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We agree that Orban is terrible for both Hungary and Europe. I hate Orban and have never voted for him. In fact, I hate Orban and his system so much that I refu

by Maro 2y ago

We agree that Orban is terrible for both Hungary and Europe. I hate Orban and have never voted for him. In fact, I hate Orban and his system so much that I refuse to pay taxes to him --- the last time I did was in 2015, since then I've been living abroad. Having said that, Hungary is still not a dictatorship, inside or outside Hungary, per the Democracy_Index [1]. Your country, Finland, with 9.3, has one of the highest scores! Congrats, you have come a long way since the Cold War ended. Hungary has a significantly lower score at 6.7, which makes it a "Flawed democracy". If you check this list, you will find lots of other european countries in the "Flawed democracy" bucket, and with a lower score than Hungary. "And Hungarians in general as right-wing nutjobs for keeping re-electing him" - I'm not offended by this, but surely you know that no country is a homogeneous set of people. Very roughly, Hungary has about 9.6M people, 8.2M in the voting age, in the 2022 election 5.7M voted, and about 3M of those voted for Orban, unfortunately [2]. (Among them was much of my family I'm afraid.) But you see, there are 5.2M people in the voting pool who did not vote for Orban, so it's not true that hungarians in general are "right-wing nutjobs". Having said that I have a pretty low opinion of a significant portion of my Hungarian countrymen, but not specifically because they're all "right-wing nutjobs". I would say the root problem is that they (like Trump voters in the US) have access to an infinite stream of information on the Internet, some of it high-quality, some of it low-quality and misleading, and they should be smart enough to tell signal from the noise, inform themselves and have reasonable opinions. "Why don't you get rid of him while it's still legally possible to do so?" - Naturally you don't follow Hungarian politics, but the way 2024 has been going so far, I strongly suspect that Orban will at a minimum lose his 2/3 majority in 2026, possibly the election. He and his cronies are making a lot of mistakes, there are scandals happening almost every week now. There is now a singular opposition party called "Tisza" which has about the same ~40% support as Orban today (so both are at roughly 40%). The only problem is, this new opposition party is so far a one-man show by a guy [3] who used to be in Orban's Fidesz party. So although he probably wouldn't be as bad as Orban, esp. at the beginning, he would still be right-wing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index [2] https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022-es_magyarorsz%C3%A1gi_orsz%C3%A1ggy%C5%B1l%C3%A9si_v%C3%A1laszt%C3%A1s https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022-es_magyarorsz%C3%A1gi_ors... [3] https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_P%C3%A9ter_(jog%C3%A1sz) https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_P%C3%A9ter_(jog%C3%A1sz...

CRConrad 2y ago
> the way 2024 has been going so far, I strongly suspect that Orban will at a minimum lose his 2/3 majority in 2026, possibly the election. He has a 2/3 majority?!? And won't (possibly) lose it until 2026? How long has it been known that he's a raging nutjob and asshole -- one decade, or several? Possibly losing his huge majority in over a year from now... That's far too little, far too late. > But you see, there are 5.2M people in the voting pool who did not vote for Orban, so it's not true that hungarians in general are "right-wing nutjobs". Enough of them are indifferent enough to right-wing nutjobbery not to vote against Orban's right-wing nutjobbery, which makes them enablers of him and it. Over time I've come to think that all peoples are in the end responsible for their own leadership: If a majority of the people is against oppression, then they should vote against it. If they can't vote, they should rise in revolution. If they don't, they're not sufficiently against it to warrant being called civilised. That's why Germans carried (and to some extent still carry?) a collective responsibility for Nazism (and anew do so for the AfD and BSW nutjobs they're voting into power nowadays); why Russians carry a collective responsibility for Putin (and before him, for Stalin. And Ivan IV); and why Hungarians carry a collective responsibility for Orban. IMO.

by Maro 2y ago

CRConrad 2y ago

> the way 2024 has been going so far, I strongly suspect that Orban will at a minimum lose his 2/3 majority in 2026, possibly the election. He has a 2/3 majority?!? And won't (possibly) lose it until 2026? How long has it been known that he's a raging nutjob and asshole -- one decade, or several? Possibly losing his huge majority in over a year from now... That's far too little, far too late. > But you see, there are 5.2M people in the voting pool who did not vote for Orban, so it's not true that hungarians in general are "right-wing nutjobs". Enough of them are indifferent enough to right-wing nutjobbery not to vote against Orban's right-wing nutjobbery, which makes them enablers of him and it. Over time I've come to think that all peoples are in the end responsible for their own leadership: If a majority of the people is against oppression, then they should vote against it. If they can't vote, they should rise in revolution. If they don't, they're not sufficiently against it to warrant being called civilised. That's why Germans carried (and to some extent still carry?) a collective responsibility for Nazism (and anew do so for the AfD and BSW nutjobs they're voting into power nowadays); why Russians carry a collective responsibility for Putin (and before him, for Stalin. And Ivan IV); and why Hungarians carry a collective responsibility for Orban. IMO.