There is no foreign leader that MAGA loves more than Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has turned his country into a testing ground for the far-right’s darkest impulses.
Orbán shares MAGA’s worldview down to the bone: a politics rooted in white nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry toward LGBTQ+ people, fearmongering about immigrants, and open contempt for liberal democratic institutions. He’s taken a sledgehammer to press freedom, and rewritten Hungary’s Constitution multiple times to attempt to entrench permanent one-party rule.
Who needs a think tank like the Heritage Foundation when MAGA can just follow the Orbán blueprint?
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has broadcasted from Budapest. The Conservative Political Action Conference has held meetings there. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon treats Orbán like a prophet, calling him “one of the great moral leaders in this world.” MAGA influencers openly pine for their leaders to rule the way Orbán does: with vengeance, zero accountability, and a chokehold on dissent. Is it any wonder President Donald Trump and Orbán have a fierce bromance?
But what has all this ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism gotten Hungary?
Orbán took what was once one of Europe’s rising post-Soviet democracies and ran it into the ground. Today, Hungary is the poorest country in the European Union, while the nation continues to suffer some of the highest inflation rates in the bloc. Ironically, Trump’s tariffs are compounding the country’s ills.
Furthermore, Hungary is hemorrhaging young people. Its economy is increasingly dependent on authoritarian allies, like China and Russia. It’s isolated from its neighbors, distrusted by democratic partners, and rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe.
Things are so bad that despite all the constitutional roadblocks in its path, the primary opposition party, Tisza, holds a 15-percentage-point lead in polling, 51% to 36%, ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections (though a date has yet to be set). In Hungary’s system, where the legislative majority selects the prime minister, defeating Orbán’s party would mean removing Orbán himself.
That’s what MAGA-style authoritarianism gets you: economic destitution, political isolation, and moral rot.
Just like how Trump doesn’t care about the economic challenges faced by his working-class base, MAGA doesn’t seem to care that their idol Orbán has crushed Hungary’s economy.
For them, it’s enough to simply hate the right people.