Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media's midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This weekend, Hungary holds its national election, and Vice President J.D. Vance flew there in advance to help boost the chances of incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an autocrat close to our president's heart.

J.D. Vance: The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers, and they've done it all because they hate this guy. I'm here to help him in this campaign cycle.

Brooke Gladstone: For the past 16 years, Orbán has systematically brought the institutions of Hungary under state control, from the courts to the education system to the press, gutting the democratic checks to his power. Vance's visit to Hungary is no surprise. Orbán's model of democratic illiberalism, dubbed the Hungarian model, has served as a kind of instruction manual for President Trump and the MAGA right. Last spring, we talked about it with Márton Gulyás, a founder and lead anchor of Hungary's most influential independent media outlet, a YouTube channel called Partizán. Turns out Partizán played a vital role in the rise of Peter Magyar, the opposition candidate now beating Orbán in the polls.

Márton Gulyás: This guy appeared in our channel for the first time in Hungary. He was absolutely unknown for the wider public. It was funny because we even had to label him as the ex-husband of the justice minister, because the justice minister was well known for the public.

Brooke Gladstone: Before appearing on Partizán, one of the very few outlets in Hungary where opposition voices can be heard, Peter Magyar was not a politician.

Márton Gulyás: He was a whistleblower. He said that he's fed up with the style of the government. He's fed up with the misconduct of the public, public funds, and the level of corruption and the concentration of power in Orbán's hand. He was a textbook definition of a whistleblower, coming from within the system and telling the audience what kind of scandals he witnessed within the circle.

Ivan Nagy: Hungary's president at the time, Katalin Novák, pardoned someone who was convicted for helping the head of a foster home cover up child abuse, basically. It brought about the downfall of Katalin Novák, and it brought about the rise of Peter Magyar.

Brooke Gladstone: Ivan Nagy is a reporter for the Columbia Journalism Review from Hungary. He's kept a close eye on his country's press in the run-up to this weekend's crucial vote. He says that the erosion in Orbán's seemingly invulnerable power base began with this single bombshell story in February 2024, a scandal involving Hungary's then-president. The presidency in Hungary is a largely ceremonial post.

Ivan Nagy: President Novák, before she was appointed the President of Hungary, was the Minister of Family Affairs for Orbán. It was a huge position created solely for her and for her successors because one of Orbán's main political platforms is being a pro-family government, offering all sorts of tax breaks and financial advances to families who have multiple children. It's what he uses to try to sugarcoat his very anti-LGBTQ stance in social life. To find out that your president pardoned someone who helped cover up a crime, that is huge.

Brooke Gladstone: It feels so quaint that Hungarians still care about outrageous hypocrisy, because we've been seeing a lot of it.

Ivan Nagy: We long thought that the threshold for something to be noticed by Hungarians was somewhere up where the Artemis Project is up now. From day one, investigative work has kept an eye on this regime. Over time, it's become virtually impossible to break through the noise, and especially to have a story that penetrated beyond a certain bubble of society that could access free information. Because one of the building blocks of this regime is the complete isolation of huge populations from verified objective news. Many, many people are still dependent on government propaganda, on freely accessible public media channels, which are 24/7 echoing the government's talking points.

Brooke Gladstone: Back to the interview that Magyar did, the one that went viral. You say it kicked off some of the first real backlash that Orbán has seen during his regime. What were these stories that no one paid attention to, some of those bombshell stories you referred to?

Ivan Nagy: Prior to the child abuse story?

Brooke Gladstone: Yes.

Ivan Nagy: For instance, one of these stories is that in the 2010s, public money from Hungary Central Bank was funneled into non-governmental organizations, on paper charities, all led and run by people who are related to either the son of the head of the national bank or his business circles. What ended up happening is that, and I've done the maths for this, around $1.5 billion worth of Hungarian foreigns were embezzled and lost in this whole business. This is something that journalists have covered for years, that the business circles of the Central Bank leader's son have gotten so rich that they actually purchased skyline apartments, condos in Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.

