A Response to David Pressman

The ambassador, who left in disgrace, did not represent the American people in Hungary.

Recently, a journalist from a New York publication asked – certainly with hostile intentions – to interview me about my experiences in Hungary. Since then, I have reflected often on these experiences and how Hungary fits into the current global landscape. After reading David Pressman’s recent interview in the New York Times (a different New York publication), I perceived an opportunity to share these reflections in my own words. 

On multiple occasions, the former ambassador has asserted that he was an apolitical figure representing the United States, not a single political party. This is particularly offensive to American sensibilities in the context of media issues, where a recalibration toward independent media has been long overdue. 

Figures like Pressman are unrepresentative of the American people, but their voices have been artificially amplified. Thus, the idea of foreign media interference in the name of the American people, just as we are casting off the yoke of an “overwhelming media ecosystem” of our own, is rankling.

To this foreign observer and onetime businessman, anti-government Hungarian media outlets like Átlátszó and 444.hu seem a rather profitable undertaking. These media are financially attractive, as evidenced by a safety net of funding from the U.S. State Department and European Union, among others. (Most Americans are unaware their money is used in this way, though this topic is slowly gaining some attention in independent media.) These Hungarian anti-government outlets are also professionally attractive, as their work is widely cited in Western corporate media. Compare the global reach of Átlátszó and 444 to similar outlets in Austria, Slovakia, or Croatia. Journalism is a notoriously volatile profession in the Internet age, but anti-Fidesz journalism surely offers better career prospects than most.

As the reader well knows, Mr. Pressman’s stated figure of 85 percent pro-government media is a particularly bold lie. First, English-speakers have gradually learned the expression “by independent accounts” signifies “commissioned by NGOs,” whereby the outcome is preordained and politicized. (The same logic applies to assessments that Hungary is some sort of “electoral autocracy.”)

Hungarian-German journalist and media lecturer Boris Kalnoky has helpfully summarized the actual landscape in the Hungarian Review: "In a nutshell, after the collapse of communism, the post-communist elites were able to hold on to their networks and influence in what had been up to then the media of the Communist Party. Fidesz later acted to counterbalance that disadvantage. However, even now, media opposed to the government of Viktor Orbán clearly dictate the themes of the national conversation. As for suppressing free media, that is impossible. The legal guarantees for press freedom and simple market dynamics ensure that that can never happen."

I recall a recent cover of Hvg that portrayed the prime minister as some kind of deranged club DJ. I often chuckle at the cleverness of Hungarian journalism representing views different from my own, something I would never say about the patronizing counterparts in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe. This suggests another valuable insight: the ideological evenness of the Hungarian media landscape likely produces better journalism.

Pressman’s milieu, of course, has no interest in balanced coverage or quality journalism. 

In the United States, only large bookstore chains are likely to offer any kind of right-leaning publications; solely left-leaning viewpoints are on display at grocery stores, pharmacies, and other smaller stores. The “papers of record” that enjoy a lion’s share of influence and distribution similarly present uniform views. In his interview, Pressman recites a litany of influential print, online, and broadcast media outlets: “CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox…” Tellingly, only the last of these can be labeled right-leaning, while the first six all operate demonstrably on the left. Add to this list American corporate boards, school boards, church organizations, and even the military high command, and it represents something Americans outside of the coastal corridors might call “infinite control of a single political party.”

Unrestrained Rainbow Diplomacy

In the New York Times interview, Pressman and his interlocutor expressed astonishment that Hungarians perceived social activism “even if what was generating legitimate political concern didn’t have much to do with L.G.B.T.Q. issues at all.” This degree of denial can only exist in the sheltered confines of America’s coastal corridors, for rainbow diplomacy has been central to recent American foreign-policy activity.

How can we be sure? The foreign-policy establishment has told us. In 2023, United States National Security Council spokesman John Kirby asserted, “LGBTQ+ rights are…a core part of our foreign policy."

As if to confirm Kirby’s assertion, the practice of flying rainbow flags at American embassies – a ritual that started during the Obama administration and continued sporadically during the first Trump administration – became a matter of doctrinal purity during the Biden years. This phenomenon is not limited to American diplomacy. I have observed the Norwegian embassy in Budapest flying only a rainbow flag, and not the flag of Norway. Even the Vatican has not avoided this profession of secularized religion (though, notably, Muslim-majority countries largely have).

As independent journalists sort through the state-funded ideological weaponry of Biden's previous U.S. administration, expenditures in Central Europe are drawing some attention. One 2024 State Department grant awarded $25,000 to a Slovenian NGO for “empowering LGBTIQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in Slovenia.” Two separate State Department grants of $35,000 awarded Slovakian NGOs to “promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQI+ people in Slovakia” and “create a supportive environment for Slovakia’s LGBTQI+ minority.” Of course, Slovenians, Slovakians, and Americans would vote against these measures if they had a voice in such matters. Once again, malignant liberalism supersedes democracy.

Now let’s return to that confusion over why foreigners “encode the critique in a frame of, ‘This is L.G.B.T.Q.,’” and why Pressman “actually had to interrupt [a Hungarian government minister] and say, No, actually, I want to speak to you about your relationship with Vladimir Putin.” To the people on Main Street – the demos of democracy, the ones responsible for returning President Trump to office – the connection between these issues is clear. To average voters, it is an obvious problem that these flag-flyers and NGO-promoters are also responsible for matters of war and peace. While this unelected, activist managerial class has spent American resources with missionary zeal, the international situation has intensified.

