“Hungary is a lesson for Americans” - Timothy Snyder
Is change possible even when the system feels rigged?
Professor Timothy Snyder argues that Hungary's recent political shift offers a crucial lesson for everyone.
If democracy can be reclaimed in a country where it seemed 'hopeless’, it is possible anywhere, including in the U.S.
Watch this brief but profound perspective on why standing up for democracy matters.
"Well, I think they're two very different cases because however one evaluates the Bulgarian one, we don't know how significant it will be, whereas Orbán isn't just a person or a government. Orbán was an entire system.
Orbán was an example of how to build an authoritarian state from a democracy. Orbán was an example of how you exploit the European Union from the inside in order to build an oligarchy in your own country, and meanwhile make it harder for the European Union to implement any kind of sensible policy, and Orbán was, also, the center of an international network, an international far-right oligarchical network, in which Russian money was laundered by way of Budapest into Western institutions, including American institutions, American political action committees, American think tanks, and so Orbán's defeat, I would say, is extremely consequential.
It has immediate consequences for Russia, for Ukraine, and, on the other side, it sets a positive example, right?
Because Hungary is exactly the situation that you were talking about in the beginning, where you could say, 'Well, everything is hopeless. The government controls mass media. The government never seems to lose an election. This guy's been in power forever. He seems to know all the tricks. The elections are going to be unfair,' which they were.
So, if you look at Hungary, from that perspective, it's very possible to be hopeless. But nevertheless, the Hungarian opposition, not only won, they won a huge victory, enough to build a constitutional majority and change the fundamental direction of the country. And so, that's a lesson for Americans and for everyone else. If this sort of thing is possible in Hungary, it's certainly possible in other places."
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