These are the kind of things that never really reached broader society. It's mostly corruption-related. Hungary's richest man was once the pipe fitter, the gas man of Viktor Orbán, a childhood friend, and now, virtually in every industry in Hungary, he owns a majority stake. These kinds of things journalists have covered for long, but one of the many reasons that didn't resonate with people is that people are doing relatively well off in Hungary. Orbán paid a lot of attention to making sure that the amount of money that people see in their bank accounts or in their wallets is just always slightly, a little more than the month before or the year before.

Brooke Gladstone: All people, Ivan, or just the elite?

Ivan Nagy: It's a very good question. Obviously, Orbán's business circles were the biggest beneficiaries of his governance. As I said, it's really hard to explain how absurd it is that someone like a pipe fitter from Orbán's home village becomes the richest man of Hungary in the span of five years. What Orbán has done to guarantee his success is to make the most vulnerable parts of society feel like they are better off. Wages have actually risen consistently from 2010 until 2022. People felt like they had more money on their bank accounts.

Now, the problem was what we understood as journalists and what we tried to report on is that at the same time, Hungary has the highest value added tax in the world, 27% on every purchase Hungary has had, after COVID and the war In Ukraine, a 25% inflation rate, all sorts of other economic measures that Orbán imposed on businesses, all trickled down to the consumer level.

Brooke Gladstone: Surely the electorate would have noticed that.

Ivan Nagy: Except they did not, because on the surface, it did look like they had more money in their bank accounts. That was the magic of Orbán. This is why his regime started to crumble only in the past four years, because of all the economic crises, because of COVID, because of the war in Ukraine, because this illusion can no longer be kept up. Orbán always knew that this kind of financial aspect was crucial to his power. A lot of times before elections, we had seen all sorts of cash advances and tax breaks and many, many ways in which people would see a large amount of money reach their bank accounts before election day.

His regime started to crumble only in the past four years because of all the economic crises, because of COVID, because of the war in Ukraine. They're connecting the dots, and here's Peter Magyar, someone who's been in front of the public eye for two years and telling them that, "You're struggling to pay your rent. I'm pointing to the guy who's responsible for it. It's because of him. Look at his cronies on their yachts. Look at his family getting rich while you're getting poorer. See?"

Brooke Gladstone: We've often looked at Hungary as an example of democratic backsliding, where the press seemed to have less and less influence. What is it like working on the ground there right now? What have you heard?

Ivan Nagy: Having been an independent journalist in Hungary for five years, I only left a year and a half ago, hostility was the baseline emotion that you were feeling when you were out reporting, especially if you're reporting on rallies connected to Orbán. It became a kind of rite of passage to receive your first death threat through email. What has changed over the past couple of years, and especially in the past couple of months running up to this election, has been that Orbán, for the first time, really acts like someone who's in danger. Orbán has taken independent journalists as their enemies, as part of all the forces that are, in his mythology, coming to get Hungarians if Orbán is not protecting them. Has really been showing in the street--

Brooke Gladstone: The enemy within.

Ivan Nagy: Precisely. You see young female reporters trying to do interviews on the street, being shoved off or even forcibly removed from buildings by politicians. That's never been seen before. There's no like life-threatening assault, but it's definitely impossible to do your job if you consider your job to be going to an event, reporting from it, asking questions, and going home untouched.

Brooke Gladstone: Especially female reporters. Not so much male reporters.

Ivan Nagy: It has happened to female reporters multiple times in his campaign. It does happen to male reporters as well. Like I remember years ago being touched or lightly shoved at, and you're taught not to respond to it. When you see it happen on camera, that does feel like crossing the line, and it is crossing the line.

Brooke Gladstone: You've noted that a half dozen whistleblowers have given tell-all interviews about how the regime operates and that Orbán is all over the tabloids. That is part of the story of the media now.

Ivan Nagy: There is a saying in Hungarian which roughly translates to we've known, but we never thought. In a lot of ways, life and public life in Hungary operates in this we've known but never thought kind of way. Everyone knows that officials can be bribed across the country, but until someone gets investigated and taken down for this, people pretend like it doesn't exist. Same goes to understanding how this regime works.

