He’s not actually very liberal from what I’m reading. He’s pro EU and not a Putin puppet but other than that his policies aren’t all that different from Orban’s. He was even in Fidesz until a few years ago.
I wonder if there will be much improvement for the LGBTQ community there.
But at least the Ukrainian payments stalemate is broken.
If I were to Americanize it: This is essentially if Ted Cruz, or better yet Chris Christie, beat Donald Trump in the general election. Undeniably a good thing as it’d mean no more Trump and it’s kinda humilating for him.
But it means… yeah. One of them at the helm.
Someone on Bluesky said it was like if the Dems had lost to Trump 4 times and then ran Mit Romney and won by a historic landslide
That’s a better comparison, actually. Mitt very publicly doesn’t like Trump, but voted with him like 80% of the time.
liberalism must be defeated, international proletariat must rise up against this sick ideology.
Yes, death to LGBT folks and other minorities. Here, have a white cloak.
Contemporary communists are feminists and pro-LGBTQ. Source: I’m one of them.
Which means in modern political parlance you’re not just a communist, but also a liberal. Especially in Eastern Europe.
No, you don’t get to choose the words I describe myself with. Socially progressive is not synonymous with liberal, it’s kinda the opposite actually.
Okay, but that’s what the word means now. Socially progressive and liberal are almost synonyms for years now, and the amount of people this has spread to is increasing.
Outside of your own narrow circle, you say you’re against liberalism, and people will think you’re going to be joining the KKK or something. So you can go on and say that you’re anti-liberal, but to an increasingly big amount of people that means you’re a bigot.
Something something dictionaries should be descriptive, not prescriptive.
I’ll link another comment I just made, which highlights this. There’s articles quoting three bigoted Eastern-European politicians (including the one this article is about) talking about how liberals and their gay agenda are ruining the world.
The usage of the word liberal has thus shifted. As the likes of Putin, Orban, Trump, etc, use the word liberal to describe someone they perceive as “woke”, “SJW”, whatever, basically just non-bigoted people, the people being described as such have largely adopted that label as their own. Largely, the word “liberal” where I live now means you’re accepting of other people, and your economic stance usually may be anywhere from center to left - as liberalism now carries the connotation of being a progressive, empathetic person, usually most people who call themselves liberals are pro taxation, social safety nets, etc.
This is why, and I’ve said this in a few other comments now, I propose that the original word “liberalism” for the most part should be replaced with “neoliberalism”, “capitalism”, or “marketism” to reduce confusion. Not a single one of those could in any way be confused for progressivism at least.
death to LGBT
One of the best LGBT rights in the world is in cuba (a communist country) and that happened democratically without any electoralism bullshit so keep your bs to yourself, I guess.
Cuba is on the other side of the world. Liberalism in Eastern Europe generally means tolerance for others. Not being a bigot.
The word “liberalism” in Europe is generally used to refer to economic liberalism, not social progressivism.
Yeah exactly. Liberals here are right wing capitalists. And often conservative.
They are kinda the same as the liberals in the US but that’s because US doesn’t really know any real left wing. So it’s right wing democrats or extreme-right republicans.
That makes liberalism seem somehow progressive but it isn’t really.
Haven’t heard it used for economic liberalism in over a decade, but I’m also not from western Europe.
and liberalism in other parts of world means western imperialism, capitalist enforcement, pro rich anti evironmentalism.
Sure, but this article isn’t talking about other parts of the world?
It’s about Orban, Putin and not just Trump but MAGA in general. That’s 3 countries where if you say you hate liberals, you’ll get high fives from neonazis, skinheads and so on.
Here’s Putin bashing ‘liberalism’ - he’s talking about multiculturalism and LGBT
Here’s Orban saying liberals are aiming for hegemony of opinion, stigmatizing conservatives and Christians - this almost always means “We’re not allowed to hate people for being different”.
