen through multiple ways. Companies like NSO purchase vulnerabilities for this step and probably have a set of them on their disposal, ready to deploy ones as they get discovered. Pegasus is the rootkit which is installed once the attack is successful, and allows spying on the user. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
nuker 5y ago
iOS iMessage bugs parsing images, I recall
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  From the Amnesty report shown by another commentator, there were a bunch of compromised Apple services.
abhiminator 5y ago
This article from Amnesty International's Security Lab is a good primer on the attack vector used by the Pegasus exploit https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
swiley 5y ago
The iMessage exploit sounds like a Null terminated string issue. The rest of it sounds like a Metasploit-esque framework along with some telemetry tools.
fulafel 5y ago
Pegasus is a name for their attack repertoire of the day plus whatever next stage payloads are run upon a successful compromise.

mayank_vashisht 5y ago

It’d be interesting to learn how the NSO group's marketing worked. Did NSO go knocking on the doors of all these despotic regimes? Or was it the other way around? And what was the hand of the Israeli government in the deal-making? For instance, reports state that the spying in India began right after the India’s PM met with Netanyahu in 2017 [1] So was NSO actively backed by the government? Sigh. So many questions. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-rahul-gandhi-among-indian-targets-of-nso-client https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-...

Vaderv 5y ago

Thank you tje country that made it

saagarjha 5y ago

> The son and one of the closest confidants of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. They were both selected as targets before the Hungarian national election of April 2018. Back then, Simicska was the owner of a media empire, and he was openly waging war against the Orbán government. (It would have been futile to target Simicska with this spyware as he did not use smartphones.) There's literally no winning here. You can literally disconnect from the internet and they'll just target the people around you…

londons_explore 5y ago

Where is this list of phone numbers? I want to check if my numbers on it or anyone I know...

janjones 5y ago

Here is a technical report about the exploits: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...

deregulateMed 5y ago
Holy shit, there's literally a dozen of Apple products exploited. It's not a single "Apple music exploit", it's dozens of separate services. Music, messenger, safari, iOS, etc... I never want to hear Apple cares about security again. I could forgive 1 mistake, but this seems like negligence. (Don't put me down as a defender of MS or Android, but at least they don't use "Security" in their marketing)
- t-c-h 5y ago
  If you would have actually read the report, you would have known the attacks are not specifically device or mobile OS bound. They simply say that iOS leaves behind more useable traces. From paragraph 10: Much of the targeting outlined in this report involves Pegasus attacks targeting iOS devices. It is important to note that this does not necessarily reflect the relative security of iOS devices compared to Android devices, or other operating systems and phone manufacturers. In Amnesty International’s experience there are significantly more forensic traces accessible to investigators on Apple iOS devices than on stock Android devices, therefore our methodology is focused on the former. As a result, most recent cases of confirmed Pegasus infections have involved iPhones.
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    The article doesn't mention android again. And I'm not even defending android, I'm attacking Apples unethical marketing practices of claiming security and privacy, but failing.
- ohashi 5y ago
  That seems dramatic. It's a billion dollar ex-spy run company catering towards governments with seemingly no ethics. No offense to Apple but this is near state level actor as a threat and with enough motivation ($$$$$$$$) they will find ways to exploit Apple's software no matter what.

germandiago 5y ago

I came to the conclusion that politicians are a big problem. Not sure we can get rid of them but they are. FWIW I just see them use the money of others for their own purposes coactively and provoke a lot of polarization. Many times with bad intention for selfish interests. I am talking about ALL of them. I think people should be able (Hungarian case at hand) to choose whether they want certain contents to be taught at certain age for their kids. No matter which ones. It should be a free to choose thing. The minimum stuff we must all agree upon should be not killing, discriminating, etc. in legal terms. But when you try to force people to like or dislike something, instead of respecting others (whether they like or not other people ideas) then you have this highly polarized environment because you will always find the other half resisting, since it is imposed contents highly ideological. I think that things could be way better with fewer of these people.

re-al 5y ago

"Pegasus takes advantage of so-called zero-day vulnerabilities of software running on mobile phones, meaning built-in flaws that not even developers and manufacturers are aware of." Vulnerabilities, eh - 'flaws'? Or backdoors there by design? What's in a name?

haspok 5y ago

TL;DR: the government hacking into private mobile phones is completely legal practice according to Hungarian laws and nobody can be held responsible for it.

giorgioz 5y ago

Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus: https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-spyware-attacks/167909/ https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s... Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?

ignoramous 5y ago
That's a PR piece by an upstart that sells MDM (mobile device management) suite to enterprises. There are many entrenched MDMs that can very well do as much, if not more.

freakynit 5y ago

Fuc** dictator assholes. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.

freakynit 5y ago

Fuc** inhumane dictators. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.

deleted 5y ago

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gypsyharlot 5y ago

When you don't do the EU's bidding, their propaganda machinery will work so hard that even Goebbels would be impressed. Then comes the sanctions and other bullying approaches to force your ways. God I hope more countries follow the UK and leave the world's fattest bureaucracy.

known 5y ago

No privacy = No democracy