Hungary: A Small Population in a Larger World.

As one learns more about Hungarians and Hungary, I often wonder why the country continues to elect a dictator, Victor Orban, and his government to power.  It is not an easy question, and many of the answers include his control of the media and his unwavering connection to the people of the countryside of Hungary, who, despite the highest inflation in Europe and rampant poverty, continue to support him.

The Orban family and the friends of the government have enriched themselves lavishly even as many Hungarians have been unable to heat their homes in the winter and buy food at reasonable prices.  The gasoline prices are some of the highest in Europe, teachers and nurses are the most underpaid in the EU and highway tolls have nearly doubled in the past year.  The government has befriended the criminal regime of Vladimir Putin, recently signing new gas purchase deals and further enhancing an atomic energy project. Many of the large government agencies, including the gas utility MVM, are state-owned or, more correctly, partially state-owned, with friends of the government taking large stakes in almost all regulated entities with consistent cash flow.  The heating gas prices in Hungary are some of the highest in Europe,

Teaches Protesting at the October 23rd Demonstration in Budapest 2023. 

 
Even though the Orban government has repeatedly said that the supply deal with Russia is the cheapest possible.  It is a state modelled under the rules and ethics of a Mafia organisation.  The history of Hungary does tend to explain many of these anomalies.

Hungary has had a complicated history going back to the Turkish invasion of the 1600s.  Having fought on the German side in WWI and again in WWII, Hungary lost much of its land and now occupies only one-third of the original Kingdom of Hungary.  After WWII Hungary fell into the hands of communism and has always remained suspicious and skeptical of the Western Powers.  The revolution of 1956 was thwarted quickly by the Russians, and although Hungary called for help from the West, no one came and answered the call.  Hungarians were left alone and suffered the brutal recriminations and revenge of the Russian-installed puppet government.  

I would argue that as a result of the historical suffering, the Hungarian people are in a state of post-traumatic stress syndrome or PTSD, a condition perfect for the creation of a dictator and the inability of the population to rid themselves of such a dictatorship.  The government propaganda machine is unbelievably efficient, having taken over all media by friends of the state.  Much of this is modelled under the Russian propaganda system, where almost all the lies of the state are believed.  In fact, I spoke with one gentleman, not uneducated, who firmly believed that the United States created the Ukrainian war in order to make money by selling arms.  

Man watching Teachers Demonstration. 

Many of these lies are believed and made into mythological truths that reinforce the idea that the aggressive government currently in power is the only one that can maintain stability and a national identity.  Coupled with an inherent suspicion of the West by a tiny population whose language and way of life are under threat, it is comforting for many to support the nationalism promulgated by the current government.  When Orban reels against the EU and the United States, many people here feel good about that rebellious tendency and its nationalist quality.  

The Frankfurt school Sociologist, Bruno Bettleheim, after WWII, came up with the concept of Identification with the Aggressor or the idea that those that are subjugated soon learn to copy the behaviour of those aggressive to them as a form of survival.  Much of that is evident in today's Hungary.