As Péter Magyar Wins Another 15 March, Hungarian Progressives are Left on Their Own.
Péter Magyar started the spring political season smartly by not walking into Orbán’s LGBTQ trap. That doesn’t mean progressive voters should avoid standing up for their values - writes Ábel Bede
15 March is an important day in the Hungarian political calendar. To mark the 1848 revolution, parties hold rallies to show strength and set out their plans for the spring. This year, both main camps of Hungarian politics held their respective rallies. Viktor Orbán made his speech in front of the National Museum in the morning, while Péter Magyar’s Tisza took over the Andrássy Boulevard in the afternoon. The two minor parties, MKKP and Mi Hazánk also held their own, much smaller-scale events.
Out of the two main contestants of the 2026 elections, it was clearly Péter Magyar who won the day for the second year in a row. He needed a relaunch after he failed to properly thematise public discourse in January-February which was arguably his most difficult period since entering politics. Magyar, just like last year, managed to attract a larger crowd than Orbán. Additionally, the visual language of his speech and its presentation were quite strong. His Attila suit was a creative touch and looked good on him. More significantly, Magyar’s embrace of the Attila is also symbolic; such items, and especially the Bocskai suit (which Attila is a slim-fitted variation of) tended to be owned exclusively by the far right. By wearing an Attila, Magyar is slowly continuing the re-embracing of national identity markers Fidesz had monopolised for a long time.
At his rally, Magyar also announced he would tour the country with twelve “referendum questions” this spring. Knowing they would likely be rejected by Hungary’s constitutional court, Magyar will not ask these questions in an actual, legally binding referendum but more in the form of a poll of the general public by his activists. The questions include Hungary’s EU and NATO membership, tax- and pension matters, and term limits for Hungarian prime ministers. Despite what he claims, though the nature of his questions is indeed slightly less propagandistic than those of Fidesz’s national consultations, the outcome of the vote is crystal clear in most cases.
But Magyar, of course, is not actually doing this to find out the opinion of the public on the aforementioned matters. He intends to test the infrastructure of his “Tisza Islands”, the micro organisations and activist base of his party and to start collecting data about the whereabouts of his enthusiastic sympathisers and voters on the fence. The pseudo-referendum questions also give Tisza an excuse to tour the country yet another time.
Fidesz’s rally, on the other hand, was much less innovative. Viktor Orbán recycled the exact same speech he’s made millions of times about his fight against “the empire” and how reinforcements of the populist European right are coming and are set to take over other European countries. A big theme of his event was Hungary’s opposition to an accelerated membership route for Ukraine and he reiterated his announcement of a consultative poll (again, not a referendum) on Ukraine’s EU membership. One of his twelve key points (the 1848 revolutionaries also had twelve points, hence the obsession with the number among the two camps) was even “Union but without Ukraine!.”
Magyar’s only mistake this 15 March was to react to this proposition and add it to his list of “referendum” questions. His strength has tended to come from thematising Hungarian public life with his own bread-and-butter topics and not reacting to outlandish theoretical questions and fake geopolitical or culture war dilemmas (which the immediate EU accession of Ukraine is). This is a similar mistake to the ones he made in his difficult January-February period.
Despite Magyar falling into his smaller trap, the most memorable part of Orbán’s speech was a gaffe. He went too far by calling non-Fidesz aligned members of the public “bugs.” This was seemingly too much, even for his own supporters (a rare feat) as he and Fidesz parliamentary faction leader Máté Kocsis needed to post pseudo-clarifications that Orbán actually only called Magyar and not the general public a bug. That’s never a good sign after a supposedly major speech.
Orbán mentioned bugs when he set to outline his domestic political agenda for the spring, labelling it “a deep clean.” One feature of his “deep clean” was that, on Monday, Fidesz introduced a bill with which they intend to ban Budapest Pride this year. The legislative change includes a change in the constitution as well as the new law itself that bans public gatherings “promoting” homosexuality. Those who organise and participate in such events can be fined up to HUF 200,000 (EUR 500) and face ID cameras can also be used to investigate them.
In a way, the LGBTQ community should be grateful to Orbán. Fidesz has just made the 2025 Budapest Pride the most well-attended in the country’s history. Just in time for the first Hungarian Pride’s 30th anniversary! There is no better advertisement for a protest than Orbán explicitly banning it. The threat of fines will hardly be a deterrent, given that no one can seriously think that the Hungarian state is able to investigate and fine tens of thousands of people at the same time. Nevertheless, it is needless to say that the move is yet another gross violation of Hungarian democracy, this time in particular of the right to protest.
The ban was also the bigger trap for Magyar: do the morally right thing and stand up for the right to march and face accusations of promoting evil pro-kindergartener-sexchange-globalists OR don’t say a thing and throw the LGBT community and progressive Hungarians under the bus. Magyar chose the latter which, from a strictly Machiavellian perspective (in regards to the success of his party), was the correct one.
Magyar can afford not to stand by the LGBT community - he is not a progressive person and does not advertise himself as such. If many others, such as the writer of these passages for example, found themselves in this situation they would have no choice but to stand by the Pride March and protest the ban because their moral conscience would dictate so. Magyar’s conscience is not plagued by this dilemma. That is why, in the current political climate, he is better placed to defeat Orbán than the author of this article would be. And, to be fair to Magyar, he did post that the “restriction of the right to protest” was unconstitutional and that everyone would have the right to protest under a Tisza government, a clear wink at his actual position on the matter.
This does not mean that Hungarian progressives should all stop standing up for the LGBT community or against other civil rights abuses “for the greater good” like Péter Magyar. They might face a classic lesser evil dilemma at the ballot box. But this dilemma does not exist on the streets. Now, it is even more so the duty of progressive-minded Hungarian citizens to pick up this mantel and go protest and verbalise dissent given that politicians with actual power won’t.
In the long run, this lesson might even be beneficial for politically conscious Hungarian citizens; they should not expect politicians to lead rights movements but take matters into their own hands. Maybe Magyar’s unwillingness to clearly support the Pride March will make Hungarian civil rights groups more self-reliant and progressive citizens more active.
In a way, Magyar’s reluctance to stand by progressive values can also be liberating for progressive Hungarians who, from now on, won’t have to be afraid of alienating Fidesz voters by backing individual causes. Unlike in the past 15 years, the burden of having to end Orbán’s rule is no longer on their shoulders but on those of the right-of-centre Tisza; hence progressives can afford to compromise even less. After all, one does not stand up for the rights of marginalised communities or celebrate the diversity of sexual ethics and lifestyles to topple the Orbán regime but because it is the right thing to do.
Due to the current structure of Hungarian politics, this ironic form of liberation will mostly impact citizens and civil organisations. But briefly, this week benefitted some parties too. A few more similar issues and MKKP might find itself hovering around the 5% parliamentary threshold again. These events also allowed Momentum, the newest of the “old” opposition parties, to die well; they disrupted the parliamentary vote and organised a protest afterwards. They always deserved to die a better death than MSZP, DK, Jobbik, or LMP. Now they will be able to say that they did so with their heads held high and while doing what all Hungarians should be doing; standing up for what they thought was right.
Ábel Bede
"To die well" ? **head-scratch** -- In other respects, clear and well-written. Thank you