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Orban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1] I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban be

Orban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1] I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban because the media doesn’t like him because he is a pain in the ass for many plans of the European Union and gets bad reporting. Hungary has by the way not even 10 million residents. 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-vote-orbans-12-year-rule-tight-ballot-overshadowed-by-ukraine-war-2022-04-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-vote-orbans-...

dijit 2y ago
Yeah, Putin also enjoys a really high approval rating. Quite easy when you control the state media and suppress opposition... which is what the EU is trying to fine Hungary for doing, but Poland kept blocking it. Source: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-media-freedom-act-examining-public-and-private-control-of-media-organs-in-hungary-and-italy/ https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-m...
- exomancer 2y ago
  FWIW the pervious Polish government modeled its state capture after Hungary quite openly. They quite miraculously lost the elections after a major mobilization (historic attendance of over 74%), and have now been stripped of funding due to illegally using state funds during their campaign in 2023. This was possible in Poland because, unlike Hungary, Poland still had free (non-state) mainstream media, and not for the lack of trying.
- deleted 2y ago
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simion314 2y ago
As far as I know Orban changed the electoral law, he uses the votes from Hungarians outside Hungary (weird to vote for shit that does not affect you), the people in cities are not voting for him so he gets the votes from uneducated people that do not know a foreign language and get indoctrinated by the Orban controlled media. He is also super corrupt and Putin fanboy so most online English support he gets are from Ruzzian trolls.
- defamation 2y ago
  You can vote outside of any country pretty much if youre a citizen of that country. US included.
  - jkaplowitz 2y ago
    Many countries do put restrictions on this. Some examples: Until literally this year, the UK removed the right to vote after 15 years of living abroad, and Canada even used to restrict that right to just 5 years. Even now, civilian US citizens living abroad whose intent to return to live in the US is uncertain or who don't intend to return, and Canadian citizens living abroad regardless of intent to return, are only federally guaranteed a right to vote from their last in-country address in federal elections, but often can't vote in state, provincial territorial, or local elections. This is true even if they retain significant ties to the relevant state, province, territory, or locality, like having close family there (including kids too young to vote for whom they're a legal parent), owning property there, operating a business there, or being owed a pension controlled by the relevant level of government. And the guarantee of a right to vote from abroad in US federal elections is purely statutory, not constitutional - not to mention it has a few gaps in it, like citizens who have never lived in the US and neither of whose parents last lived in a state that allows the right to vote from abroad to descend to the next generation based on last parental residence. Et cetera.
    - chgs 2y ago
      Indeed the U.K. did not give the right to vote for U.K. citizens living in the EU when there was a vote about stripping their citizenship.
      - mike_hearn 2y ago
        Yes they did. You could vote in the referendum from abroad (I did). There's no such thing as EU citizenship anyway, so nobodies citizenship changed as a result.
PaulRobinson 2y ago
I suggest you look at what has happened to journalists critical of him..
Hunpeter 2y ago
I'm not here to claim that Orban is anywhere near the level of a "real" dictator in terms of squashing dissent. But consider that one way Orban makes sure to maintain this - indeed significant - majority is to try to silence/discredit voices that go against his narrative. In fact, his party is spending millions of dollars in public funds to finance a continuous stream of propaganda on many channels. On top of this, there absolutely have been a few cases where more sinister tools like surveillance etc. were employed against independent news sources for example. Their newest invention "Szuverenitásvédelmi Hivatal" (= Sovereignty Protection Bureau, idk what the official English name is) is only the latest way to at least try to scare nonprofits/NGOs/news outlets that are in some way opposed to his goals.
- even_639765 2y ago
  I think the fascism you're looking for is in the UK and France this month.
  - cpursley 2y ago
    I still can’t get over that the UK arrests people over social media posts. Is the US the only place on the planet that actually has free speech?
    - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
      Depends on what you publish.... if you just yell about different random people, sure... if you post a video of war crimes, well.. that's a different story now.
    - leadingthenet 2y ago
      We’re rapidly approaching that reality, yes. Maybe Switzerland?
      - snovv_crash 2y ago
        If people in Switzerland wanted that they could vote for it. But they actually prefer having limits on other peoples' speech more than they resent the limits on their own, so they don't.
sharpshadow 2y ago
Btw after Hungary got the Presidency of the Council of the European Union[1] in July Orban made a trip to Ukraine[2] which was fine for the media until he went directly afterwards to Russia and then to China[3] which the media didn’t took very well. To finish off his trip he went to the USA to meet and endorse Trump.[4] The media wasn’t really happy with that either. But overall he is one of the only European leaders which speaks with all relevant parties and tries to stop the conflict in Ukraine. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_Council_of_the_European_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_Council_of... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/world/europe/orban-hungary-ukraine-zelensky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/world/europe/orban-hungar... 3. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/07/08/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-makes-surprise-visit-to-china https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/07/08/hungarian-prim... 4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-trump-mar-a-lago-visit-nato-summit/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-trump-mar-a-lago-visit-n...
- consp 2y ago
  > tries to stop the conflict in Ukraine Afaik only cares about cheap gas, the rest is irrelevant.