Closer to home for me, former head of our very own mini-nazi party:
Mart Helme saying that liberals are establishing homototalitarianism
Relevant bit:
Helme said the extensively discussed interview with Deutsche Welle turned into an attack. “Attempts are made in Estonia to establish homototalitarianism, where, by appealing to the Constitution, attempts are made to make it clear to us that we must not speak or have an opinion on certain issues. That there are certain subjects and groups of people that have been declared untouchable by liberals and that cannot be criticized. By the way, the list of topics is expanding quickly,” he said.
Last one is not too relevant for Hungary in particular, but his son, the new leader of the party, cried about Orban losing, as he’s a wannabe member of the same Trump-Orban-Putin alliance. Basically a useful idiot for them. I brought this one up purely to show that this usage of the word “liberal” is now common.
Sure, if you collapse capitalism, neoliberalism, and western foreign policy into just ‘liberalism’
I can’t see shit oudda this thing!
I’m really happy that Hungarians got their wannabe president-for-life kicked out peacefully. :)
Regarding Russia - Putin’s popularity is in a clear downward dive, but a dive from very high altitude (he has built a formidable propaganda machinery and brainwashed people severely) so it will take time. His regime currently has almost full control of Internet use in Russia, so the only channels which can operate freely are VPN tunnels to services hosted abroad (Telegram being most popular). I hope self-organizing mesh networks will also offer a challenge in cities, but that remains to be seen.
Sadly, unlike Orban, Putin has also rebuilt the system so that he can order arbitrary violence (e.g. poisonings). As a result, most likely in Russia, when time comes, it will be bloody. But there’s a positive thing about Putin: he’s old and might just die one day (or touch the wrong door handle without gloves, if others near him decide he’s too old), opening an avenue for peaceful change.
Trump will be kicked out, I’m 95% sure of that. But Americans will have to rethink the role and authority of the president quite soon after that. And I mean limiting it.
When Putin goes it will be another 1990s scramble for power and the Russian people will follow whomever is the biggest thug who makes them feel a sense of pride and stability, which is precisely how Putin came to power.
People forget that before Putin Russia was in economic collapse throughout the 90s. And that all of Russian history the central government been authoritarian and corrupt af
This is an incredibly racist framing. Russia literally had the first successful socialist revolution in history, which brought about immense levels of democratization and rights compared to the tsarist regime before it. People originally elected Putin precisely because a stronger Russia with a stronger state was the only thing that proved capable of putting a brake to the neoliberal chaos and destruction instituted after the illegal dissolution of communism. Putin is popular not because he’s positive, but because people are deathly afraid of suffering the 90s again and Putin platforms himself as the solution (when in reality he’s just another filthy capitalist).
Trump will be kicked out, I’m 95% sure of that.
I’m not worried about that, I’m actually more worried about who replaces him when it swings back right. He proved that Hitler adjacent is fine and that overton window isn’t going back left. We’re so far right we could fit two more parties to the left and just be a little progressive.
Trump will be kicked out, I’m 95% sure of that. But Americans will have to rethink the role and authority of the president quite soon after that. And I mean limiting it.
Vote Libertarian?
Oh no, please no…
We’re not going to make it, are we?Yeah, unfortunately they seem to be the only party who would actually do that. And even though I have some sympathy towards small-l-libertarianism, too many of the capital-l-libertarians are batshit crazy, dumb or both.
Wouldn’t that require actual elections? Russia does not have that.
Is Liberalism good?
There’s certainly good things about it
No.
Read: State and Revolution by Vladmir Ilyich Lenin
is freedom bad?
Depends on the freedom.
- American freedom to use and abuse anyone under you in the capitalist hierarchy. Bad.
- Freedom to get cared for at any hospital of your own choosing without having to sell your kidney? Not bad.
- Freedom to masturbate to incest porn? Not bad. (Looking at you UK)
- Freedom to kill people as long as you’re operating a multiple ton heavy vehicle with practically 0 consequenses. Bad.
