U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the White House in May, 2019.Manuel Balce Ceneta/The Associated Press
Donald Trump’s authoritarianism has sometimes been likened to Viktor Orban’s approach in Hungary.
Prime Minister Orban won an election in 2010 and has since been dismantling democratic institutions, downgrading checks and balances, taking control of independent media and cracking down on universities. In the spring Mr. Orban compared political opponents to “insects” that have survived for too long.
Mr. Trump is a big admirer of Mr. Orban’s. Their teams have met several times over the years and exchanged notes.
Closely charting Mr. Orban’s takeover methods has been Peter Kreko, a Hungarian economist and political scientist who is director of the Political Capital Institute.
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As bad as the Hungarian strongman is, Mr. Kreko said in an interview, his government is not as repressive in some respects as the regime the American President is putting in place. Mr. Trump has “gone further” in the last few months, he said, “than Mr. Orban did in 15 years.”
“[Mr.] Orban has always been careful in trying to keep at least a democratic facade,” Mr. Kreko added. He pressures the judiciary, putting in place loyal judges, but does it in a much more careful way. He wouldn’t consider putting troops in the streets as Mr. Trump has done in cracking down on immigrants and crime. On curbs on scientific research, he said, “here we can’t imagine what Trump is doing.” The style is also different. There isn’t the self-glorification that sees Mr. Trump hanging big banners of himself on government buildings.
Mr. Orban sounded Trumpian in March when he said it was time to get rid of what he called a “shadow army” of NGOs, journalists, judges and politicians who he said were working for foreign powers.
But he has not followed up, said Mr. Kreko. However, “if he sees that [Mr.] Trump can get away with what he is doing, he will be more uninhibited.”
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It’s unbelievable that the U.S., the longtime champion of democracy, is moving in the other direction, Mr. Kreko said. Even more shocking is that there is not more opposition to it from the American people.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has cleared the way for Mr. Trump to assert even more control over the levers of power. In keeping was his demand this week that Attorney-General Pam Bondi get more aggressive in investigating political opponents: “We can’t delay any longer.”
Such moves have even angered some Republicans, most of whom act like Mr. Trump’s puppy dogs. Political strategist Karl Rove called it “wrong and dangerous,” to use the murder for political purposes. “It will further divide and embitter our country.”
What the administration is doing with threats on freedom of speech from the Federal Communications Commission is “right out of Goodfellas," and “dangerous as hell,” said Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
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The Trump clampdown on media hasn’t equaled that of the Hungarian leader, but with his threats to revoke the licences of TV stations and other intimidating measures, he’s catching up. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, in an outrageous display of censorship, is demanding pledges from Pentagon reporters to refrain from gathering information that has not been authorized for release.
The purges of anyone deemed to be acting disloyally, such as Mr. Trump’s firing of his top labour statistician for putting out job figures he didn’t like, has a totalitarian touch. This followed his attacks on liberal universities and his war on science. At the United Nations this week, Mr. Trump called climate change the “greatest con job” ever perpetrated and “made by stupid people.”
Last week Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, expressed annoyance at Canadians’ negative attitude toward his country. That the ambassador expects otherwise, given Mr. Trump’s gratuitous tariffs, annexation talk and his being the first president since the invention of the telephone to treat Canada as an adversary, is risible.
In the election campaign, Kamala Harris called Mr. Trump a fascist. It didn’t get much pick-up then, but she would be on firmer ground with the accusation now. The question is how one defines fascism. Political scientist Lawrence Britt, who studied many fascist regimes, found they had 14 elements in common. Remarkably Mr. Trump checks the boxes on almost all of them. And his second term is only getting started.
Both his Republican Party and Mr. Orban’s Fidesz Party face electoral tests next year. If the results don’t go their way, their reactions on whether to accept them will be a fine test of which leader is the most anti-democratic. Mr. Trump’s track record in respect to the 2020 election is an indicator.