What the Hell is Wrong with Hungary?

[appalachiablue]

- The 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
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- Daily Kos, April 4, 2022.

I haven’t seen this written about here yet, and what little MSM coverage of Hungary’s election yesterday has been quite superficial at best, so I’ll just put it out for general discussion — what the Hell is wrong with Hungary (and by extension, the substantial majority of today’s Hungarians)?

They had their one chance yesterday to rescue their country from the increasingly autocratic one-man rule of Viktor Orban and his quasi-fascist Fidesz party, but instead gave him an overwhelming electoral victory over the united opposition. Sure, we can make excuses that it wasn’t really a completely free and fair election, given Orban’s media monopoly and gerrymandered manipulation of the electoral process, but even the opposition concedes Fidesz won a substantial majority of the votes cast — unlike the case with the 2020 Belarus election where Lukashenko had to commit wholesale fraud to claim an illegitimate win.

So how is it that the land of Lajos Kossuth, whose hopes for Hungarian independence and the Liberal Revolution of 1848 were overthrown by Imperial Russia, and Imre Nagy, whose efforts to free his country from their Soviet successors were crushed under the tread of Russian tanks in 1956, now flocks to the standards of Putin’s biggest European cheerleader? Has the land of the Magyars become so corrupted that they now place pecuniary measures like the price of gas above existential questions of good and evil that now even extends to genocide? ~

- 225 Comments, 130 Recs,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/4/2090117/-What-the-Hell-is-Wrong-with-Hungary
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- Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Orb%C3%A1n
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- BBC News, Hungary Profile - Timeline, Key Events:

..- 1919 - Communists take over power under Bela Kun. Kun wages war on Czechoslovakia and Romania. Romanian forces occupy Budapest and hand power to Admiral Miklos Horthy.
- 1920 - Under Treaty of Trianon, Entente powers award more than two-thirds of Hungarian territory to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. The re-defining of Hungary's borders leaves a third of native Hungarian speakers living outside the country.
The National Assembly re-establishes the Kingdom of Hungary, but as the Entente powers had refused to allow the return of a Habsburg king, Admiral Horthy is made regent.

- 1920s-1930s - Admiral Horthy's rule is characterised by bitter resentment at loss of Hungarian territories, becomes progressively more reactionary and more closely allied with Nazi Germany.
- 1938 - After Munich Agreement cedes part of Czechoslovakia to Germany, Hungary regains some of the territory it lost in 1920.
- 1939 - Hungary joins Anti-Comintern Pact of Germany, Japan and Italy, and withdraws from League of Nations.
- 1940 - With the encouragement of Nazi Germany, Hungary regains northern Transylvania from Romania.
- 1941 - Germany invades Soviet Union. Hungary allies itself with Germany, and loses a large part of its army on the Eastern Front.
- 1944 - Hungarian Nazis seize power after Horthy asks advancing Soviet troops for an armistice. Jews and gypsies are deported to death camps.

- Communist rule
- 1945 - Soviet forces drive the Germans out of Hungary by early April. New coalition government introduces land reform bill, redistributing land from large estate owners to peasants.
- 1947-49 - Communists consolidate power under Soviet occupation, with new constitution, nationalisation of industry, collectivised agriculture and mass terror.
- 1956 uprising, Stalin statue being toppled... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17380792