Now, as the regime might be coming to an end, more and more people are coming out to speak up from the army. Someone came out a week ago and had a tell-all interview for a press outlet called Telex about just how much it is politically controlled instead of professionally controlled and how much power Viktor Orbán's own son has within the army to do whatever he wants.

Another very explosive interview a couple of weeks ago, an investigator from the Hungarian police force revealed that the government, through the secret service, have been surveilling Peter Modyar's party and tried to compromise members of Peter Magyar's IT team to bring down the internal network of the party. We've known that Orbán's been surveilling the opposition and journalists since 2019, when it turned out that his government has installed spyware on dozens of people's phones in the independent press, and NGO sphere, and political spheres.

We've known that Viktor Orbán's son had virtually unlimited power in the army because we've had investigative reporting about it. We've known of all of these things, but we never thought of all of these things. Right. I don't know if it makes sense, but the point is, if you have a regime which is in many ways held together by fear, people deciding, being fully aware of the potential consequences, to still talk to the media shows how much of this imaginary power you have left.

Brooke Gladstone: You quoted journalist Noemi Martini saying that, "If someone lit up a match, the place would explode."

Ivan Nagy: She was referring to just how much tensions have overboiled in this election campaign. Even from an ocean away, I feel it on my skin. It's been such a high-pressure, non-stop campaign, where bombshell after bombshell comes in the media, where you have explosive revelations about the government every other day. Viktor Orbán and his government coming up with new narratives every other day, all sorts of smear campaigns after one another.

You have sex scandals, you have pedophilia scandals, you have corruption scandals, you have foreign policy scandals, you have spy games. This is another thing that Noemi told me when we talked for this piece. People want this to end because if it doesn't end soon, it's going to end dirty. It's just a very, very tense environment. Hungary is deciding its fate on Sunday. Is there not a bigger moment for a country?

Brooke Gladstone: Let's say Orbán still manages to win the election. What happens?

Ivan Nagy: It's not at all improbable. If anything, it's a toss-up. If Orbán wins, there will be a crackdown in Hungary, not just for the press, but for everyone who's spoken up. This is why I said that the whistleblowers are really taking a massive risk here. Orbán, on the campaign trail this year, said, "Don't worry, everything will be noted, nothing will be forgotten."

Now, for the press, there are a couple of very clear consequences that can happen. Last year, his government drafted a legislation which very closely mimicked Russia's Foreign Agent Law, which is basically designating any news outlet or NGO that has received foreign funding, even if it's through an EU program, that counts as foreign interference. They never actually tabled this for a vote, but it is ready. Then that would pretty much mean the end of the independent press in Hungary.

Also, Hungary has had a sovereignty protection office, which is a government organization which, for some reason, has the same power as the judiciary in many ways, but does not have any of the oversight or due process at all. They can just determine anyone to be a threat to Hungary's sovereignty.

Brooke Gladstone: Was this an office set up by Orbán?

Ivan Nagy: Yes, a few years ago it was. They just placed some think tank/government media political commentator as the chief of it. It just has a lot of authority, without any sort of oversight, to investigate and look into the finances of Hungarian NGOs and Hungarian news outlets on the premise that they're threatening Hungary's sovereignty.

Brooke Gladstone: If Magyar wins, what have we got? A paradise of press freedom?

Ivan Nagy: I wish any politician could promise a paradise of press freedom. Peter Magyar, here's the thing about him. You're being compared to Viktor Orbán. You can only be great for the press. Peter Magyar is a super professional politician. He has a very detailed political platform, a program, has a whole section on how he would restructure public media. That is something that Hungarians want, that is something that Hungarians need. As I've mentioned, he's already much more open, like he gives interviews to independent outlets.

Brooke Gladstone: You say that Magyar has a toxic habit, a very thin skin, evidently.

