Hungry, Hungry Hungarians; The Buckley Myth; The End of Kings
Short summary
The author reports on Hungary’s election where Viktor Orbán faces a strong challenge from Péter Magyar amid rising economic hardship, linking today’s campaign to 19th-century American enthusiasm for Lajos Kossuth. He then examines how Nick Fuentes and other online paleocons have revived extremist ideas that William F. Buckley long tried to exclude from mainstream conservatism.
- Péter Magyar's Tisza party has pulled roughly even with Orbán's Fidesz in polls, driven by inflation that hit 25% and €17 billion in frozen EU funds, making this Orbán's toughest election in 16 years.
- American enthusiasm for Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth in the 1850s (drawing figures like Lincoln, Whitman, Marx, and Engels) prefigures today's cross-border fascination with Hungarian politics.
- Nick Fuentes and other online paleocons have repackaged extremist ideas that William F. Buckley deliberately excluded from National Review, successfully mainstreaming them for a new audience.
Full summary
Hungary’s ruling Fidesz Party and its leader, Viktor Orbán, face a serious challenge after 16 years in power. Sky-high inflation—peaking at about 25 percent in early 2023—and €17 billion in EU funds frozen over rule-of-law concerns have hit living standards. Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider whose rise followed the 2024 resignation of President Katalin Novák, is campaigning on bread-and-butter issues—healthcare, education, infrastructure, corruption—and drawing unprecedented crowds outside Budapest. Independent polls now put his Tisza party neck-and-neck with Fidesz, even within striking distance of a constitutional majority. At a Dévaványa rally, locals bluntly summed up voter sentiment: “Because they are much poorer now.”
The piece then draws a line from today’s politics back to the 1850s U.S. fascination with Lajos Kossuth, Hungary’s revolutionary leader, noting that American crowds once cheered him—even Abraham Lincoln hosted a pro-Kossuth meeting. Whitman admired Kossuth personally but warned against U.S. intervention in Europe. Marx and Engels began as Kossuth fans before turning on his Napoleonic overtures. Finally, the author critiques a recent New Yorker article on the GOP’s hard-right drift, arguing that figures like Nick Fuentes have polished paleoconservative ideas—once kept off the pages of William F. Buckley’s National Review—to win a broader online audience.