For Americans, this means observing obscene losses of human life in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere, and the dizzying sums of American money propagating these deaths. The world has become a decidedly less stable place with the Biden-Blinken-Pressman milieu directing foreign policy. For Hungarians, Slovaks, and others throughout Europe, this means the existential angst of a war next door, rationing energy, burning wood, and interrupting school calendars. Ironically, for activities conducted in the name of “democracy,” these martial undertakings prove rather unpopular in the rare moments when they are subject to a vote.

I recall a conference call of journalists before the 2023 Slovakian parliamentary elections, in which one of the think-tank presenters quipped, “It will be difficult, but [Slovakian voters] can be led there. They need to see why their views are incorrect.” Of course, not all Europeans have the luxury of “incorrect views.” Dear reader, don’t take it for granted.

A Power-Sharing Deal Between Two Rival Gangs

French novelist Michel Houellebecq captures the essence of unrestrained liberalism masquerading as democracy in his 2015 novel entitled Submission: "When people got tired of [a center-left candidate], we’d witness the phenomenon of democratic change, and the voters would install a candidate of the center-right, also for one or two terms, depending on his personal appeal. Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm."

For decades, this system has prevented any democratic voice on issues such as mass immigration and cession of powers to Brussels, topics that are matters of course to ruling liberals but unpopular among voters. As I write these words, Germans are confronting the news that an Afghan migrant has been arrested after a stabbing spree that left at least two dead, including a two-year-old child. German voters have never enjoyed a democratic alternative to the society liberalism has wrought. Gastarbeiter were not on the ballot a half century ago; nor were the extension of Gastarbeiter contracts and family-reunification schemes; nor, more recently, was “Wir schaffen das.” 

Now, as Alternative für Deutschland sits at the brink of real parliamentary power – a degree of power that would give voters a voice on the migration issue for the first time – Berlin and Brussels are seeking to ban it.

In the Netherlands, Austria, and France, the political establishment has preferred the lack of a functioning government to respect for the will of voters. In the French case, in which establishment politicians have deployed every imaginable tactic to keep Marine Le Pen’s party from power, they seem to prefer an outright collapse of the current republican system to acceptance of France’s most popular party. 

Consider also Poland, Hungary’s eternal friend. After years of spinning the same narratives with which Hungarians are familiar – flawed democracy, electoral autocracy – Western liberals got their wish when Donald Tusk was reinstalled as prime minister in December 2023. The EU’s “rule of law” concerns evaporated instantaneously, and Tusk’s government has proceeded to stage a public-broadcasting coup, arrest political opponents, brutalize protesters, and ignore the rulings of inconvenient judges. Two lessons are worth internalizing here: one is that the death throes of malignant liberalism will be uneven and might continue for some time; second is that the Polish example is what Western liberals have in store for Hungary if they achieve power. Essentially all of Mr. Pressman’s activities in Budapest can be viewed in this context.

To this humble foreign observer, it seems relatively straightforward why Fidesz has remained in power so long: the opposition has failed to offer an appealing alternative. Recently, Mr. Márki-Zay, lionized in Western media, proved a poor campaigner (one recalls Kamala Harris). Mr. Magyar’s narcissism and personal history seem certain to cause him political problems, though predicting the future is a fool’s errand. And it is baffling that those who care about opposition politics would allow Mr. Gyurcsány and his allies to remain influential. Of course, few in the West care about these details.

Here, as is often the case, I feel blessed to have lived in Hungary.

I recall the attitude of a Hungarian woman, one of the most delightful people I met in Budapest, who was apolitical and generally no fan of Fidesz. However, as the 2022 parliamentary elections approached, she became a committed supporter of the ruling party, as she harbored a fanatical desire to prevent Mr. Gyurcsány and his friends from returning to power. It remains one of the most powerful democratic anecdotes I have encountered. I am confident the outgoing State Department regime in Budapest spent little time interacting with such Hungarian voters.

Deny Everything Abroad That You Encourage at Home!

“The Nazis were not very effective diplomats,” wrote American journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer in his 1939 book Germany Puts the Clock Back. “But as propagandists they were remarkable. Their system was successful by its very simplicity: deny everything abroad that you encourage at home; accuse your enemy of doing just what you intend to do; find effective slogans, and repeat them a thousand times.”

Apologies to the reader for a World War II-era reference, something that has become intolerably banal in American political discourse, but this example proved too compelling. 

For Mr. Pressman, of course, had little interest in diplomacy during his tenure in Budapest and scarcely pretended otherwise.

The second part of that equation, framing one’s enemy through an “accusation in a mirror,” is nothing new for anti-democratic movements, the latest manifestation of which is the West’s prevailing form of malignant liberalism. While the peoples behind the former Iron Curtain are less receptive to its false promises (to their credit), the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, among others, are still metabolizing this medicine.

 As Mr. Pressman and his hyper-liberal milieu exit the global stage, let us hope and pray they leave minimal damage in their wake.

Author Michael O’Shea is an American–Polish writer and a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest.