Authoritarism in Hungary and Poland

[rmgill]

At this point it's become so bad that the left can go riot in the streets and they're called justified. For the right, if a father is unhappy and angry that his daughter was sodomized he's a terrorists for nothing more than strong language and pulling his arm out of the hands of a cop trying to restrain him. 

[sunday]

When the Polish government/legislative tried to unpack the Polish Supreme Court from all the leftist judges that the previous, Left, government had appointed, the EU commission was up in arms against that attack to the independence of the judiciary...

Then, there are the pro true-family measures adopted by Orban, like substantial rebates in income tax, for life, for mothers.

Also, this, from one of the links I previously posted:

Quote

The Commission against Hungary and Poland: an ideological persecution

A few weeks ago, the European Commission admitted that the delay in the arrival of aid funds for the pandemic to Hungary and Poland and the refusal of their governments to assume certain ideological agendas: “There is a link between the plans and the country-specific recommendations in the European semester,” Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, said, and pointed out the impediments: in the case of Poland, “the independence of the justice system”, and in Hungary “the fight against corruption”.

Last week, Financial Times linked the blocking of EU funds to Hungary and Poland to “human rights” issues: “Poland and Hungary are embroiled in disputes with the EU over rule of law issues including allegations of discrimination against LGBT+ people“, the British newspaper noted. These two issues are the most mentioned in the media when it comes to talking about the causes of the ideological persecution of the European Commission against Poland ajd Hungary, and it is necessary to qualify it this way because under the term “rule of law”, the EU is introducing an ideological agenda that has nothing to do with democratic values and that even puts them under threat.

The Commission’s ideological agenda: abortion and gender ideology

In Counting Stars you could already see some examples of this ideological offensive, such as the EU’s attempt to impose on Poland an agenda in favor of abortion and against an anti-pedophilia law approved by the Polish Parliament, for the mere fact that this norm prevents the imposition of gender ideology in the country, and Brussels’ opposition to the anti-pedophilia law approved by the Hungarian Parliament, in terms very similar to the aforementioned Polish law. Thus, we are not facing an objection from Brussels to alleged violations of the rule of law, but rather an attempt to impose the ideological theses of the left, a thesis to which the European People’s Party has been giving way.

 

Edited October 13, 2021 by sunday

[BansheeOne]

5 hours ago, bojan said:

One is a part of the other. Economic policies are a means to tighten their control, control is a way to prevent criticism when economic policies fail.

Elegantly put. Orban at least really seems to have no actual ideology other than maintaining power by creating a friendly class with a controlling stake in national power and wealth both supportive of and dependent upon his system. All the rallying items and bogeymen - nationalism, Christianity, conservative vs. liberal values, the EU, immigrants, Soros, gipsies and, lately, homosexuality - are just to distract from that. Which appears to work equally well with left- and right-wingers as they rubberneck after the latest political squirrel while Orban's crony clique gets handed another slice of national assets. 

I'm not sure what turned the former liberal anti-authoritarian into somebody who styles himself defender of the Christian occident while running interference for his buddy Erdogan against any EU censure and turning Hungary into a European bridgehead for China between the first and second part of his rule; I suspect it was a kind of idealism-shattering disappointment over being voted out for the slightly repainted old Socialists. It's like he swore that would never happen to him again, and if Hungary was to be ruled by a cleptocratic regime masquerading with updated bits of old ideology, it would be his. 

He never concealed that much, either. It was all there in his now-notorious 2014 speech about creating an illiberal state; the smokescreen was not yet well-developed, or maybe just not given much thought vis-a-vis a friendly, limited audience, but the road was clearly mapped. 

Quote

[...] 

The starting point of discussions on the future because, if I understand correctly, our task each year it to try to somehow understand together what is happening around us, to seize its important moments and to perhaps recognise from this what will happen to us in the future. And so if this is our task, then I suggest that we remind ourselves in short about the fact that there were three great changes in the global regime during the 20th century. At the end of the First World War, at the end of the Second World War and in 1990. [...] 

The statement that I would like to put forward as the starting point of my speech today is that there is a change of similar value and weight going on in the world today. The manifestation of this, meaning when it became absolutely obvious, is what we describe as the 2008 financial crisis, or rather the Western financial crisis. [...] 

Since the state is nothing more than a form of organising the community, which in our case sometimes coincides with the country’s borders and sometimes doesn’t, and this is something I will touch on again a little later, the determinative moment in today’s world can perhaps be described by saying that there is a race underway to find the method of community organisation, the state, which is most capable of making a nation and a community internationally competitive. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the explanation for the fact that the most popular topic in thinking today is trying to understand how systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies and perhaps not even democracies, can nevertheless make their nations successful. The stars of the international analysts today are Singapore, China, India, Russia and Turkey. And I think that our political community recognised and touched on this challenge correctly several years ago and perhaps also succeeded in processing it intellectually, and if I think back on what we have done over the past four years and what we will be doing during the upcoming four years, then things can indeed be interpreted from this perspective. Meaning that, while breaking with the dogmas and ideologies that have been adopted by the West and keeping ourselves independent from them, we are trying to find the form of community organisation, the new Hungarian state, which is capable of making our community competitive in the great global race for decades to come.

[...]

With regard to the relationship between two people, the starting point of the liberal organisation of society is based on the idea that we have the right to do anything that does not infringe on the freedom of the other party. This is the ideological principle and starting point onto which the Hungarian world was constructed in the twenty years prior to 2010, in acceptance of the general principle in Western Europe, by the way. However, we needed twenty years here in Hungary before managing to determine the problem that although this is an extremely attractive idea, it is unclear who is going to decide the limits beyond which someone is infringing on our freedom. And since this is not automatically given, somebody must decide it. And since we have not appointed anybody to decide it, what we experienced continuously in everyday life was that the strongest decided. What we continuously experienced was that the weak were trampled over. Conflicts on the acceptance of mutual freedom are not decided according to some abstract principle of justice, but what happens instead is that the stronger party is always right. It is always the stronger neighbour who decides where the driveway will be; it is always the stronger party, the bank, who decides the interest rate on mortgages, and who changes it mid-term if needed, and I could continue on with a long list of instances that individuals and families with weaker economic defences experienced regularly during the previous twenty years. It is in reply to this that we suggest, and are attempting to construct Hungarian state life around this idea, that this should not be the principle on which society is built. This cannot be entered into law, we are talking about an intellectual starting point now. The principle around which Hungarian society is organised should not be that everything is allowed that does not infringe on the other party’s freedom, but instead should be that one should not do unto others what one does not want others to do unto you. And we are attempting to build the world that we call Hungarian society around this principle in Hungarian public thinking, within the education system and through personal example with our own behaviour. [...] 

It could happen, Ladies and Gentlemen, that in the United States – and I am refereeing to a piece of news I read yesterday – that in the United States the Senate, or perhaps it was the Senate and the House of Representatives together, decide to impeach the President of the United States for regularly overstepping his sphere of authority. And when I look behind these pieces of news I see that not only do they plan to impeach him, but the President of the United States has already been convicted of overstepping his sphere of authority on several occasions. Imagine what would happen in Hungary if Parliament took the Prime Minister to court for overstepping his sphere of authority and then the court found him guilty. How long could I remain in office, Ladies and Gentlemen? I am only citing these examples because we are living in a world in which anything can happen. It could even be the case that, when the various court proceedings are over, the Hungarians could receive back from the banks hundreds of billions of forints that they should never have been charged in the first place. Even that could happen, Ladies and Gentlemen! What I mean by all this is that it is practically impossible to forecast events precisely or within an insignificant margin of error. It could even happen, to give you another refreshing example in closing, that the election-winning Hungarian Government declares that at least fifty percent of the Hungarian financial system must be in Hungarian hands. Not in state hands, but in Hungarian hands. And that this will be the case only three months after the elections. Because this is what has just happened. In view of the fact that the Hungarian state has re-acquired a bank that should never have been sold to foreigners in the first place, and as a result the ratio of Hungarian national ownership within the banking system now exceeds fifty percent.

[...] 

https://2015-2019.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp

I find it more likely that the current Polish government is emulating the Orban method to secure honest ideological aims, as they represent rather traditional national convictions like a distrust of their neighbors born out of historical experience; they lack the opportunistic moment of Orban to turn around and ally with Russia, for example. Though skipping straight to China if they grew so much at odds with liberal Western values that both EU and American bennies needed to buy off the electorate dried up (see the recent legal move aimed at an American-owned independent broadcaster) would have a certain logic. The traditional enemy of my traditional enemy, and all that. 

[rmgill]

39 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

Elegantly put. Orban at least really seems to have no actual ideology other than maintaining power by creating a friendly class with a controlling stake in national power and wealth both supportive of and dependent upon his system. All the rallying items and bogeymen - nationalism, Christianity, conservative vs. liberal values, the EU, immigrants, Soros, gipsies and, lately, homosexuality - are just to distract from that. Which appears to work equally well with left- and right-wingers as they rubberneck after the latest political squirrel while Orban's crony clique gets handed another slice of national assets. 

Sorry, I think you're off the rails here Banshee. A lot of those liberal things are what are directly driving the crazy woke stuff here in the US. I can't speak for how it's going in Germany but at least here it's setting up everything for destruction of society as we know it. Identity politics and the woke LGBTQ stuff which is making your gender identity more important than your actual work product is just absurd. 

Folks pushing back COULD be observably using it as an avenue for power or it could be really about trying to stop the destruction of Hungary as a nation and a culture. 

[BansheeOne]

You're looking after the aforementioned squirrels. Which is unsurprising because as usual, like all the Sammite posters who yet again have somehow run the train into American partisan politics on page one of a thread about events on another continent, you think the whole world is like your image of the US. If you don't think I'm close enough to know better, listen to Bojan. Or you can wait till Adam Peter shows up and gives you an earful about his dear leader. 

[rmgill]

Ok. Then please. Steelman what Orban's position is vis a vis homosexual political pushes from the standpoint of Hungarian politics and things in Hungary. 
 

Mind you, if I compare to US political activity because the same thing seems to be happening here as there (immigration and open borders pushes by the left, media and corporate interests) I at least know I am casting around for comparable things for perspective. Its not like the overall gist of leftism across the world or  human behavior in the US is utterly unique and unparalleled. 

[DB]

My favourite comment here so far is that police violence in the UK is a tool of the left.

I fear my sides may split.

[Markus Becker]

10 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Orban at least really seems to have no actual ideology other than maintaining power ...

That reminds me of ... someone not Hungarian. 🤔

[jmsaari]

13 hours ago, rmgill said:

At this point it's become so bad that the left can go riot in the streets and they're called justified. For the right, if a father is unhappy and angry that his daughter was sodomized he's a terrorists for nothing more than strong language and pulling his arm out of the hands of a cop trying to restrain him. 

What has any of that to do with Poland & Hungary?

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10089723/Hungarian-fans-fighting-latest-incident-long-list-ugly-scenes-blighting-football.html

The wave of VIOLENCE: Hungarian fans fighting with riot police at Wembley is just the latest incident in a long list of ugly scenes blighting European football this year... but the reasons are complex

• Hungarian fans clashed with police at Wembley during their game vs England
• But English fans are not blameless - just look at the Euro 2020 final back in July
• Stewards are 'badly paid, badly trained, it's a very unstable job', says one expert
• Football can't solve the problem by itself, and it will require political will too

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/10/13/hungary-hooligans-black-shirts-caused-wembley-chaos/

https://www.joe.co.uk/sport/carthapian-brigade-hungary-ultras-293385

[Rick]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10089723/Hungarian-fans-fighting-latest-incident-long-list-ugly-scenes-blighting-football.html

The wave of VIOLENCE: Hungarian fans fighting with riot police at Wembley is just the latest incident in a long list of ugly scenes blighting European football this year... but the reasons are complex

• Hungarian fans clashed with police at Wembley during their game vs England
• But English fans are not blameless - just look at the Euro 2020 final back in July
• Stewards are 'badly paid, badly trained, it's a very unstable job', says one expert
• Football can't solve the problem by itself, and it will require political will too

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/10/13/hungary-hooligans-black-shirts-caused-wembley-chaos/

https://www.joe.co.uk/sport/carthapian-brigade-hungary-ultras-293385

So European football has violence in the stands and American football has violence on the playing field.