In this instance we’re talking about the freedom to be a sexual or racial minority. Orban was notoriously against that, much like Putin and Trump. The narrative usually is that liberal policies (allowing LGBT and minorities to exist peacefully) result in LGBT and minorities taking over every aspect of life, so the average person will be forced to be gay or trans and their daughters will have to take black husbands or whatever.
In Eastern European politics, liberal doesn’t mean economic liberal generally, at least not for the last decade or so. It literally means not being a hateful bigot.
Which is why I’m finding it funny that there’s a tankie (not you, Tolc) going on in this thread about how all forms of liberalism are bad.
The narrative usually is that liberal policies (allowing LGBT and minorities to exist peacefully) result in LGBT and minorities taking over every aspect of life, so the average person will be forced to be gay or trans and their daughters will have to take black husbands or whatever.
Which never actually happened like ever. We just want to be who we are. There’s no movement to make everyone gay, that’s insane to even think that.
Same as the republicans getting their knickers in a knot over trans athletes. Which are few and far between and aren’t actually that successful because HRT makes you a lot weaker if you are MtF. It’s just an imaginary issue.
Same as the toilet thing they get all worked up about. The men molesting women are cis men.
In this instance we’re talking about the freedom to be a sexual or racial minority. Orban was notoriously against that, much like Putin
You could say this about almost any Eastern Europe government. Also, this Hungarian party doesn’t precisely advertise itself as super LGBTQ friendly, they advertise themselves as apolitical centrists, which tends to maintain status quo. I’d gladly be proven wrong, though!
Sounds like you should run for office under those talking points. Good luck.
You seem to have a problem with my comment?
Why the reluctance to call a fascist a fascist?
Because the whole world is fascist and the leaders of fascism don’t like to be called it, so no mainstream media or news will call it such.
Also it can be confusing for some people. For instance, in WWII the fascist USA helped Russia defeat the fascist Nazi doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Most operate like Fascism = Bad instead of Fascism = Corporatism.
Altlantic has, diacussed here by the author
Oh boy does that headline have nothing to do with the article. The article does a good job of explaining all the hard work Magyar did, but it is a bit silly to suggest that it is a temple for what could be done in Russia. For example, it does not lay out how a candidate can avoid all the tripping hazard windowsills that litter the Russian halls of power.
indeed, Belarus and Russia either do what Ukraine did at Madain,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
or they endure and to be fair Belarusians did have a go.
Maidan was a color revolution sponsored by the US, though, the Nuland leaked audios essentially confirm this. Haven’t you asked yourself why it seems that mass protests only ever change governments in countries neighboring Russia, but this never happens in mass protests in the US (occupy wall street movement), Spain (15-M movement), France (gilets jeunes)…?
Amateur political scientists making arguments that a certain kind of political is inevitable is something of a pastime. Apathy begets apathy.
Tim Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom” actually talk a lot about how apathy first destroyed Russia, and is currently destroying the US.
Boy is this lively. I certainly have my concerns as Magyar is former Fidez and of a Minister Portfolio and by all accounts is very much a conservative politician.
But as far as EU policy is concerned his win is likely to finally get Hungry to be in line with the rest of Erouope.
Also remember Trump sent Vance over to try and election campaign against him so that tells you how the people of Hungry feel about that.
All and all consider this winning a battle but the war continues
Conservative is fine. Being Putin’s lapdog is not.
How is conservative fine? All EU conservative parties support Israel which is actively committing genocide.
So, while I’m not too knowledgeable about politics in Hungary, this may or may not be relevant…
In Canada we used to have the progressive conservative party, and the reform party. The reform party was the religious / right wing nut jobs, and the PC’s were, well I’m not really sure what i was too young to follow it to closely, but they weren’t like the reform party. How progressive they were though I don’t really know, it could have just been a name… The reform party would be closer to MAGA than what the PC’s were.
