The often vicious media machine built by Hungary’s longtime leader Viktor Orban last week took a small step toward accepting that elections in April had swept away the old system. Its flagship newspaper promised to stop calling the incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, a “bug” who must be “exterminated.”
“In the future, we will refrain from calling you a bug or showing you as an insect in any context,” Magyar Nemzet, a pugnacious print and internet outlet, said in a contrite letter to Mr. Magyar, who takes over as Hungary’s prime minister on Saturday.
The letter was sent on orders from a Hungarian court, so was hardly a spontaneous peace offering, but its sincerity is sure to be tested by Mr. Magyar’s ascent.
The incoming prime minister has insisted that his sweeping election victory on April 12 should bring about not only a change of government in Hungary, but a “complete regime change” after 16 years of rule by Mr. Orban’s defeated Fidesz party.
Whether that happens will depend on uprooting a vast network of patronage that embedded Fidesz loyalists in businesses, the judiciary, regulatory agencies, prosecutors’ offices and the news media.
For now, many erstwhile Orban loyalists are doing the hard work for him. While some are resisting what they see as a vengeful purge by a power-hungry new leader, many who depended on Fidesz for jobs and protection are already changing sides.
The turnaround has come with the dawning realization that Mr. Magyar’s victory so battered the once-invincible Fidesz that it has no real hope of keeping state funds and contracts flowing to its friends, or of holding anticorruption investigators at bay.
A prominent Fidesz-friendly businessman, Gyula Balasy, announced in a tearful interview on Monday that, fearing investigation for corruption, he was giving the state ownership of four of his main companies.
His business won lucrative and, according to rival companies, highly overpriced contracts from Mr. Orban’s government to plaster billboards across Hungary with incendiary posters denouncing the European Union and Ukraine.
Hungary’s national police force said on Wednesday that it had blocked bank accounts connected to Mr. Balasy’s companies and started a “fraud and money laundering” investigation.
Mr. Magyar welcomed the businessman’s retreat, saying on Facebook that “this system can collapse much faster than anyone would think.”
“For all of them it is over. They believed that it would continue forever and are now going through all the stages of grief,” said Csaba Lukacs, a veteran journalist and the managing director of Magyar Hang, a conservative newspaper.
Mr. Lukacs once worked for Magyar Nemzet, the newspaper that referred to the new prime minister as a bug, but left when Fidesz started turning it into a nationalist bullhorn focused on smearing Mr. Orban’s opponents.
“Fidesz,” he said, “became a cult,” with Mr. Orban at its center. Shellshocked by its election debacle, the party is struggling to understand what happened and to adjust to the new order. (Magyar Nemzet now runs post-election information under a new rubric: “Post-Trauma News.”)
The list of those traumatized is long as Mr. Magyar promises to remove what he calls the “puppets of the old regime.”
TV2 Group, a private broadcaster, fired its news director, a Fidesz loyalist who heavily slanted news in favor of Mr. Orban, and canceled a particularly venomous program, Tenyek, promising a “renewal” of its approach and “to provide a news service that meets expected professional standards.”
The broadcaster is controlled by Lorinc Meszaros, a childhood friend of Mr. Orban’s and former boiler fitter who, thanks largely to state contracts, became one of Hungary’s wealthiest tycoons.
M1, the main state television channel, which never featured Tisza candidates during the campaign except to insult them, has suddenly started giving extensive airtime to Mr. Magyar, who has denounced its news division as a “factory of lies.”
Among the most traumatized sectors is the sprawling network of research groups and academic bodies that organized conferences in praise of Mr. Orban and pumped out material reviling the European Union, the Hungarian-born financier George Soros and liberals in general.
Szazadveg, a lavishly funded pro-Fidesz research organization, announced on Tuesday that it was going through a “change in focus” with a smaller staff.
Effectively financed by the state through nominally independent foundations filled with Orban loyalists, this galaxy of right-wing groups turned Budapest into a mecca for MAGA Republicans from the United States and for like-minded Europeans who describe themselves as “anti-woke.”
Hungary’s election “is a disaster for us,” Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch anti-immigration campaigner and regular visitor to Budapest, said in a despondent video posted on social media.
In March, she gave a speech at what might have been the last annual gathering in Budapest of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a MAGA-aligned American organization.
CPAC denies receiving money from the Hungarian budget. But a sponsor of its annual Budapest conclave, the Center for Fundamental Rights, received government money through a foundation controlled by Fidesz.
“CPAC can come to Budapest, very welcome, but not with Hungarian taxpayers’ money,” Mr. Magyar said after his election victory.
The lopsided election result “surprised everyone,” said Gabor Szucs, an analyst at the Center for Fundamental Rights and a founding member of pro-Fidesz National Resistance Movement. He will sit in Parliament as a Fidesz legislator.
“I consider Peter Magyar dangerous,” he said. “For the right, the most important thing now is to stand together, encourage one another and strengthen our community.”
Some are resisting the abrupt shift in political winds. Hungary’s president, Tamas Sulyok, selected for his largely ceremonial job in 2024 by a Fidesz-dominated Parliament, has ignored Mr. Magyar’s demand that he step down. Mr. Orban asked his voters to sign an online petition: “Hold on, Mr. President.”
Fidesz’s election rout has stirred deep division over how to recover. Some are even calling for a purge of its leadership, including Mr. Orban.
“If the same people want to rebuild Fidesz who got us to this point, we will be in big trouble,” Nora Kiraly, a failed parliamentary candidate for the party, said last week in a message on Facebook pleading for a “total overhaul.”
“At present there is zero self-reflection and zero realization of the fact that Hungary began to recover on the evening of April 12,” she said, complaining of “threats and intimidation” against dissent within the party.
Fidesz operates in “a kind of feudal chain of command, with no room for criticism or comments,” said Gabor Hajnal-Nagy, a Fidesz member of the local council in Jaszbereny, a town east of Budapest.
“Loyalty to Mr. Orban is the only criterion for Fidesz members,” he added.
Since his defeat, Mr. Orban has given up his seat in Parliament but is staying on as Fidesz leader, saying he wanted to focus on rebuilding the “patriotic camp.”
Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a Budapest research group critical of Fidesz, said Mr. Orban could take the path taken by President Trump after his election defeat in 2020, when he “was able to strengthen his position by casting himself as a victim.”
But Mr. Orban’s party, he added, seems “paralyzed,” with its supporters in business, politics and academia “stepping down on their own, surrendering without a single shot fired.”
Mr. Orban, he added, “has no chance to return to power.”
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw.
The post As Hungary Gets a New Leader, the ‘Trauma’ Sinks In for Orban Loyalists appeared first on New York Times.
