ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Last Sunday, we broadcast this show live from Budapest. It was late in the evening there, and Hungarians had just voted their populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán out of office, putting an end to his 16 years in power. After the broadcast ended at midnight, we walked across the city's famous Chain Bridge and witnessed thousands of people singing and dancing - pure joy brought on by the power of the people.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing in non-English language).
SCHMITZ: In the days following this historic election, the country's incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, said Hungary's old illiberal order is out. Magyar is set to officially take power next month. He's already promising to make big changes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PETER MAGYAR: (Non-English language spoken).
SCHMITZ: In an appearance on state television this past week, Magyar sparred with a television host loyal to the Orbán government, calling the broadcaster a, quote, "factory of lies" and promising to reshape it. That's just one of the ways Magyar says he'll release the grip Orbán's government had on the country's democratic institutions.
So what do these changes mean to populist movements around the world? We're joined now by historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, who wrote about that for The Atlantic. Welcome, Anne.
ANNE APPLEBAUM: Thanks for having me.
SCHMITZ: The voter turnout was a record 80%. Why were Hungarians who had voted for Orbán so many times before now suddenly fed up with him?
APPLEBAUM: I think it was accumulated experience. I mean, look, this is a very corrupt system. The corruption was beginning to affect people's lives - a deterioration of health care, of education, very high inflation. And I think that was coupled also with the revelations that happened at the end of the campaign, of Orbán talking to Vladimir Putin, of his foreign minister talking to the Russian foreign minister and appearing to collude with them against the European Union.
You know, Hungarians still have a fresh memory of being occupied by the Soviet Union, and for a lot of people, even younger people, this was too much and people started chanting at his - both at Orbán's rallies and at opposition rallies, Russians go home. And I think that was really the nail in the coffin.
SCHMITZ: So we're talking here about how in Hungary, Orbán seemed almost larger than life. Why did he matter so much to the rest of the world?
APPLEBAUM: Because he made himself matter. He described himself as an illiberal prime minister, and he said that he was creating a new kind of illiberal political system. He called it an illiberal democracy. He sold that system in other countries. He funded think tanks and scholarly exchanges, and he met with politicians in other European countries and, of course, in the United States to exchange ideas about how this could be done. I've heard him stand in front of a room of so called national conservatives and tell people that what you need to do if you want to stay in power is make sure you're in control of the media. So he was not shy about describing his methods.
And they were inspiring to people. He inspired other far-right political movements to think that they could also capture power through similar methods, similar kinds of - similar use of propaganda, similar kinds of control. And I think he was a model for, in particular, some of the current Trump administration. He had a lot of influence in the Heritage Foundation, over the people who wrote Project 2025. And I think his fall is a sign to them and to everyone that these methods don't necessarily have to last forever or work forever.
SCHMITZ: So what does this loss mean then, for other Western leaders who wanted to follow in Orbán's footsteps?
APPLEBAUM: So I think outside of Europe, it's going to cause a lot of people who would be natural allies of the Trump administration - the European far-right movements who feel close ideologically to the MAGA movement - it's going to cause a lot of them to question whether they should be too close to Trump or too close to Vance. You know, the American president is not popular in Europe. The war in Iran was very much, very, very unpopular. It may change some of those relationships, but I think it will also give people pause.
You know, this idea that if you simply run political campaigns that constantly focus on fighting an enemy - you know, for Orbán, it was originally migrants, then it was gay people. In the most recent campaign, it was Ukraine. It was, you know, Ukraine is our enemy, Ukraine might invade us. I mean, it was actually fairly incredible. But all of their propaganda was focused on that. I mean, maybe it will make people think twice about running these negative populist campaigns focused on semi-imaginary enemies. Maybe it will force them to return to debating things that affect people in real life, like the economy or health care.
SCHMITZ: And finally, let's talk about incoming prime minister Peter Magyar. He set out to plan to restore the free press, to rebuild Hungary's relationship with the EU and NATO. Will he reverse the damage that Orbán has wrought on the country's democratic institutions?
APPLEBAUM: He seems to intend to try, but as we know from a parallel movement in Poland - we also had in Poland a populist authoritarian government in charge for eight years. Then there was a coalition - center-right, center-left coalition - that won an election. It proved to be very difficult to change some things back and that once you've altered the judicial system - and Orbán was in charge of it for 16 years - it's very hard to alter it back in a different direction.
Peter Magyar has one big advantage, which is that he has a constitutional majority in Hungary. That means he can change the Constitution, which is something that Orbán used in the past to help his own efforts to keep power. So we'll see. I mean, he's certainly going to make an effort, and he'll have a lot of support. He'll have support from sister parties across the European Union. He'll have support from the European Union leadership who would like to see him succeed. You know, when you're asking about the effects of his campaign, there are also a lot of democratic or liberal or centrist movements and parties in Europe that are going to be watching him, both the way that he won and also the way that he now rules to see what lessons can be learned.
SCHMITZ: That's Anne Applebaum. She's staff writer at The Atlantic. Thank you.
APPLEBAUM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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