The right wing parties were losing elections though to the Liberals, so Harper managed to bring both the PCs and the Reform together under 1 party, with their sometimes very wildly different views. As much as he was damaging to Canada, Harper was an excellent politician and he managed to keep control of these 2 factions within the party as Prime Minister for almost 10 years.
Once Trudeau came into power after people had had enough of Harper, these two factions in the federal conservatives have been in a sense fighting each other. We had Erin O’Toole as one of their leaders, and he was trying to be more middle on some topics, and the nut job part of the faction threw him out.
I’m saying all this to say… Maybe, just maybe, Magyar has thrown out the bad seeds in the party. Yes, it’s still going to be a conservative government, but maybe we can get back to what politics was like before the crazy right wing nut jobs infiltrated all the conservative parties around the world and made things much worse.
I would love to see our conservative parties here throw out the bad seeds. We just had a merger of right leaning, and nut job parties like this in BC, but we narrowly shut them out in the last election, and watching what has happened within that party since, has been a gongshow.
We are living in a world where both the US and Russia support the same piece of shit. What the fuck
US and Russia were always aggreeing on basically the same thing. They might disagree on who is going to be the leader of the fascist world, but they very much aggree that the world should be fascist and have a leader.
someone mentioned hes mostly center right.
Look, fuck Orban, but y’all aren’t even waiting to see how Magyar pans out, before hailing a new era. Fascism and anti-fascism aren’t just like a Zeitgeist or something. They require concrete actions. Not understanding this means that elections will just keep bringing you back to fascism.
The concrete actions in question, historically, are mass worker movements, both communist and anarchist (the former more historically successful).
Does he mean fascism?
Magyar? No.
It’s beyond me that any modern democracy would even allow someone be PM/President for 16 years in the first place, and then allow them to run again. For all that’s fucked with America rn, that one they’ve done right (for now).
It’s beyond me that any modern democracy would even allow someone be PM/President for 16 years
I actually see it backwards. The proof that bourgeois western democracy is utter shit is that every 4, at most 8 years, the party in government gets hate-voted out of there. If people were actually content with the parties elected, I’d expect to see long periods of dominance by one or two similar parties, followed by some tumbling until the correct one is found again, etc. Having constantly changing parties and candidates kinda proves that everyone fucking hates anything that touches the government, not very democratic IMO.
How is denying the right of the people to reelect whoever they want to office more democratic than fulfilling their right? Claiming democracy restricting such liberty is somehow more democratic is impressive mental gymnastics. Even with modern democracy the guiding philosophy is to restrict government to promote & protect individual liberty, not undermine liberty of the people.
Well, only for the presidency. The zombies in congress are entirely unaffected.
Protest-non-voters won’t believe this one simple trick.
The Democrat Party in the US is not anti-Fascism as their support for Zionism and plenty of other Fascist ideologie abroad as well as their unwillingness to stand fast against Trump shows.
The situation in the US is akin to a decades long one-two tactic being played by two of the same team (team Oligarch) on their way to score for them and against everybody else, which has NOTHING AT ALL to do with anything in Europe, except for what’s going on in Britain.
B-b-both sides same!
PArTY A GoOd oNLy DOeS gOOd, pARty B evIL OnLY dOEs bAd.
(Switch A and B around for the other group of tribalist simpletons)
Nu uh, both sides same!
No, the good cop is clearly different from the bad cop to anyone who has eyes.
Sorry I forget genocide and mass imprisonment is okay if it might give you benefits.
Yet another one who doesn’t understand primaries or getting better candidates on the ballot of a major party. Not believing this one simple trick: confirmed.
Reality is not all rainbows & butterflies. Systems operate according to rules we don’t control no matter how much we stubbornly refuse to accept them until we work the system to change it. Denying the system exists doesn’t change it.