Ivan Nagy: Peter Magyar is very active on social media, which means Facebook in Hungary. Every time one of the larger independent outlets writes about him, critically, whether that's about his platform or investigating his past, whatever, he shows up in the comment section and launches a tirade against the news outlet, accusing them of being funded by the government or just putting laughing and crying emojis. Because he has built a cult following, because, let's face it, people believe in him. Many people believe in him as the Messiah. Many of his followers follow him in the act. You see mass unsubscribions from outlets if they write something critical about Magyar. You see people sending texts and threats like, "Why are you in the way of the change of the regime?"

Here's the problem, because Orbán has built a friendly press that inevitably puts the independent press on the other side of this equation. Even though the press has been very much scrutinizing whatever opposition figures that come around, the press is still being characterized in the larger society, on all sides of the political spectrum, as being anti-Orbán. If the independent press does something anti-Magyar, which you can label as anti-Magyar, just any investigation or analysis, they are immediately called out, like, "Wait a minute, you're supposed to be on our side."

This is why I believe that if Magyar wins, there has to be a very steep learning curve in Hungary for media literacy, because people will need to understand that these same people who had been scrutinizing Viktor Orbán, mind you, because he had unrestricted power for 16 years, who else would you be looking at? The opposition who has no political power? No, obviously, the press was scrutinizing the one man and his regime that's defined this era of Hungarian history. People will need to learn that the press is not there to bash Orbán. The press is always there to scrutinize the one in power.

Brooke Gladstone: We recently had Vox's Zach Beauchamp on to talk about how countries display democratic resilience. He referenced Brazil, South Korea, Poland. Poland, in particular, though, is showing signs of potentially waffling back toward the right wing. Given the mixed messages from Magyar, how sustainable is this current and fragile perhaps resilience?

Ivan Nagy: Democratic resilience is a very touchy subject in Central and Eastern Europe. In all of the countries that once used to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence, they've only had really three decades of experience with democracy. That's not enough to build resilience. That's enough to build a basic understanding as long as everyone plays along. In these countries, you mentioned Poland, but you can also mention the Czech Republic, you can also mention Slovakia, people have not been playing along. Figures like Viktor Orbán have not been playing along, or figures like Robert Fico in Slovakia have not been playing along.

The reason they have not is that they understood that these democratic foundations in the society are not strong enough to actually withstand the pressure of an autocrat. This was all for a political power grab. We've seen this in many countries, as I mentioned. Talking about resilience in countries which barely understand democracy in the first place, societies that have barely had an experience with democracy in the first place, and then 15 or 20 years in, we're subjected to an autocrat, it's starting again. It's something that educated, glasses-wearing, blue shirt-wearing, well-combed individuals like myself from large cities can actually delve into and talk about, but it's not an issue that concerns these societies.

These societies are concerned with having enough money in the bank to buy enough food, to pay for rent, to be able to buy a new refrigerator if the old one breaks. That is the focus of life for the overwhelming majority of society. To answer your question ultimately, nobody knows if any bounce back in terms of democracy would last in Hungary just as much as we don't know anywhere else in the region. Obviously, we're getting more and more skeptical of just how resilient democracies are in the US, or in the UK, or across the European Union countries.

What is certain is that it fluctuates, and if Peter Magyar would come to government, that he would be here to establish a democracy, partly because he is a democrat. While he, in many ways, resembles an old version of Viktor Orbán, who's very charismatic, who has this central right Christian approach to governance that is very popular in Hungarian society, he is at heart a democrat. He's a democratic politician. Not only that, he will have a lot of pressure on him.

One of the things that keeps coming back in reports when people go to his rallies in the countryside, I myself have followed him for an entire day on the campaign trail last summer, and I'll be doing it this weekend as well, is just how much faith people put in him, just how much people expect of him. He can't let the country down. If he wins, he's going to have a lot of expectations. That alone should guarantee some sort of democratic fortune for Hungary in the coming years. In the long run, it's going to be years and years and years and decades of consistent pro democratic politics just to establish some baseline democratic resilience.

Brooke Gladstone: Ivan, thank you so much.

Ivan Nagy: Thank you for having me.

Brooke Gladstone: Ivan Nagy is a reporter for the Columbia Journalism Review from Hungary. Thanks so much for listening to our midweek podcast. Be sure to catch the big show on Friday, which comes out around dinner time.

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