This Year Proved Orban Was Right, Again

I wouldn't be surprised if the international press is already bracing for the Hungarian prime minister's next Tusvanyos Festival speech.

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban addresses the audience at the Tusvanyos Summer University in Baile Tusnad on July 27, 2024. (Photo: AFP)

As for the political performance of the pro-war establishment, one only has to look at the current state of the governments in Paris and Berlin. Since the protraction of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the magnitude of Germany's economic downturn has been outweighed only by the negative performance of the three-party coalition government (SPD, Greens, FDP), so much so that Chancellor Olaf Scholz was censured by the Bundestag in mid-December, which paved the way for new elections to take place next February.

And although the German mainstream media are doing their utmost to reduce this political crisis to a mere power issue, the reason for the failure of the federal government, both at the voter and the political level, is an open secret. Namely the disparate communication and strategic handling of the crisis caused by the energy price explosion linked to the war and of migration that is claiming German lives.

But Berlin is not the only one suffering the European consequences of the war visions dreamed up at the drawing boards in Washington. For French President Emmanuel Macron, otherwise considered very talented politically, has also managed to steer himself into turbulent waters, after he and his allies have tended to go against the popular will not only on the war, but also on the major economic issues affecting the country. The turbulent nature of Macron's current term is not only reflected in the giant slap in the face he received in this summer's European Parliament elections with Marine Le Pen's pro-peace National Rally winning a landslide victory raking in more than 31% of the vote, but also in having to install his fourth (!) head of government since his presidential victory in 2022.

But it would be a mistake to assume that only German and French voters were dissatisfied with the performance of their mainstream political elites. Not far from here, Austrian voters also cast their ballots for a change of elites in Vienna this past September, with the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) clocking a confident victory by making migration, the economy and the debate over aid for Ukraine a major campaign issue. The failure of the winning party as well as the opposition parties to form a government in Austria since then, is more an indication of a crisis in the Austrian political system than of the self-correction of public sentiment.

It should be noted that signs of this European anti-war voter trend were already visible the year before, when Robert Fico, who campaigned in the same tone as the Hungarians against the war, won the Slovak elections in the fall of 2023 with a confident victory.

But if anyone still has any doubts about the predictions Orban made in Tusvanyos, we can hardly ignore the most important political development to influence the outcome of the war: the results of the November US presidential elections.

The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, yet again to the shock of pollsters and the entire Western world essentially defeated not one but two pro-war Democratic presidential candidates this autumn by making Orban's pro-peace policy the flagship of his campaign from the very first moment. The inescapable significance of this electoral theme, it should be added, became clear in truly tangible fashion not only in the attempt made on President Trump's life during his campaign tour, but also in his attracting many undecided voters to produce overwhelming victories in swing states, which are normally the fiercest battlegrounds in the political contest every four years.

In light of all of the above, it is clear that just as the Hungarian prime minister has been proven right on so many issues in the past, such as migration and the issue of protecting Europe's borders, 

so, too, this year has also proven that Viktor Orban was right.

I would, therefore, not be surprised if the international press, as well as MEPs from the globalist Left, are already bracing to take in his next year's Tusvanyos speech.

The author is chief senior analyst at the Szazadveg Center for Public Knowledge Foundation