This is what authoritarianism and nationalism gets you... Hungary downgraded to "partly free"

[ck4829]

Hungary has become the first European Union country to be designated as “partly free” in an annual gauge of democratic freedoms, underscoring the effects of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s drive to create an illiberal state.

The erosion of democracy under Orban constitutes “the most dramatic decline ever charted” in the EU, Freedom House, a Washington-based think-tank, said in its annual Freedom in the World report. All other 27 EU members retained a “free” label.

The government in Budapest rejected the report, saying in a statement Tuesday that Freedom House was part of the “empire” of George Soros (Doesn't THAT sound familiar, blaming The One Jew), the Hungarian-born billionaire investor and philanthropist. Most of Freedom House’s funding comes from the U.S. government.

Orban, who returned to power in 2010, has overseen the most extensive centralization of power since the end of communism. He’s appointed allies to head formerly independent institutions, extended his influence over parts of the court system and curbed dissent by tightening regulations over universities and civil society. The EU is currently probing whether to sanction the perceived rule-of-law violations here and in Poland. “Hungary has become a trailblazer when it comes to dismantling democracy,” said Zselyke Csaky, Freedom House’s head of research for Europe and Eurasia. “It’s spawned copy-cats inside the EU as well as across the Atlantic.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/hungary-becomes-first-partly-free-eu-nation-in-democracy-gauge

[PSPS]

1. And, of course, Orban has been invited to the white house. he fits right in.

[DFW]

2. Orban is 75 years too late. He really missed his calling

Though nominally an ally of Germany since outbreak of World War II, Hungary didn't really participate in earnest in the rounding up and extermination of Jews until 1944, when the tide had definitely turned against the Axis already.

Orban is new model of the Hungarian regime of 1944, and is unashamedly proud of it. The EU is understandably unhappy having him as head of one of their member states, and even less happy about the strong support he has among his people.

We should be concerned as well. Why? Orban controls virtually ALL the media in Hungary, and Hungarian is SO completely different from all other European languages that media from outside must be translated, or it will only reach people well-enough educated to be fluent in other languages.

We have plenty of other media than Fox, Sinclair and National Hate Radio, of course, but there are large portions of our country that only listen to those three, and actually believe what they hear..

[DBoon]

3. Fascism wasn't just Hitler and Mussolini

Many states had their own versions, which when supported by the Nazis enthusiastically supported Nazi extermination policies. Hungary's version was the Arrow Cross, for example.

The Romanian Iron Guard is very similar to modern "alt right" movements, in its pretensions to intellectualism.

[DFW]

4. So true. The appeal was much broader. n/t

[Hortensis]

5. The 1990s saw the birth of many new democracies.

Now with a perform storm of bad factors coming together, it's "a republic if you can keep it."