Orbán is falling tho. It’s going to be a fight, but he is consistently way behind in the polls and for the first time in 20 years, mainstream Hungarian public opinion is squarely against him.
Why is he even so popular. If any serious politician even looked in the russian direction in Poland he would crucified. I always thought it was common among post soviet states. And yer here we are in 2025 with fico in slovakia and orban in hungary.
It’s still a smaller problem than the US and even the Far Right around these parts won’t go down certain routes so popular in America (like the whole religious crap). Even the very overt association with the ultra rich you see in the US isn’t popular in Europe with the Far-Right - they’ll hapilly take their money, but only as long as it’s done quietly.
Absolutelly, there has been copying of American politics by first the European mainstream parties (which is how Neoliberalism came over) and of late the Far-Right who also got a lot of money from the likes of the Koch Brothers (Steve Bannon very overtly came to Europe some years ago with money from them to “Boost Far-Right parties”), but it’s done with very different twists and and that’s why I doubt a guy with the Societal-awareness of a pretty dumb doorknob, like Musk, can actually twist for his own benefit what are essentially local movements fit to local thinking and exist for local crooks to get rich.
I’ll give you a pretty interesting example of how these things are so adapted to local thinking: the Far-Right in The Netherlands, which predated the whole Steve Bannon thing by quite a lot - as far as I can tell it mainly got propelled to significance by the Theo van Gogh murder at the hands of an Islamist - was started by a guy - Pim Fortuyn - who from the start never hid that he was an homosexual. Even in most places in Europe this would be a big No-No for a Far-Right leader, worse so in the US, but in The Netherlands the mindset about sexual orientation is pretty much that it’s all normal and as relevant as one’s eye color, so for a Far-Right leader to have a sexual orientation other than the majority one was absolutelly fine because such things are irrelevant there.
This is the kind of differences of mindset that a guy like Musk faces if trying to influence politics in Europe. Sure, the Far-Right over here will take his money (they’re crooked crooks, so they’re fine with getting lots of money under the table) but any such party that actually followed his actual advices would end up overtaken by other Far-Right parties whose speech and politics were more adapted to the local thinking. Also being seen as associating with Musk would negativelly impact his vote, both because he is filthy rich and these parties capture a lot for vote from disenfranchised working class people and because he’s a foreigner so the Nationalists instinctivelly distrust him.
Oh thats true. Each country in europe has their own spin off far right. Also far right parties in europe already have their sponsors and they usualy have suspiciously russian accents. And its certainly better to keep quiet about that for them ( before russia invasion some could even get away with that in the western countries somehow , beacuse for some inexplicable reason pepole had suprisingly high opinion of russia, a f* dictatorship in europe. And its even worse with hungary, of all the countries that could romance with russia why tf hungary . That i just dont understand. In poland if anyone even looked favorably towards russia he would almoast be treated as a traitor , and hungary had similar experience with the soviets so why ).
Actually you know. I think i welcome the competition for the far right . Perhaps musk or other crazy bilionares can outbid some rusian oligarchs.
At worst nothing changes. At best far right will become tad more pro american. And americans are still our allies at the end of the day for better or worse.
Actually you post really made me think in a direction I didn’t expect.
You see, in countries with systems other than Proportional Vote - so, countries with electoral circles - the Left generaly has had less political power than their share of the vote because it gets divided (as the joke goes, “The biggest enemy of the Left is the Left”) and in systems with electoral circles that means fewer elected representatives per vote.
The exact same problem will apply to the Far-Right if they get divided. In fact, you can see it already in the last election in the UK, where the Far-Right Tories (who used to be just Conservative Right and moved to full-blown populist Far-Right during the Leave Referendum) have lost the elections because an even more Far-Right party called Reform UK appeared and divided their vote, which their First Past The Post electoral system (so, electoral circles with a single representative per electoral circle) transformed into a big loss for the Tories in terms of elected members of Parliament as it made them not come first anymore - and thus not get the member of parliament for that circle - in many such electoral circles in which they usually came first.
All this to say that a divided Far Right would probably be the best possible thing for Europe, at least in most countries (as only a few have electoral system using proportional vote), though paradoxically that would not impact the total representation of the Far Right in the EU Parliament because that one uses Proportional Vote.
There is quite a massive problem of europans increasingly choosing similary shitty politicians ( so far hungary and slovakia are the worst cases ).
