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Editorial: Hungary’s rejection of Viktor Orban a warning for the American right

April 13, 2026

For nearly two decades, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán oversaw what he himself described as the building of an “illiberal state” that many in the American right and particularly the MAGA movement have taken inspiration from.

Having served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002 and continuously since 2010, Orbán was a dominant political force who used his considerable power to reshape his country.

That all came crashing down this weekend. Orbán’s ruling party was swept from power in a landslide, with the country’s new leader, Péter Magyar, boasting Hungary was now “liberated.”

“We will do everything to restore the rule of law, plural democracy, and the system of checks and balances,” Magyar declared.

Magyar’s victory notably came after Vice President JD Vance unusually traveled to Hungary to boost Orbán on behalf of the Trump administration. “Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy, for truth and for the God of our forefathers?” Vance asked at a campaign rally for Orbán on April 7. “Then, my friends, go to the polls this weekend, stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you.”

Vance’s plea for Hungarians to “stand with Viktor Orbán” was met with a resounding “no” at the ballot box just days later.

Orbán separated himself from other European leaders with a hardline stand against immigration and an explicit commitment to maintaining “ethnic homogeneity.” In 2022, he infamously declared, “We do not want to become peoples of mixed race.”

Under the guise of Christian conservatism, Orbán also prioritized cracking down on LGBT rights. Last year, the Parliament passed a law intended to ban Pride events in the most authoritarian manner possible. As Human Rights Watch reported: “The law… authorizes authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify event organizers and attendees, with both groups facing fines of up to €500 for exercising their freedoms of assembly and expression.”

Orbán’s government also engaged in extensive crony capitalism, meddling in the free market in the name of national greatness. “By the end of Orbán’s second term in office, the state had taken control of around 300 to 400 companies in such diverse sectors as banking, energy, shipyards, airports, restaurants, broadcasting, waste collection, film production, and telecommunications,” noted the Cato Institute.

Furthermore, Orbán prioritized massive state subsidies to reverse the country’s declining birthrate — a “family-first” social engineering project that proved to be a costly failure. Despite spending roughly 5% of Hungary’s GDP on these incentives, the fertility rate has resumed its slide. As the Cato Institute noted, while the rate initially rose to 1.61 in 2021, it remains far below the replacement level of 2.1 and has declined every year since.

And as Cato’s Johan Norberg wrote for the Washington Post, a major lesson of Orban’s government can best be summarized as: “Sweeping aside institutional constraints on government in pursuit of grand visions of the common good unshackles the smallest, most sordid ambitions of rent-seeking and corruption.” Sound familiar?

Again, this is the government that the Trump administration defended by sending JD Vance to Budapest. This is the leader that right-wing pundits like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson have championed.

It should be obvious, but Orbán’s big-government authoritarianism is antithetical to American values. His downfall should burst the bubble of those on the right who think the path to permanent power is to mimic reactionary politics that despise checks and balances, individual rights, and economic freedom.

At the end of the day, bad ideas are bad ideas—no matter how much a strongman in power tries to make them seem otherwise.

Orange County Register

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Editorial: Hungary’s rejection of Viktor Orban a warning for the American right

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