Fact: the US voting system (plurality voting) lacks the sincere favorite criterion[1]. Fact: that means strategy exists to optimize outcomes, and not following it with protest(-non)-voting can functionally help elect the candidate you like least, directly backfire, and cause worse real-world outcomes for your own values. Fact: that means lesser-evil voting is necessary in close, high-stakes races to minimize losses.
Voting in a way that backfires has real-world consequences. Denying it is like denying the consequences of pulling the trigger when a loaded gun is aimed at your nuts. If you have to vote for the only viable candidate who will realistically refrain from pulling the trigger & don’t (in a cute little protest), then you’re still getting nuts blown off. Protest(-non)-voting to blast your nuts off every time doesn’t lead anywhere.
There are viable ways to reform the system: lobby legislation with enough organization & support, elect your candidates to other offices (local, congressional, etc) to build popular support, get your candidate to run as a major party in national partisan races, vote lesser-evil in national partisan elections until your candidate is on the ballot as a major party.
Anything else is blasting yourself in the nuts. Worse, it’s blasting off your neighbors’ nuts & ovaries, too. Your neighbors don’t want to vote lesser-evil either, but they’re not stupid enough to pretend that other moves won’t blast off their nuts.
It’s straightforward mathematics: plurality voting violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, majority loser criterion, independence of clones.
↩︎There is, therefore, a simple way to affect the outcome of a plurality election in your favour without having to convince anyone else to support you. If you introduce a clone of an opponent then the vote for your opponent may split between your opponent and their clone, meaning that you require fewer votes to win. In practice, this fact is well known and some people in British elections do not vote for their preferred candidate because they do not want to split the vote against the party they dislike.
Well if you don’t vote, you just get all those things (and worse) happening anyway.
Or you know organize outside of electorlism or if you must vote for someone opposed to genocide at the very least.
Do both. DO BOTH. One does not preclude the other. In fact by building the best future you can with your vote you leave space to do the other.
Organize to do what outside of electorlism?
Asking because I’m genuinely curious what you feel is more affective than voting in how we can each contribute to avoiding genocide.
Within legal means of course. Because I’m certainly in support of deposing fascists and oligarchs.
Taking Orban as evidence, this can certainly be achieved through voting in even the most rigged of elections.
Orban was replaced by another far right racist imperialist just one m ore friendly to NATO and the EU than Putin.
One small improvement like this one, made every voting cycle, will eventually lead to wherever you want to move those goal posts.
How can you possibly believe this in 2026? Tell me, which western liberal democracy hasn’t seen living standards be destroyed, welfare hollowed out, and worker rights disintegrated over the past 20 years? Tell me one single western liberal democracy where the people are consistently making gains and are happy with their government
Like a ratchet!
You did it, you saved Gaza!
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo
Here’s President Clinton establishing the Oslo accords helping Gaza exist as a recognized nation in peace with Israel. Specifically,
Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace. Both sides agreed that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established and assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. Then, permanent status talks on the issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem would be held. While President Bill Clinton’s administration played a limited role in bringing the Oslo Accord into being, it would invest vast amounts of time and resources in order to help Israel and the Palestinians implement the agreement.
Just making sure you’re aware that voting helped establish Gaza’s existence.
And voting is also is the reason it could have been saved from genocide.
Trump was supposed to save Gaza according to large portions of people here on Lemmy that told me voting for Kamala would be voting for genocide in 2024.
Now we live in a world where the actual truth is much more obvious - that Kamala would have obviously protected Gaza more than Trump. (Simply because she’s not politically compromised by Israel the same way Trump is).
So now you want to tell me voting doesn’t work to prevent genocide. Despite the current outcome being very clearly AVOIDABLE through voting. Just that option wasn’t taken - largely through the encouragement of many here on Lemmy to not vote for Kamala.
If more people didn’t vote for Trump the genocide wouldn’t have happened. Period. That is just not the outcome we have now. That doesn’t mean voting failed. It means most people failed to vote for the person who could have stopped it.
