Voting for a dictatorship

by Rick Johansen
Judging from statistical evidence, this blog doesn’t have much of a following in Hungary or, for that matter, anywhere else, but if anyone from Hungary is reading this piece; what were you thinking? You have just handed a landslide parliamentary majority to a friend and ally of Vladimir Putin.
The evidence of Russian war crimes has been mounting in recent days and weeks, with the most appalling scenes emerging of streets full of corpses, children being raped and abused and millions being displaced from their homes by a country led by a fascist tyrant. Yet we wake this morning to find that hard right PM Viktor Orban has won a fourth term in office. How did it happen?
The journalist Ian Dunt explains: “This is how it goes, of course. You gerrymander, purge the judiciary, take control of the media, rig advertising regulations. Orban creates his own information ecosystem where democracy really ceases to function.” This could never happen here, right? But since 2016, Britain has been on a similar path.

Boris Johnson’s government has been gerrymandering since he took office in 2019, with the support of certain powerful vested interests he tried to purge the judiciary, the attacks on the BBC and Channel 4 which the right wrongly perceives to be left wing, spending billions of taxpayers money on political campaigns, which helped enable our disastrous decision to leave the EU in 2016 – we’re there with Hungary, but on a smaller scale for now.

Even in Russia, Putin remains popular in many quarters. Given the tricks of the hard right trade, can anyone be surprised?

For all that, those who voted for the ruling Fidesz party need to give their heads a good wobble. With everything that’s happening in Ukraine, they have a leader who literally supports the man who is leading the criminal invasion of another country. And they vote for him in huge numbers.

Yes, we can blame manipulation by the powerful, including the media, but in the end voters decide and In Hungary most of those who voted returned to office one of Putin’s biggest supporters. They’ve probably voted themselves a step nearer to a dictatorship, too. When that happens, there will be no one to blame other than those who voted for it.

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