Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Posts Tagged ‘Trump-Orbán

Hungary – “Defeating Orbán is One Thing – Defeating Orbanism Quite Another”

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Donnacha Ó Beacháin discussed the Hungary elections with Flor MacCarthy and

@shonamurray.bsky.social on Oireachtas TV. Defeating Orbán is one thing, dismantling Orbánism quite another Expectations are high and Magyar’s support base is diverse, even contradictory. Managing expectations will be key to avoiding fragmentation

Discussed Hungary elections with Flor MacCarthy and @shonamurray.bsky.social on Oireachtas TVDefeating Orbán is one thing, dismantling Orbánism quite anotherExpectations are high and Magyar’s support base is diverse, even contradictory. Managing expectations will be key to avoiding fragmentation

Donnacha Ó Beacháin (@donnachadcu.bsky.social) 2026-04-27T05:52:44.347Z

Six lessons from Hungary’s vote and Orbán’s defeat An “illiberal democracy” can be ousted — what India and the world should learn

Link :
Six lessons from Hungary’s vote and Orbán’s defeat

Kavita Krishnan examines the fall of Orbán in greater detail here :

Writing in The Hindu after Viktor Orbán’s 12 April 2026 electoral defeat, Indian Marxist-feminist Kavita Krishnan draws six lessons for an international readership and, above all, for India under Narendra Modi. She argues that illiberal democracies can be ousted at the ballot box; that obituaries for universal democracy are premature; that Ukraine won the Hungarian vote; that regime-change accusations are confessions; that Orbán’s fall is a defeat for Xi Jinping as well as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu; and that pro-democracy forces must now discard the “West versus rest” map and consolidate their gains across borders. [AN]


Hungarian voters have swept their far-right strongman Viktor Orbán out of office, ending his 16-year run as Prime Minister and electoral autocrat. Here are six lessons the world can take from them.

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Multiple Bullies At Work, Out to Create a “Multipolar World” – Kavita Krishnan

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Two interesting articles by Kavita Krishnan are below.

The author explains :

My article in The Hindu on what’s at stake for Ukraine and the world.
I try to get all my material on Ukraine from the horse’s mouth: I just read Putin, Dugin, Vance, Mearsheimer really thoroughly – and they confirm all that I’m saying, without even bothering to disguise their intent. There can’t be more reliable and irrefutable sources.
The article attached is based on reading Mearsheimer himself saying Putin’s top peace condition is a puppet regime in Kyiv, since liberal democracy in Ukraine is an “existential threat to Russia”.

Kavita Krishnan

The second article examines the recent electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary

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Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept – the ideological logic of the Trump–Orbán alliance comes into focus

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The far-right political rulers of the USA and the Russian Federation, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, are promoting the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, ahead of a general election in the Eastern European state on Sunday April 12 2026. The implications of this political development are widely understood; a selection of reactions which have appeared on Bluesky should put an end – for ever – the obviously ludicrous theory promoted by some on the left that the 2022 Russian genocidal invasion of Ukraine was a disguised USA V Russia war (a “Proxy” war).

Trump calls into an Orbán campaign rally to endorse him, as Bloomberg reveals secret tapes of Orbán's private conversations with Putin in which he promises him absolute loyalty.

Scott Horton (@robertscotthorton.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T17:30:10.027Z

-Trump threatening to wipe out entire civilizations.-JD Vance courting dictators, Orban and Putin.🚨 We are in the middle of a national emergency, and the only way it ends is with Trump's removal. This is ALL we should be talking about right now.

D. Earl Stephens (@dearlstephens.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T22:03:45.225Z

JD Vance is off to Hungary, another Trump official working (with Putin) to prop up Orban. Re-upping this piece abt why many self-styled “classical liberals” abandon all principles when it comes to Orban: they like the authoritarianism and want it for America.donmoynihan.substack.com/p/make-ameri…

Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T13:09:36.082Z

If he was telling the truth, he would have added "on Moscow's terms" immediately after saying "Trump and Orban have done the most to end the war".It is a completely new low for the Vice President of the United States to perform such blatant political interference in a foreign country. Disgraceful.

(@furro293.bsky.social) 2026-04-08T04:14:36.000Z

Vance in Budapest: Orbán as the Far Right’s Proof of Concept

What Pinochet Was to Neoliberals, Orbán Is to Christian Nationalists

When US Vice-President J.D. Vance travelled to Budapest to endorse Viktor Orbán ahead of the 2026 Hungarian elections, the ideological logic of the Trump–Orbán alliance came into focus. For American nativist Christian nationalists, Orbán’s Hungary is a proof of concept: evidence that a programme combining Christian nationalism, anti-migration politics, and systematic dismantling of democratic opposition can hold power for sixteen years. Jan Bělíček dissects Vance’s Budapest speech — its Great Replacement tropes, its anti-EU demagoguery, its hollow invocations of workers’ rights, and the irony of preaching Christian civilisation to a comparatively secular Hungarian audience. The underlying agenda, Bělíček concludes, is replication: Vance and Trump want to build in the United States what Orbán has built in Hungary. [AN]


Watching yesterday’s second appearance by J.D. Vance in Budapest, I think I finally understood why the second-highest-ranking US politician has travelled to lend his support to Viktor Orbán ahead of the elections. [1] For nativist Christian nationalists like Vance, Orbán’s Hungary represents much the same thing that Augusto Pinochet represented for the neoliberal right. [2] It demonstrates that their political experiment — grounded in Christianity, aggressive nationalism, and hostility to expert knowledge and the left — can succeed and hold power for an extraordinary sixteen years.

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