The Oslo accords weren’t a good thing what world do you live in, they were an entrenching of Israeli colonialism and Palestinian disfranchisement.
that Kamala would have obviously protected Gaza more than Trump
lmao you guys don’t actually believe this right? “Obviously once she was in office she would have done a 180, she was secretly anti-genocide the entire time”. Want to go take a look and see how many of the fatalities of the genocide happened under the biden/harris admin?
It’s grading on a curve.
Biden/Harris were weak on Israel, barely managing to occasionally wag a finger at them for misbehavior, but continuing to provide some support to Israel. This was bad.
Trump’s admin has been all in on it and has been ride or die for everything Netanyahu wants. This is even worse.
I think you meant to send this to the other guy.
I did! Apologies about that! 🙌 Completely missed the thread I was supposed to be responding to.
That’s cool and everything, but these people don’t actually care how many people die in which scenario.
It doesn’t matter if they care, it matters what they do. Because that’s what decides the outcome in each scenario. Their actions. Not their feelings.
Trump ended up encouraging the genocide, planning to build a resort on top of mass graves. Kamala just didn’t verbally attack Israel openly.
Those actions are not the same, and would have lead to a different outcome despite both candidates not caring.
Kamala was an active participant in the genocide as VP what are you talking about?
By ‘these people’ I mean people who didn’t vote (because they don’t care how many die), not the politicians.
And you failed to prevent trump taking office even though you tacitly endorsed a genocide.
And we’re back to: see article and protest-non-voters won’t believe this one simple trick.
“Liberalism” isn’t a good thing and Magyar is also a corrupt white supremacist.
Liberalism in the context of Eastern European conservative politicians means not being a hateful bigot. It’s COMPLETELY divorced from the concept of economic liberalism. A “liberast” is anyone who isn’t a xenophobe.
The narrative being sold is that liberals want to force everyone to be exactly what the Fox News stereotype of a liberal was in 2016. Blue haired LGBT. Orban et al fight against minorities and LGBT and say they’re fighting against liberals trying to destroy your country.
This is what illiberalism means in this context. Bigotry.
But Magyar is also a bigot.
He’s already said that he’d uphold the people’s right to assembly (context being the Pride being banned by Orban).
What his actual stance on LGBT people is, remains to be seen. But Orban was outwardly hateful against them. Same with immigrants. Magyar however wants the EU money and the EU doesn’t like repressive governments.
Magyar is hopefully a stepping stone to something better. He’s honestly not great. But I don’t get why everyone seems to think this isn’t worth celebrating. Orban was essentially a dictator, but he lost. Despite having all the legacy media and most social media behind him, despite having gerrymandered the hell out of the electoral maps, he and his party were reduced to irrelevance in a single election. Replaced by an Orban-Lite, maybe, but at least he’s out and Magyar’s campaign promise has been to unfuck the electoral system of Hungary. Whether he’ll do it or not remains to be seen, but he can’t be Orban 2.0 if he wants the EU funds back that Orban lost.
Are you just going to completely ignore his racism and I honestly have little knowledge of his lgbt stance but he isn’t quiet about his racism.
His party’s top leadership includes people who worked tirelessly for uplifting Romani people, they achieved raising the rate of high school enrolment in some of the poorest areas of Hungary from 10% to 100%.
This was still during Orbán’s rule.
IDK what you base the white supremacist claims on, especially as much of his electorate is not white.
I’ve seen interviews conducted by news sources I trust where Romani people were quoted saying “when he speaks, we’re all Hungarians”.
Also, illiberalism is not the opposite of liberalism, please look stuff up.
Have you also seen his “the immigrants are stealing from zoos” to eat our animals quote or his promise for extreme immigration control?
Yeah, on the one hand that was an idiotic thing to say but what he said was that immigrants were housed in inhumane ways and he wants to stop that.