[sunday]

1 hour ago, jmsaari said:

What has any of that to do with Poland & Hungary?

It seems both Poland and Hungary are implementing policies aimed to prevent that.

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, jmsaari said:

What has any of that to do with Poland & Hungary?

Because it's not just US Liberalism, but western Liberalism that seems to be getting pushed into Hungary and Poland? 

The one big thing that the US Exports is culture and that  cultural zeitgeist that seems to be running across the US, Canada, Australia, etc is seen by folks in both Poland and Hungary and they've decided that they do not want that there? 

The situation in Louden County is an outgrowth of the demand to accept Transgenders thus, a Bi-sexual boy who wears a skirt who rapes a girl is NOT a problem in the school. Even when pressed. That sort of shift is something that appears to be a problem in more than just Louden County. Could be that Orban sees that and the push by the EU Council that Hungary SHOULD be having gay acceptance being taught in schools. Of course here, it's gone so far as to require that kids be taught about sodomy at an early age. 

Seriously, it doesn't take much to search for Orban and LGBT and find articles specifically pointing to the cultural push from the West on this front. Is there a different angle that I am not aware of? 

[rmgill]

30 minutes ago, sunday said:

It seems both Poland and Hungary are implementing policies aimed to prevent that.

I guess LGBTQ rights pushes for things like Drag Queen Story time spring un-referenced from anywhere else in Hungary and Poland...?

[rmgill]

And to be clear, do I think that LGBT folks should be attacked and abused legally in Poland, Hungary or anywhere else? No. But by the same token, if they feel that they don't want Drag Queen Story Time or 12 year olds pushed into Transgender surgery after they express interest in opposite gender toys for 5 minute, I don't blame them. 

I can see these sorts of things like bringing a train into the station. One puts the brakes on so that you stop IN the station. In the US and most of the west, the train went right on past the station and appears to not be stopping. I can't blame Orban and the other conservative factions in both Poland and Hungary from wanting to put the brakes on. Over here, we're going to have to get the train stopped and then conduct the whole consist backwards into the station which is always more time consuming. 

Edited October 14, 2021 by rmgill

[futon]

[jmsaari]

26 minutes ago, rmgill said:

Seriously, it doesn't take much to search for Orban and LGBT and find articles specifically pointing to the cultural push from the West on this front. Is there a different angle that I am not aware of? 

I think it was DKtanker(?) on first page who asked how is this different from Pelosi admonishing media for being uncooperative or smth to that effect. The difference is talking vs doing, Orban has been able to actually do that. You'd have a decent analogy if Biden managed to actually packed the SCOTUS with a buch of partisan democrat supporters & drove Foxnews & similar off the air... that's the issue with Hungary. I hope that's what you are missing, and you don't seriously think what's going on is actually just fine because he happens to be on an anti-LGBT-agenda. And that's in no way any defence of any of what's going on in the US or BLM/antifa types getting the pass for rioting & media painting a picture of police violence that's misleading to say the least unless one spends considerable time digging the actual statistics & details of the big-news cases... but ends wouldn't justify the means even if you were to take Orban at face value for trying to defend western values, which would be giving him ludicrous amount of benefit of the doubt, way, way past the point any is warranted.

[bojan]

If anyone thinking that Polish and Hungarian ruling parties (or generally any Eastern European "right wing" parties) ATM are in any way similar to the US "right" in the "fundamental values"... I have a bridge to sell you.

But why trust locals, when you can surely find US based youtuber that says those are OK.

[sunday]

Judging by this anti-Orban hit piece, the Hungarian media landscape shows more freedom than the Spanish one, and I do not see nothing wrong with wanting the national media owned by nationals.

[BansheeOne]

1 hour ago, rmgill said:

And to be clear, do I think that LGBT folks should be attacked and abused legally in Poland, Hungary or anywhere else? No. But by the same token, if they feel that they don't want Drag Queen Story Time or 12 year olds pushed into Transgender surgery after they express interest in opposite gender toys for 5 minute, I don't blame them. 

I can see these sorts of things like bringing a train into the station. One puts the brakes on so that you stop IN the station. In the US and most of the west, the train went right on past the station and appears to not be stopping. I can't blame Orban and the other conservative factions in both Poland and Hungary from wanting to put the brakes on. Over here, we're going to have to get the train stopped and then conduct the whole consist backwards into the station which is always more time consuming. 

