Going Hungary

Let’s start with a recipe. It’s one that takes a while, but it’s already in progress. It turns apple pie into Hungarian goulash. What do you get when it’s fully baked? Anne Applebaum lists some of the ingredients in The Atlantic (Gift Article): “Flick through pro-government Hungarian accounts on TikTok, and you might see an AI-generated version of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, sitting on a golden toilet, counting his money, snorting cocaine, and barking orders at a Hungarian soldier. You might also find an AI-generated Péter Magyar, the leader of the Hungarian opposition, appearing to say he’s fine with handing Hungarian factories over to foreigners, as long as he’s the one in charge of the country … You won’t find much about Hungary itself, which is not an accident. In recent years political parties around the world have produced surrealist campaigns, comic campaigns, conspiratorial campaigns, even beer-drinking campaigns. But on any list of strange elections, the 2026 parliamentary election in Hungary will stand out.” This may be the world’s first post-reality campaign. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t we have enough lies and obfuscations to worry about when it comes to our own country and its upcoming election? Yes, we do. But, sadly, the two stories are related. What you see as the demoniacal demolition of democracy, others see as an achievable and worthy aspiration (and I’m not just talking about the golden toilet). “Not long ago, the U.S. government would have vocally defended the democratic process in Hungary, and might have sought to downplay wild claims about fictional Ukrainian invasions. Instead, the Trump administration is doing its best to amplify them. Strange though it sounds, Hungary, although a tiny country in Central Europe, plays an outsize role in the imagination of the American and European far right: MAGA and its international wing understand that the Hungarian election, the most important in Europe this year, could mark a turning point in the war of ideas that has convulsed the democratic world for the past decade.”