A Model for MAGA- Viktor Orbán’s Hungary

Vik­tor Orbán’s Hun­gary mod­el has become a blue­print for many Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives. On March 31, 2025, The Atlantic pub­lished an analy­sis by Anne Apple­baum exam­in­ing how Hun­gary’s auto­crat­ic sys­tem has led to cor­rup­tion and eco­nom­ic decline despite right-wing Amer­i­can praise. The arti­cle begins:

Flashy hotels and upmar­ket restau­rants now dom­i­nate the cen­ter of Budapest, a city once bet­ter known for its shab­by facades. New mon­u­ments have sprung up in the cen­ter of town too. One of them, a pas­tiche of the Viet­nam War memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., mourns Hun­gary’s lost 19th-cen­tu­ry empire. Instead of war dead, the names of for­mer­ly “Hun­gar­i­an” places—cities and vil­lages that are now in Roma­nia, Slo­va­kia, Ukraine, Poland—are engraved in long gran­ite walls, solemn­ly memo­ri­al­ized with an eter­nal flame. But the nation­al­ist kitsch and tourist traps hide a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty. Once wide­ly per­ceived to be the wealth­i­est coun­try in Cen­tral Europe (“the hap­pi­est bar­rack in the social­ist camp,” as it was known dur­ing the Cold War), and lat­er the Cen­tral Euro­pean coun­try that for­eign investors liked most, Hun­gary is now one of the poor­est coun­tries, and pos­si­bly the poor­est, in the Euro­pean Union.

          Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/viktor-orban-hungary-maga-corruption/682111/

Key Points

• Hun­gary has become one of the poor­est EU nations despite the Vik­tor Orbán Hun­gary mod­el being praised by Amer­i­can conservatives.
• Orbán used his pow­er to enrich a small group of oli­garchs while the coun­try faces declin­ing indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion and healthcare.
• Amer­i­can fig­ures like Steve Ban­non and Her­itage Foun­da­tion’s Kevin Roberts have called Hun­gary “an inspi­ra­tion” and “the mod­el” for governance.
• Apple­baum warns the auto­crat­ic takeover admired by MAGA con­ser­v­a­tives has led to Hun­gar­i­an stag­na­tion, cor­rup­tion, and poverty.

Orban’s Corrupt Hungary- A Model for MAGA’s Attack on US Democracy

The trans­for­ma­tion of Hun­gary under Vik­tor Orbán has become a ref­er­ence point for the Amer­i­can MAGA move­ment, with experts warn­ing that the hol­low­ing out of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and the entrench­ment of loy­al­ists has cre­at­ed fer­tile ground for sys­temic cor­rup­tion and illib­er­al governance‑a sce­nario explored in recent warn­ings that America’s MAGA future could mir­ror Hungary’s decline under Orbán. This trend is rein­forced by the increas­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between U.S. con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ures and Hun­gar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, as lead­ers of the so-called “free speech uni­ver­si­ty” move­ment have estab­lished exten­sive ties to Orbán’s edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tives, notably through insti­tu­tions like the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium, which ampli­fy nation­al­ist and anti-lib­er­al nar­ra­tives. The Hun­gar­i­an government’s tight­en­ing of restric­tions on LGBTQ+ rights, often jus­ti­fied by invok­ing exter­nal threats and echo­ing Russ­ian influ­ence strate­gies, demon­strates how cul­ture war tac­tics are used to con­sol­i­date pow­er and export illib­er­al mod­els. Mean­while, the sus­pen­sion of Fidesz from the Euro­pean Parliament’s largest group sig­nals grow­ing inter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion, while direct engage­ment between Don­ald Trump, Vik­tor Orbán, and Ben­jamin Netanyahu over Hungary’s ICC with­draw­al high­lights the emer­gence of a transna­tion­al nation­al­ist alliance. These devel­op­ments are mir­rored in inde­pen­dent analy­ses that detail how Orbán’s regime has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tled checks and bal­ances, cen­tral­ized media con­trol, and enabled grand cor­rup­tion net­works man­aged by polit­i­cal elites, result­ing in Hun­gary being labeled the EU’s most cor­rupt state and a case study in demo­c­ra­t­ic backsliding.

Exter­nal References:

1. How Vik­tor Orban Pulled Off Hun­gary’s Descent Into Dictatorship

2. Hun­gary Most Cor­rupt EU Mem­ber in 2022: Watchdog

3. Cap­tur­ing the Media — Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Communication

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.