Read his speech under my earlier link. It's all there, in his own words, in an official English translation on the Hungarian government website. The basic reasoning is "the 2008 world financial crisis showed liberal Western capitalism is doomed, authoritarian corporatist systems like Russia, China, Turkey, Singapore are the future". He even gives a definition of Western liberalism, and it's not the modern American "let's push diversity on everybody" one which as usual is at odds with that used in the rest of the world, but the classical "you have the right to do anything that does not infringe on the freedom of others". You know, exemplified in rugged American individualism.

He does indicate the common grievances of those who feel left behind by globalization and modernization which he intends to use in furthering his agenda - the unease about the power of international banks (not new really, since both Nazis and communists, well, banked on that), the feeling that politics care more about immigrants than the workers in declining domestic industries, the loss of identity, including as defined through Christianity. Note though that he also mentions Christianity as one of the inhibiting factors he pays lip service to uphold in his reorganization of the state, along with freedom and human rights. 

Again, I don't really know how people can buy into the "defender of the faith" act of someone who in fact defends Erdogan and China, two parties the same people otherwise scream about being rather repressive against Christians, from European censure due to overlapping economic interests in their personal circles. The same folks who go on about the US government being in China's pocket (at a time the US is actually moving to increase containment of China) because, Hunter Biden, don't say a peep as Orban turns Hungary into Beijing's European spy central and lets them build the first overseas campus of a CCP-affiliated university. Because, look - refugees! Gays! Soros!

[Der Zeitgeist]

25 minutes ago, bojan said:

If anyone thinking that Polish and Hungarian ruling parties (or generally any Eastern European "right wing" parties) ATM are in any way similar to the US "right" in the "fundamental values"... I have a bridge to sell you.

But why trust locals, when you can surely find US based youtuber that says those are OK.

I guess the question is if US-Republican leaning folks want to be similar to the eastern European right wing.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Der Zeitgeist

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, Rick said:

So European football has violence in the stands and American football has violence on the playing field.

Yes, but your players, generally speaking, are not Fascists. Look at the second link on the Carpathian Brigade, In another life they were called Brownshirts.

[urbanoid]

  

6 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

I guess the question is if US-Republican leaning folks want to be similar to the eastern European right wing.

Maybe. Having principles and abiding by the rules would be all great for the Republicans, if only the other side did the same. As they were/are, US conservatives were unable to conserve two genders or marriage as a union of man and woman. What's left to conserve at that point? The argument of not using the government to impose your values, because there's a risk of the other side doing the same, is totally invalid by now.

Edited October 14, 2021 by urbanoid

[BansheeOne]

34 minutes ago, bojan said:

If anyone thinking that Polish and Hungarian ruling parties (or generally any Eastern European "right wing" parties) ATM are in any way similar to the US "right" in the "fundamental values"... I have a bridge to sell you.

The kicker being that they weren't really different from the previous Romanian social democratic government either. The latter got somewhat of a pass because fellow nominal left-wingers in the EU were gladly occupied by chasing after Orban's right-wing squirrels, but eventually rose to sufficient notoriety to be used as a counter-club by conservatives against accusations of not cutting Fidesz lose. Again, with the possible exception of the PiS, the ideological front for these cleptocratic authoritarian regimes is interchangeable. 

[sunday]

49 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

The argument of not using the government to impose your values, because there's a risk of the other side doing the same, is totally invalid by now.

The word is suicidal, not invalid. If in a conflict one party escalates by using some methods, the other party should do the same or risk losing. 

There was a process of de-Nazification, de-Fascistization, and something like that in Japan after WWII. The methods used were quite in the Authoritarian side, as were implemented by occupation armies, and the end result are societies with better rule of law, and quite free elections.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, Communists were left in the education, and media organization of Western countries. Perhaps that was a mistake, and I am not referring to a lack of one-way helicopter trips here, nor of putting them in reeducation camps.

Finally, I have read that in this matter of Hungary/Poland against a Leftist-dominated EU, it is likely that Adenauer, Schuman, De Gasperi, or Monnet would have sided with Hungary and Poland.

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by sunday