Regarding extreme immigration control, what would be a better way? He wants immigrants to be swiftly processed and either granted entry or refused in a strict but humane way. This, and greater contribution to Fronted.
The plan is to avoid people in camps. What better solution do you have? This is not the US, there are very few undocumented people going around and most of them seem to be Russian spies TBH
What is the “leftist” solution to immigration in the EU?
Frankly I’m just happy some progress was made, and that Hungary wasn’t so far gone that Orban became president for life.
This is about social liberalism not economic. The opposite of which is conservatism and repression. I don’t think you’re arguing for the cause you think you’re arguing for here.
I am against all form of liberalism.
Right on! Burn the LGBT folks and minorities!
I have a white cloak for you.
strawman
I have explained this in several comments by now:
Liberalism in Eastern Europe stands for not being a bigot.
By saying you’re against all form of liberalism in the context of an Eastern European election, it means you’re essentially pro-MAGA.
Oh then maybe thats why you misunderstood me, nvm.
Or you misunderstood what the article is saying.
Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people
After 16 years of what Orbán himself described as an illiberal regime
There’s no way Putin and Orban would say “liberalism bad” and mean the economic system. Putin for sure wants the Russian people to believe that their economic system is liberal in the classical sense, not mostly under his personal control. Same with Orban. There’s probably no real appetite for socialism yet in these countries, because they lived through the USSR. I know here in Estonia at least, socialism is still a dirty word.
Similarly, the MAGA movement. They’ve been spouting all kinds of shit about liberals for a decade now. If you’ve paid any attention at all, “liberal” to them means a blue haired lesbian or whatever. Not even a member of the liberal party, let alone someone who supports the liberal economic system - because by that measure, the American conservatives themselves would be liberals.
What you call liberalism would nowadays be best called liberal capitalism or something like that. Laissez-faire capitalism if talking about it in its most extreme form. Because the word liberalism just doesn’t mean that anymore. The far left are the only people using it that way nowadays.
What do Putin, Orban and the entirety of MAGA have in common, besides looting their countries? Bigotry. When they talk about liberalism and liberals in a negative manner, that’s them using a certain image of “liberals” stuck in peoples’ brains as a boogeyman.
This is what Putin, Orban and the entirety of MAGA want you to believe a liberal is:
This is an entirely different “liberal” from what you’re talking about (and of course the image which I got from some youtube thumbnail is a caricature meant to disparage this type of liberal, you’re supposed to believe that liberals are all crazy SJWs or whatever).
It’s “social liberalism” to be a extremely racist who demonizes immigrants constantly sorry i didn’t know that.
I never said Orban was a liberal?
This is a small step in the right direction. Nobody is saying Magyar is flawless, but Orban was legitimately making LGBT people illegal.
This is about social liberalism not economic.
No, it’s about liberal democracy vs illiberal democracy. Liberal democracy gives you the option to vote for different parties in fair elections, separation of power, rule of law and so on. Both conservatism and social liberalism can work within a liberal democracy.
Granted, I can’t read the whole article, but
Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people.
This part is almost definitely not referring just to unfair elections because I doubt anyone thinks that the “real” people support that. Rather, it’s common to play to the fears of these “real” people: immigrants will steal your job and also be lazy and live off benefits and they’ll also murder, rape and pillage. The gay liberals will make heterosex illegal. Etc. Orban was pushing this, Putin is pushing this, EKRE in my country has beeb pushing this, GOP has been pushing this forever. And the narrative usually pits these “bad” others against “real” hard-working folks, as if the gays and foreigners are going to be a huge danger to them and everything they hold dear.
Sure EVERYONE is, all while you don’t suggest a single person better. Liberalism is so bad why?
I’ll bet money you have no better suggestion and can only say that EVERYONE is not good enough…
Is this honestly your first exposure to a leftist condemning liberalism?
What do leftists have against minorities anyway that they hate liberalism (non-bigotry) so much?
