Orbán, Trump and the International Right Wing Populist Movement

If you doubted that right wing populism is an international movement, then the turnout of support for Victor Orbán and his party Fidesz before Sunday’s election should have put you right. It wasn’t just visits from US Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, plus supportive messages from Trump himself. [1] Every leader of the main right wing populist parties in Europe offered Orbán support, alongside Netanyahu from Israel and of course Putin from Russia. The scale of Orbán’s defeat, with his opponent Péter Magyar,winning a super majority of seats allowing him to undo constitutional changes enacted by Orbán, is impressive when set against past Orbán victories and the extent of election rigging in favour of Fidesz. But the main two reasons that Magyar won were fairly inevitable after a prolonged period of right wing populist government: economic stagnation and widespread government corruption. I noted here how severe economic decline is typical after a period of right wing…