Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How much longer can Orbán’s apologists ignore what he’s doing to Hungary?

Hungary is the Venezuela of the Western right. Just as radical leftists revealed the emptiness of their concern for the powerless by applauding as Chavez and Maduro’s gang of thieves reduced the poor to starvation, so conservatives’ admiration for Viktor Orbán shows the ephemerality of right-wing ‘civilisation’.

Conservatives never fail to miss an opportunity to speak out against assaults on what one assumes are their basic principles when the assaults are committed by their own side. The rule of law? Orbán has stuffed the judiciary with his appointees for years, and is now establishing a system of courts that exempt his government from independent judicial review. The free market? The best way to make money in Hungary is not start a business but ingratiate yourself with the ruling clique and enjoy the largesse that follows. Press freedom and freedom of speech, so beloved in conservative circles when the Leveson inquiry or the woke threaten them? Orbán controls the

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