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    If that's what hungarians want, cheap gas, he's working for hungarians, he's their president, i don't know what's wrong with that. I mean.. ask an average american, cut support for ukraine and in turn get cheaper gas.. what would a Billy or Bobby in texas say?
    - deleted 2y ago
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- cpursley 2y ago
  Exactly, we need more talking and less moralizing and “preconditions” for talking. * Not an endorsement of this particular politician
baxtr 2y ago
I think one real good test of a democracy is to plot a line with years and above the name of the person ruling the country. In the US you will see at least every 8 years a different name on top of the line. I think a good democratic system will not have a new leader every year but maybe every 4-8 years. Anything below won’t be stable enough for mid/long term policy changes. Anything above will be good for the leader and her entourage but most probably not for the entire country and its democracy.
- blumomo 2y ago
  True. If only these elected leaders wouldn’t be controlled by institutions and individuals who (1) are handlers to the elected leaders and (2) are not even elected in the first place. In the US, who currently has the power over your country? Is it your Biden (where is he?), your Harris? It someone else, maybe unelected?
  - glenstein 2y ago
    >Is it your Biden (where is he?) He's currently at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware and he will be campaigning in Pittsburgh on Monday. https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/ https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/harris-biden-campaign-strategy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/harris-biden-...
    - blumomo 2y ago
      At the beach again! What a great life as a president! I’m sure he gets to solve many of the US problems thinking carefully at the beach…
      - glenstein 2y ago
        That's a cheap shot that's not even related to your own point from one comment ago.
        2y ago
jkaplowitz 2y ago
> Hungary has by the way not even 10 million residents. What relevance does the size of Hungary's population have to this conversation?
- dandanua 2y ago
  Just a typical trick that liars use to distract from the main topic.
glenstein 2y ago
>gets bad reporting He "gets bad reporting" because he has destroyed democracy in Hungary. Including but not limited to packing the courts, erasing the independence of media, and extreme redistricting that turned pluralities or slim majorities at the polls into super majorities in Parliament. Recharacterizing that nightmare as if it is just 'reporting' helpfully introduces a layer of abstraction that implies there's nothing in his actions to condemn.
deleted 2y ago
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throw0101d 2y ago
> Orban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1] Erdogan had the majority of votes go his way in the last election. Also Putin. :) Of course gerrymandering is an age old tactic: > First, the party rewrote the entire Hungarian constitution in secret. Parliament passed the new constitution after only nine days of debate. Changes included a restructuring of Hungarian elections, such that more than half of parliamentary representatives would be chosen through single-member, American-style districts (the remainder are determined by a national proportional-vote share). In drawing the new districts, Fidesz abused a rule that allowed the government to vary them in size from roughly 60,000 to 90,000 people. > The new map packed opposition voters into a handful of larger districts, diluting their votes, while pro-Fidesz voters were distributed among smaller districts. This gerrymandered system would allow Fidesz to fall short of a popular-vote majority but still win a two-thirds majority in Parliament—something that happened not once but twice, in 2014 and 2018. > A blizzard of other electoral changes accompanied the redistricting. Each was incremental, and potentially even defensible in isolation. But in combination, the laws erected extraordinary barriers that would keep opposition parties from winning elections. For example, the old system had allowed for a runoff in any district where the victorious candidate got less than 50 percent of the vote. The new system abolished the runoff, allowing a party to win a district with a mere plurality. At the same time, Fidesz created a rule that required national parties to compete in at least 27 single-member districts—even as the party passed laws that made it trickier for small parties to unite on a joint list. The result was that the various opposition parties were basically forced to split the anti-Fidesz vote in many districts, allowing Orbán’s candidates to win with relatively small pluralities. * https://archive.ph/6DiTT https://archive.ph/6DiTT / https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/why-special-republican-relationship-hungary-so-worrying/679035/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/wh... The trick in 'modern' authoritarian systems is (often) to not bother going after your opposition, but mostly trying to stay in power (see above) and helping your friends: > The railway and stadium have been pilloried by the prime minister’s critics as vanity projects. But they have something else in common. Both were built, in part, by Felcsut’s mayor, and a childhood friend of Mr Orban, Lorinc Meszaros. Until a few years ago, Mr Meszaros was a gas fitter. Thanks to winning state contracts, he jumped to number five in this year’s list of the wealthiest Hungarians compiled by website Napi.hu. In a year, his fortune soared from Ft23bn (€73m) to Ft120bn. * https://archive.ph/v8f6R https://archive.ph/v8f6R / https://www.ft.com/content/ecf6fb4e-d900-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 https://www.ft.com/content/ecf6fb4e-d900-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b... > I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban because the media doesn’t like him because he is a pain in the ass for many plans of the European Union and gets bad reporting. The Cato Institute called out Hungary in their most recent Human Freedom Report: > Since 2007, the high point in human freedom, a minority of jurisdictions have increased their level of freedom, but many of them, such as Myanmar, began from a very low base, and many others experienced only minor improvements. The vast majority of jurisdictions saw declines. Among the countries and territories that deteriorated the most are Nicaragua, Syria, Hong Kong, Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary (see Table 3). * https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2023-12/human-freedom-index-2023-full-revised.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2023-12/human-free... * https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023 https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023