“Liberal” in the context of eastern european conservative politicians is not economic liberal, nor anything to do with democracy. Liberal means “doesn’t want to kill gays and blacks”. That’s it.
The original meaning of the word “liberal” is long dead here at least. A lot of these people who claim to fight against liberalism are in fact liberals in the classic sense (free market economy and all that).
Pretty sure liberalism is still a reformist ideology even in eastern Europe, no?
So in my country, there’s literally a “reform party”, which are classical liberals in the economic sense. Their own members will, indeed, call themselves liberals and mean the economic ideology. But they were also one of the two main parties behind the Estonian “kooseluseadus” (literally translated: “co-living law” or “living together law”), which doesn’t legalize gay marriage as such, but rather creates a new institution that’s basically the same as marriage, with all the same rights and duties, and is gender neutral. That was highly controversial in 2014 and eventually led to rise of EKRE, basically our own MAGA.
Any time they’re referred to as liberals now, it is NOT about their economic policies at all. The conservatives have completely changed the meaning of the term, and now it’s liberalism vs traditionalism, and it’s all about the “traditional family values” and such, you know, usual conservative bullshit, clashing against “liberal values”.
But this is not unique to Estonia. We imported this from the US. Or rather, our conservatives did. Similar stuff in other Eastern European countries. The American right has, for a long time now, framed liberalism as what I’ve described many times in this thread: Not being a bigot. Economically, the Republicans ARE liberals, just like most of the Democrats are. And if you’re far enough left, both of those parties ARE the same to you, and they ARE both liberals. But closer to the center, as well as very far to the right, the term is used completely differently, and has been for so long now that you just can’t use it anymore.
Personally I propose either saying neoliberalism when talking about economic liberalism (even if not completely precise language), or straight up calling it capitalism. Or hell, let’s invent a new term, call it marketism. Because the meaning of the word “liberal” has shifted so much, it’s no longer correct.
And yes, my comment was being facetious. I DO know what all the people here mean when they say they hate liberalism. But that’s quite literally not the liberalism the article is talking about, and it’s not what liberalism means to most people nowadays.
Oh, also, a funny tidbit on how badly words get misused:
So the reform party, basically center-right, being classic liberals, want lower taxation and more privatization of important industries, including healthcare and education. Fuck those guys obviously - they’re only really tolerated as a “lesser evil” compared to the outright nazi-adjacent folks since the left is unpopular for a myriad of reasons. Usually they’ll form coalition with the slightly more left-wing party, the social democrats.
Our far right, literally hateful bigots, will call that party not just liberals, but also commies. After all, commie is still a dirty word, we’re a post-soviet nation. Why is this funny? Because the far right party does NOT support lowering taxes and privatizing healthcare, meaning economically they’re actually left of the people they hatefully call communists for… Mostly the gay “marriage”.
I do hope they won’t succeed in the rebranding of the words “communist” and “socialist”. I know that American conservatives are doing the same, but it’s not really catching on as much as it did with the word “liberal”.
And yes, I’m a liberal. Just not economically. I’m more of a “social democracy for now, but let’s gradually go further left” kinda guy. Let private industry innovate, find new markets for whatever they can dream of, but make sure everything important is available to every single person, and that every important industry is publicly owned, not privately. And rein in the private companies sooner rather than later.
Yeah you’re not wrong, but my takeaway is that it’s at least going in the correct direction (haven’t heard any white supremacist stuff but wouldn’t surprise me in that part of the world). When your house is on fire, you care less about who’s the guy with a hose.
Now we just gotta see if things improve through their EU vote and restoration of human rights in Hungary. Then their people need to work towards empowering more left parties. I’m at least somewhat hopeful, especially if it helps Ukraine.
When your house is on fire, you care less about who’s the guy with a hose.
except Magyar is part of the reason why the house is on fire in the first place. he’s an unapologetic Fidesz apologist
“Whatever’s normal.”
