After going through a large number of articles and opinion pieces in the Hungarian pro-government media, I could not escape the conclusion that the Hungarian government wants either to plant or to reinforce doubts among its followers about the legitimacy of Biden’s electoral victory. In addition, Fidesz media lackeys are hard at work trying to shift the blame for the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters yesterday from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Let’s start with the question of the legitimacy of the electoral process. Most of those who address the electoral process and the possibility of irregularities skirt the issue by introducing the topic with such phrases as “many people question the final result” or “it matters not whether the Democrats cheated.” Others, however, are more outspoken. Today, Origo called the election itself scandalous and described yesterday’s events as the “chaos brought about by Joe Biden’s presidency.”
The Center for Basic Laws, a well-endowed, government-financed “legal think tank,” published a carefully crafted opinion piece on Facebook. It ends with the following sentence. After reviewing the recent happenings in the United States, “we from Hungary watch all of these things with serious doubts and concerns. We cannot be sure that the election or the handover process satisfies the democratic norms and standards of Western civilization. We will continue to follow closely and to encourage the international community to keep monitoring the regrettable American events to ascertain whether Joe Biden will be able to legitimately exercise power under these circumstances.”
Given the close connection between the Center for Basic Laws and the Orbán administration, I consider this damning passage on the election and future presidency of Joe Biden to be the current opinion of the Hungarian government. Once again, Orbán is tacking far to the right of other European politicians. Most notably, the Polish government, throwing its ideological objections to the wind, has displayed great enthusiasm for Joe Biden’s presidency.
President Andrzej Duda congratulated Biden twice on his victory. First, on December 15, when he also invited him to visit Warsaw, saying that he is “looking forward to all the meetings and discussions [they] will have in the future.” His second congratulatory message was sent today, in which he wrote that Poland is determined to maintain a “high-level, high quality partnership” with the United States.
Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau today posted the following on Twitter: “Strong Europe needs strong America. The US democracy was always empowered by values and upheld by institutions, enabling it to overcome even the most daunting challenges. This truth still holds—for the good of the American people and the free world.” So, if the Orbán administration continues to view the new American president as a usurper, it will not have the backing of its Polish cousins.
As for the pro-government media’s assessment of yesterday’s appalling events, there is a concerted effort to hold the Democrats responsible for the disturbances. Sebastian Gorka, who after his unceremonious removal from the White House in 2017 had more or less disappeared from the Hungarian media, reappeared as an expert on the U.S. election and became an important source of information. He has a close working relationship with Newsmax, Donald Trump’s new favorite TV channel, which is a “partner channel” of Hír TV, a development few people are aware of. In addition, Gorka has a podcast called “America First,” which is also featured in Magyar Nemzet. In Gorka’s reading, “there is a party that legitimizes and justifies violence, and that party is the Democratic party,” but in his usual fashion he doesn’t elaborate on the particulars.
How can you make the Democrats responsible for the Trump supporters’ siege of the Capitol? The story told over and over again in all sorts of Fidesz publications is that “everybody” knew what was going to happen when 250,000 (?) demonstrators descended on downtown Washington. The Democrats, however, purposely ignored the danger. On the other hand, “Donald Trump from the very first moment condemned force.” Throughout the event he asked his followers to avoid violence and to go home. But “his peaceful, soothing words in a video he placed on Facebook and Twitter” were censored by these social media outlets. This is story of yesterday’s events as fictionalized by Origo and many others.
When it comes to the people chosen for cabinet posts in the Biden administration, I found two articles noteworthy. One appeared in Magyar Nemzet, titled “Biden’s cabinet will be made up of women and people of color (színesbőrűek).” In English this sounds innocent enough, but in Hungarian it has a derogatory meaning, which becomes clear upon reading László Szőcs’s article in Index. Out of 12 nominated cabinet members, he writes, there are only “three English-speaking heterosexual men,” while in the Trump cabinet there were 10. I don’t know how Szőcs ended up with only three English speakers, but let that be his secret. He certainly makes sure that we know that both Tony Blinken and Janet Yellen are Jewish. As far as Kamala Harris is concerned, she is described as “black, Asian, and a woman: she may become the world’s most famous nobody.”
As for Hungarian expectations of the Biden administration with respect to U.S.-Hungarian relations, Dániel Deák, a close associate of Mária Schmidt, predicted in an interview that “for ideological reasons the sharp political attacks against Hungary before 2016 can be expected to return. Biden’s victory is therefore clearly detrimental to Central Europe.” For George Soros, “Biden’s victory was of great importance” because now his NGOs operating in Hungary will heavily influence Biden’s policy toward Hungary and the Central European region.
We will see how Orbán will handle this new situation. Although almost all European prime ministers and heads of state have already congratulated Joe Biden, there has been silence from Budapest.