dijit 2y ago

Yeah, Putin also enjoys a really high approval rating. Quite easy when you control the state media and suppress opposition... which is what the EU is trying to fine Hungary for doing, but Poland kept blocking it. Source: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-media-freedom-act-examining-public-and-private-control-of-media-organs-in-hungary-and-italy/ https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-m...

exomancer 2y ago
FWIW the pervious Polish government modeled its state capture after Hungary quite openly. They quite miraculously lost the elections after a major mobilization (historic attendance of over 74%), and have now been stripped of funding due to illegally using state funds during their campaign in 2023. This was possible in Poland because, unlike Hungary, Poland still had free (non-state) mainstream media, and not for the lack of trying.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

simion314 2y ago

As far as I know Orban changed the electoral law, he uses the votes from Hungarians outside Hungary (weird to vote for shit that does not affect you), the people in cities are not voting for him so he gets the votes from uneducated people that do not know a foreign language and get indoctrinated by the Orban controlled media. He is also super corrupt and Putin fanboy so most online English support he gets are from Ruzzian trolls.

defamation 2y ago
You can vote outside of any country pretty much if youre a citizen of that country. US included.
- jkaplowitz 2y ago
  Many countries do put restrictions on this. Some examples: Until literally this year, the UK removed the right to vote after 15 years of living abroad, and Canada even used to restrict that right to just 5 years. Even now, civilian US citizens living abroad whose intent to return to live in the US is uncertain or who don't intend to return, and Canadian citizens living abroad regardless of intent to return, are only federally guaranteed a right to vote from their last in-country address in federal elections, but often can't vote in state, provincial territorial, or local elections. This is true even if they retain significant ties to the relevant state, province, territory, or locality, like having close family there (including kids too young to vote for whom they're a legal parent), owning property there, operating a business there, or being owed a pension controlled by the relevant level of government. And the guarantee of a right to vote from abroad in US federal elections is purely statutory, not constitutional - not to mention it has a few gaps in it, like citizens who have never lived in the US and neither of whose parents last lived in a state that allows the right to vote from abroad to descend to the next generation based on last parental residence. Et cetera.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Indeed the U.K. did not give the right to vote for U.K. citizens living in the EU when there was a vote about stripping their citizenship.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Yes they did. You could vote in the referendum from abroad (I did). There's no such thing as EU citizenship anyway, so nobodies citizenship changed as a result.