Orbán is falling tho. It’s going to be a fight, but he is consistently way behind in the polls and for the first time in 20 years, mainstream Hungarian public opinion is squarely against him.
2026 might be it. Hope I didn’t jinx it.
Why is he even so popular. If any serious politician even looked in the russian direction in Poland he would crucified. I always thought it was common among post soviet states. And yer here we are in 2025 with fico in slovakia and orban in hungary.
True.
It’s still a smaller problem than the US and even the Far Right around these parts won’t go down certain routes so popular in America (like the whole religious crap). Even the very overt association with the ultra rich you see in the US isn’t popular in Europe with the Far-Right - they’ll hapilly take their money, but only as long as it’s done quietly.
Absolutelly, there has been copying of American politics by first the European mainstream parties (which is how Neoliberalism came over) and of late the Far-Right who also got a lot of money from the likes of the Koch Brothers (Steve Bannon very overtly came to Europe some years ago with money from them to “Boost Far-Right parties”), but it’s done with very different twists and and that’s why I doubt a guy with the Societal-awareness of a pretty dumb doorknob, like Musk, can actually twist for his own benefit what are essentially local movements fit to local thinking and exist for local crooks to get rich.
I’ll give you a pretty interesting example of how these things are so adapted to local thinking: the Far-Right in The Netherlands, which predated the whole Steve Bannon thing by quite a lot - as far as I can tell it mainly got propelled to significance by the Theo van Gogh murder at the hands of an Islamist - was started by a guy - Pim Fortuyn - who from the start never hid that he was an homosexual. Even in most places in Europe this would be a big No-No for a Far-Right leader, worse so in the US, but in The Netherlands the mindset about sexual orientation is pretty much that it’s all normal and as relevant as one’s eye color, so for a Far-Right leader to have a sexual orientation other than the majority one was absolutelly fine because such things are irrelevant there.
This is the kind of differences of mindset that a guy like Musk faces if trying to influence politics in Europe. Sure, the Far-Right over here will take his money (they’re crooked crooks, so they’re fine with getting lots of money under the table) but any such party that actually followed his actual advices would end up overtaken by other Far-Right parties whose speech and politics were more adapted to the local thinking. Also being seen as associating with Musk would negativelly impact his vote, both because he is filthy rich and these parties capture a lot for vote from disenfranchised working class people and because he’s a foreigner so the Nationalists instinctivelly distrust him.
Oh thats true. Each country in europe has their own spin off far right. Also far right parties in europe already have their sponsors and they usualy have suspiciously russian accents. And its certainly better to keep quiet about that for them ( before russia invasion some could even get away with that in the western countries somehow , beacuse for some inexplicable reason pepole had suprisingly high opinion of russia, a f* dictatorship in europe. And its even worse with hungary, of all the countries that could romance with russia why tf hungary . That i just dont understand. In poland if anyone even looked favorably towards russia he would almoast be treated as a traitor , and hungary had similar experience with the soviets so why ).
Actually you know. I think i welcome the competition for the far right . Perhaps musk or other crazy bilionares can outbid some rusian oligarchs. At worst nothing changes. At best far right will become tad more pro american. And americans are still our allies at the end of the day for better or worse.
Actually you post really made me think in a direction I didn’t expect.
You see, in countries with systems other than Proportional Vote - so, countries with electoral circles - the Left generaly has had less political power than their share of the vote because it gets divided (as the joke goes, “The biggest enemy of the Left is the Left”) and in systems with electoral circles that means fewer elected representatives per vote.
The exact same problem will apply to the Far-Right if they get divided. In fact, you can see it already in the last election in the UK, where the Far-Right Tories (who used to be just Conservative Right and moved to full-blown populist Far-Right during the Leave Referendum) have lost the elections because an even more Far-Right party called Reform UK appeared and divided their vote, which their First Past The Post electoral system (so, electoral circles with a single representative per electoral circle) transformed into a big loss for the Tories in terms of elected members of Parliament as it made them not come first anymore - and thus not get the member of parliament for that circle - in many such electoral circles in which they usually came first.
All this to say that a divided Far Right would probably be the best possible thing for Europe, at least in most countries (as only a few have electoral system using proportional vote), though paradoxically that would not impact the total representation of the Far Right in the EU Parliament because that one uses Proportional Vote.