How did the Political Right Win Over its Opposition?

The Hungarian left suffered a historic defeat in the 2024 elections, and the next years are set to focus on intra-right electoral politics. How did we get here?

In my previous entry to the Hungarian Observer, I wrote that “the hegemony of the right is as stable as ever.” As Magyar is now officially triumphant over the old and not so old opposition, and as he successfully beat Fidesz pushed Fidesz into a slightly less comfortable first place (reading Hungary’s liberal media, you could think the difference was 2pp, not 15…), I want to elaborate on this point.

First, however, we should touch upon what we might mean by the ‘right’ in this context. There is what I call the ‘political right’, gathering around parties like Fidesz, Jobbik, MDF or MIÉP, characterised by their strong nationalism and traditionalism. Thus, the distinction between the political right and the political left has been cultural. Many politicians of the 1990s who were on the political right were nostalgic for the Horthy era, presented themselves as the continuation of the great populist (‘népi’) tradition of the 1930s and ‘40s and flirted (to say the least) with antisemitism. Some even wanted a revision to the post-Trianon borders of Hungary (That this often happened to the same politicians says a lot about the seriousness of their historical knowledge: the populist movement rose in opposition to Horthy’s ancien régime and its deep social inequalities, despite their occasional flirtations with fascism, their occasional compromises with the regime and the often virulent antisemitism of some of the populists.)

In reaction to what they perceived as a threat of resurgent fascism, Hungary’s post-communist left and strongly anti-communist liberals entered into a political alliance that has been in place ever since. In an ideological sense, the Hungarian political left (as I will call it, although the left-liberal epithet is more precise) has always included right-wingers, in the form of true believers in the neoliberal orthodoxy madly into Thatcher. 

For example, the ‘reforming’ neoliberal finance minister of Gyula Horn’s ‘Socialist’-liberal government, Lajos Bokros, would later sit in the ECR group in the European Parliament without ever changing his political positions or ever being perceived by the Hungarian political left as being part of the right. (Bokros started his career in the Communist-era Ministry of Finance, with the same positions that he later espoused.) Similarly, many Hungarian liberals take positions on Western culture war questions more in line with the Western right.

Indeed, it was the political right that was more persistent in challenging the neoliberal orthodoxy. This led to the ridiculous accusation of Orbán and his followers being ‘communists’. Even worse, it led to the suspicion that left-wing critiques of neoliberalism are ‘with’ the right.

This being said, for a long time, the difference between the political right and the political left seemed impenetrable. Left-wingers (from now on, unless otherwise indicated, this will mean the political left and similarly for ‘right-winger’) saw right-wingers as crypto-fascists, while right-wingers saw lefties as communists.

In this light, we should now examine the centrist and right-wing messiahs periodically challenging Orbán since at least 2012.

The first one was Gordon Bajnai, the last Prime Minister of the Hungarian Socialist Party. He reentered politics in 2012 with his pitch to unify the opposition and the street movement Milla, mobilising tens of thousands of people against the Orbán regime. He was ideologically centre-right (more like a moderate from the Cameron-era Tory party than even a New Labourite), but he for sure had nothing to do with the political right. 

His political hinterland, forming into the liberal party Együtt (Together), was made up of liberals from Milla, technocrats from Bajnai’s and Ferenc Gyurcsány’s governments (interestingly, despite their centre-right views, more aligned with the Socialists than with the liberal SZDSZ [Alliance of Free Democrats], as well as by trade unionists who formed an organisation called Szolidaritás. (Yes, as in Solidarność. They even stole the logo.) They were complimented by the green-lefties who broke away from their party LMP (Politics Can Be Different) to form PM (Dialogue for Hungary), which teamed up with Together.

So this was, despite the ideological tendencies of some (and definitely not all) of its parts, a political project still firmly located within the political left. They would never challenge the hegemony of right-wing economic ideas (then much stronger than now), but neither would they contribute to the hegemony of the political right.

The second wave of centrist messiahs came in the form of the Momentum Movement. This liberal party (which paradoxically would only find its liberal identity in the face of its electoral decimation this June) consisted of a whole new generation of politicians, as opposed to the various new political formations that had emerged since 2010, which were founded by figures of what was increasingly referred to as the old left. (Their precedent was the rise of LMP and far-right Jobbik before 2010.) Consisting of young liberals with various political tints from conservative-liberal to left-liberal, they often emphasised their former links to the political right. They would come from conservative families and they voted Fidesz in 2010.

That being said, Momentum were very firmly progressives, targeting the younger voters of the left camp disillusioned with the old left. They would sometimes resort to nationalist imagery not usual on the old left (e.g., they rehabilitated supporting the national team from the tedious bores who declared it Orbánist conformism), but they would then resort to pro-European slogans.

Momentum thus was never a part of the political right. However, that their members (individually) were once on the right was a key part of their identity. The hegemony of the political right was strengthened, having been on the right now being a key source of legitimation.

The third wave of centrist messiahs was the rise of Péter Márki-Zay in the 2021 opposition primaries as the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate for 2022. He was a self-identifying right-wing conservative, with neoliberal economics and (what is more important in the Hungarian context) a Christian conservative worldview. He was proudly part of the political right. However, at least he never held a position within that right (he claimed to have backed away from supporting János Lázár, then-mayor of his town Hódmezővásárely, as he realised he was ‘corrupt’). The hegemony of the political right was now strong enough to convince left-wingers to choose a right-winger to lead them, as he was seen as more likely to lead the opposition to victory. (Which, to put it very mildly, he failed to do.) But at least he was a proper dissident from the right camp.

Now, we have Péter Magyar, who used to be the husband of one of Orbán’s most loyal ministers and had positions at state companies as late as the beginning of this year. Now the person to challenge Orbán is firmly coming from his own camp. The next National Assembly elections are most likely to be an internal battle within the right.

This reflects the hegemony because all these messiahs reflect who is seen by (some) opposition voters and (some) pro-opposition actors as the likely person to beat Orbán. 12 years ago, this meant a ‘moderate,’ ‘nice guy’ from the old left. Now this means a guy who left Fidesz four months ago.

If this hegemony is allowed to become stable, it is of course the political challenge for anyone still hoping for a left-wing turn in Hungary’s future history.

Iván Merker