When Americans think of dictatorships or authoritarian regimes, they imagine scenes from 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale with oppressed masses marching with boot marks on their faces. However, The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz says it’ll most likely resemble many of us drinking a negroni in a lovely neighborhood bar during a pleasant Summer afternoon. That’s the scene from modern Hungary, which is, at best, described as a “hybrid regime” and competitive autocracy, that still has elections and the institutions of a democracy but is nonetheless ruled by Viktor Orban and a single party.
Andrew spent time in Hungary talking to dissidents, academics, and true believers, asking them to analyze and comment on their country’s gradual backsliding into democracy and embrace of a racist strongman. It’s instructive for America because Hungary is the aspirational blueprint for the modern MAGA movement. Unlike the majority, MAGA doesn’t suffer from a failure of imagination. They know exactly what they want, which is power in the hands of a right-wing minority that nonetheless cosplays as a democracy.
During the first four months of his Presidency, Trump has already taken cues from Orban’s playbook and attacked the media, judiciary, and universities. He’s removing individuals deemed “disloyal” to him and replacing them with incompetent, reckless sycophants, such as extremist, pro-Nazi podcaster Paul Ingrassia, who just became the head of the United States Office of Special Counsel. Meanwhile, our corporate media remains obsessed with a dangerous “both sides” framing and continues sanewashing MAGA’s overt corruption. Democrats, for the most part, are impotent and powerless, unable and unwilling to fight for anybody or anything except their wealthy donors.
So, is authoritarianism inevitable? No, according to Marantz. There is still enough time, and enough people, who can use the levers available to us to push back and resist what is inevitably an incompetent, ruthless, and dangerous right-wing machine that wants to copy Orban’s “hybrid autocracy” for America.
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