In the universe of far-right politics, the three members of the Axis of Evil are Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Viktor Orban. The first presides over the most powerful country in the world. The second launched the first major land invasion in Europe in over 75 years. The third has done his best to destroy the European Union from within.
On Sunday, the axis lost its littlest member. After 16 consecutive years as the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban—the joint-custody mini-me of Putin and Trump—went down for the count. His party, Fidesz, didn’t just lose the latest election. It lost bigly.
It wasn’t exactly a swing of the political pendulum in Hungary. The winning party, Tisza, is quite conservative in its outlook. It ran not so much on an ideological platform but against Orban’s corruption, authoritarianism, and deep-seated anti-Europeanism. Simply put, Hungarians had grown sick and tired of Orban’s excesses.
Only three political parties made it above the 5 percent threshold in the parliamentary elections. The opposition Tisza party captured a supermajority of parliamentary seats. Orban’s Fidesz came in a distant second. And the Our Homeland Movement, which is even further to the right than Fidesz, just squeaked in.
Significantly, all vaguely progressive …read more
Source:: Institute for Policy Studies
