Something great is happening tonight. Fascism has been defeated in front of our very eyes. Not everywhere on Earth, of course, and certainly not in the USA and Russia and, indeed, here at home where Nigel Farage’s Fascist Reform UK Ltd leads the polls, but in Hungary Viktor Orbán has been defeated.
It’s important because Orbán was supported by both the USA and his long time ally Russia. Only last week, US vice president J.D. Vance was dispatched to Hungary to offer full support to Orbán. It didn’t work and maybe had the opposite effect.
Here, the CATO institute explains better than I could how Orbán’s Fidesz party has undermined democracy to the extent that in many areas it isn’t a democracy at all. Free speech and the independent judiciary has been severely undermined in the 16 years of his rule and many believed that victory this time around could prove fatal for Hungary’s future. No more.
The winners are the centre-right Tisza, led by the next prime minister. While normally, one might be concerned by the election of a party of the right, by comparison to Fidesz they are practically liberals. It will be a disappointing night for allies like China, but devastating for Donald Trump and worse still for Vladimir Putin, who will have lost his biggest ally in the EU. For Farage, who is close to the USA, greatly admires Putin and is literally a friend of Orbán, it could be taken as a warning to what happens when people tire of the empty slogans and ugly rhetoric of the far right, something that Reform’s owner has traded on throughout his career.
I am not an expert on anything when it comes to Hungary but I know about fascism and tonight is a great night for democracy and free speech and a very bad one for fascists everywhere.
Farage said: “Orban is the future of Europe.” Not anymore he isn’t. He’s not the future of anywhere.