PaulRobinson 2y ago

I suggest you look at what has happened to journalists critical of him..

Hunpeter 2y ago

I'm not here to claim that Orban is anywhere near the level of a "real" dictator in terms of squashing dissent. But consider that one way Orban makes sure to maintain this - indeed significant - majority is to try to silence/discredit voices that go against his narrative. In fact, his party is spending millions of dollars in public funds to finance a continuous stream of propaganda on many channels. On top of this, there absolutely have been a few cases where more sinister tools like surveillance etc. were employed against independent news sources for example. Their newest invention "Szuverenitásvédelmi Hivatal" (= Sovereignty Protection Bureau, idk what the official English name is) is only the latest way to at least try to scare nonprofits/NGOs/news outlets that are in some way opposed to his goals.

even_639765 2y ago
I think the fascism you're looking for is in the UK and France this month.
- cpursley 2y ago
  I still can’t get over that the UK arrests people over social media posts. Is the US the only place on the planet that actually has free speech?
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    Depends on what you publish.... if you just yell about different random people, sure... if you post a video of war crimes, well.. that's a different story now.
  - leadingthenet 2y ago
    We’re rapidly approaching that reality, yes. Maybe Switzerland?
    - snovv_crash 2y ago
      If people in Switzerland wanted that they could vote for it. But they actually prefer having limits on other peoples' speech more than they resent the limits on their own, so they don't.

sharpshadow 2y ago

Btw after Hungary got the Presidency of the Council of the European Union[1] in July Orban made a trip to Ukraine[2] which was fine for the media until he went directly afterwards to Russia and then to China[3] which the media didn’t took very well. To finish off his trip he went to the USA to meet and endorse Trump.[4] The media wasn’t really happy with that either. But overall he is one of the only European leaders which speaks with all relevant parties and tries to stop the conflict in Ukraine. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_Council_of_the_European_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_Council_of... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/world/europe/orban-hungary-ukraine-zelensky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/world/europe/orban-hungar... 3. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/07/08/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-makes-surprise-visit-to-china https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/07/08/hungarian-prim... 4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-trump-mar-a-lago-visit-nato-summit/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-trump-mar-a-lago-visit-n...

consp 2y ago
> tries to stop the conflict in Ukraine Afaik only cares about cheap gas, the rest is irrelevant.
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  If that's what hungarians want, cheap gas, he's working for hungarians, he's their president, i don't know what's wrong with that. I mean.. ask an average american, cut support for ukraine and in turn get cheaper gas.. what would a Billy or Bobby in texas say?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
cpursley 2y ago
Exactly, we need more talking and less moralizing and “preconditions” for talking. * Not an endorsement of this particular politician

baxtr 2y ago

I think one real good test of a democracy is to plot a line with years and above the name of the person ruling the country. In the US you will see at least every 8 years a different name on top of the line. I think a good democratic system will not have a new leader every year but maybe every 4-8 years. Anything below won’t be stable enough for mid/long term policy changes. Anything above will be good for the leader and her entourage but most probably not for the entire country and its democracy.

blumomo 2y ago
True. If only these elected leaders wouldn’t be controlled by institutions and individuals who (1) are handlers to the elected leaders and (2) are not even elected in the first place. In the US, who currently has the power over your country? Is it your Biden (where is he?), your Harris? It someone else, maybe unelected?
- glenstein 2y ago
  >Is it your Biden (where is he?) He's currently at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware and he will be campaigning in Pittsburgh on Monday. https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/ https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/harris-biden-campaign-strategy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/harris-biden-...
  - blumomo 2y ago
    At the beach again! What a great life as a president! I’m sure he gets to solve many of the US problems thinking carefully at the beach…
    - glenstein 2y ago
      That's a cheap shot that's not even related to your own point from one comment ago.
      - 2y ago

jkaplowitz 2y ago

> Hungary has by the way not even 10 million residents. What relevance does the size of Hungary's population have to this conversation?

dandanua 2y ago
Just a typical trick that liars use to distract from the main topic.

glenstein 2y ago

>gets bad reporting He "gets bad reporting" because he has destroyed democracy in Hungary. Including but not limited to packing the courts, erasing the independence of media, and extreme redistricting that turned pluralities or slim majorities at the polls into super majorities in Parliament. Recharacterizing that nightmare as if it is just 'reporting' helpfully introduces a layer of abstraction that implies there's nothing in his actions to condemn.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

throw0101d 2y ago

> Orban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1] Erdogan had the majority of votes go his way in the last election. Also Putin. :) Of course gerrymandering is an age old tactic: > First, the party rewrote the entire Hungarian constitution in secret. Parliament passed the new constitution after only nine days of debate. Changes included a restructuring of Hungarian elections, such that more than half of parliamentary representatives would be chosen through single-member, American-style districts (the remainder are determined by a national proportional-vote share). In drawing the new districts, Fidesz abused a rule that allowed the government to vary them in size from roughly 60,000 to 90,000 people. > The new map packed opposition voters into a handful of larger districts, diluting their votes, while pro-Fidesz voters were distributed among smaller districts. This gerrymandered system would allow Fidesz to fall short of a popular-vote majority but still win a two-thirds majority in Parliament—something that happened not once but twice, in 2014 and 2018. > A blizzard of other electoral changes accompanied the redistricting. Each was incremental, and potentially even defensible in isolation. But in combination, the laws erected extraordinary barriers that would keep opposition parties from winning elections. For example, the old system had allowed for a runoff in any district where the victorious candidate got less than 50 percent of the vote. The new system abolished the runoff, allowing a party to win a district with a mere plurality. At the same time, Fidesz created a rule that required national parties to compete in at least 27 single-member districts—even as the party passed laws that made it trickier for small parties to unite on a joint list. The result was that the various opposition parties were basically forced to split the anti-Fidesz vote in many districts, allowing Orbán’s candidates to win with relatively small pluralities. * https://archive.ph/6DiTT https://archive.ph/6DiTT / https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/why-special-republican-relationship-hungary-so-worrying/679035/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/wh... The trick in 'modern' authoritarian systems is (often) to not bother going after your opposition, but mostly trying to stay in power (see above) and helping your friends: > The railway and stadium have been pilloried by the prime minister’s critics as vanity projects. But they have something else in common. Both were built, in part, by Felcsut’s mayor, and a childhood friend of Mr Orban, Lorinc Meszaros. Until a few years ago, Mr Meszaros was a gas fitter. Thanks to winning state contracts, he jumped to number five in this year’s list of the wealthiest Hungarians compiled by website Napi.hu. In a year, his fortune soared from Ft23bn (€73m) to Ft120bn. * https://archive.ph/v8f6R https://archive.ph/v8f6R / https://www.ft.com/content/ecf6fb4e-d900-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 https://www.ft.com/content/ecf6fb4e-d900-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b... > I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban because the media doesn’t like him because he is a pain in the ass for many plans of the European Union and gets bad reporting. The Cato Institute called out Hungary in their most recent Human Freedom Report: > Since 2007, the high point in human freedom, a minority of jurisdictions have increased their level of freedom, but many of them, such as Myanmar, began from a very low base, and many others experienced only minor improvements. The vast majority of jurisdictions saw declines. Among the countries and territories that deteriorated the most are Nicaragua, Syria, Hong Kong, Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary (see Table 3). * https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2023-12/human-freedom-index-2023-full-revised.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2023-12/human-free... * https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023 https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023