Bait, switch, hill to die on
Hungary's new anti-LGBTQ laws and their purpose
You pay too much attention to Orban, and he knows it. With the recent “anti-LGBTQ” laws he played the West for his own gain, and made his domestic opponents clowns, as usual. It was a masterful play: the West paying too much attention, getting too zealous on a Hungarian domestic issue not only played into his hands, but also left many Western analysts dumbfounded, as they tried to make sense of these actions basing their assumptions on a well-demonized straw man.
I’m writing this to offer some needed clarity.
This was the most perfect amalgamate of internal and external political play by Fidesz since the migrant crisis in 2015. Orban’s party, despite its depiction as a global villain, is merely a strictly democratic A-player focused on winning the next election in a tiny country of 10 million.
Bait
A few weeks ago the Hungarian ruling party, Fidesz1 announced that they’re proposing new laws2 that would sanction pedophilia even further than it already was. LGBTQ was not mentioned back then.
At first I was puzzled by this sudden new topic that came almost out of the blue: some commentators pointed at the recent scandal of a long-serving Hungarian diplomat who was caught with child porn on his computer. Some thought this was Fidesz’ way of distancing himself from the guy, a redeclaration of purity.
But this argument had its flaws: he was appointed by the Leftist regime long before Orban’s current rule, and by the nature of his crime no one could have been aware of it, making his case impossible to hang around the neck of any party Left or Right, there was no gotcha to get out of it, there was no need for damage control.
Why push this so hard right now, when Fidesz could be milking the success of their vaccination campaign and the popularity of reopening after the third wave of COVID for the summer?
Why keep the pedo-topic alive when both sides seem to be in agreement that the incident with the diplomat should be let to die down on its own? There must be something more to this, I thought.
The government test flew the original pedophile law proposal, and encountered little resistance from the opposition. What to resist, really? This was the bait.
Modelling Fidesz
Don’t overthink Fidesz.
When it comes to understanding what the ruling party does, I try to treat it as a super-pragmatic black box. The less I know about its internal intricacies, the better: I can’t get bogged down by minute details if I want to get a strategic picture.
Super-pragmatic means votes at all cost: principles are nice, but if they get in the way, they can be overstepped. If you can get enterntainment value out of measuring Fidesz up to conservative or christian values, run with it, but you’ll miss the big picture. I’ll waste no time with that.
Kompromat theory
Ramping up a pedophilia moral panic just 10 months before the election, out of the blue, when there’s plenty of COVID-related political capital to gain made no sense until I considered it as the first move in a longer game: what if the opposition has a bad apple among its ranks and the government knows about it?
Fidesz has been in control of the Ministry of Interior, lead by Sandor Pinter3, a revered and feared figure in Hungarian politics. This alone gives them an advantage in domestic intelligence.
Furthermore, the grand coalition4 of half a dozen parties against Fidesz in the 2022 election is struggling in semi-public game of musical chairs for future positions, both on the ballots and in the hypothetical future government that they would form. Passing kompromat on a fellow coalition member to the ruling government would both eliminate competition and get rid of a future liability5.
As an added bonus, Fidesz had its own sex-scandal before the municipal elections in 2019, and a payback is always a sweet motivator.
Switch
Once the little bit suspiciously timed, but ultimately no brainer proposal on punishing the kiddie diddlers got well established in the public consciousness, and became quietly approved by both sides, came the addendum that blew up Europe. In short, according to the ruling party:
LMBTQ + children = pedophilia
LMBTQ in Hungary is a niche topic.
Support or denial of the equation above would each sustain a single digit party at best on both sides. Such a niche controversy is too restrictive and divisive for a large-tent party like Fidesz to target so prominently and escalate so vehemently, unless there’s a way to sell this to a broader audience.
The single digit proponents are present in the grand coalition, coexisting peacefully with other parties whose base either doesn’t care about LMBTQ stuff, or care less than they hate Orban, so they accept it as a necessary cost. Elevating LMBTQ’s importance in the public discourse can exploit this internal fracture.
Ideological depth problem
The LMBTQ universe represents an identity based on sex and little else, it’s not a millimeter deeper than that6.
Mixing it with children is mixing sex with children, so can one narrative present it if there’s a daring political party willing to endure the — mostly foreign — shitstorm that follows. Fidesz is such a party7. With this framing, the equation above can be reduced to a more popular8 form:
children + sex = child sexualization
If you push sex on kids, you’re sexualizing them, you’re a pedophile. Sex is for adults.9
There is sex ed as part of the biology curriculum, but that’s normal sex, and in Hungary, in 2021 normal sex is old school heterosexuality, regardless where you stand (outside of the far-Left, that is). Actual sex is more than what kids are thought in biology class, but all that extra stuff, that the electorate by and large tolerates, is for adults.10
In hindsight, it’s surprising it took Fidesz so long to exploit this, although the potential explosive power would have been wasted had they done sooner, and then even COVID came along. It seems Fidesz was itching to do this as soon as the third wave ended, it must have been in the works for quite a while.
With this reframing it becomes less of an attack on the far-Left and more of an attack for the Center11, meanwhile the opposition is now forced to take a stand on a fringe and polarizing political issue that they wanted to keep in the closet for the sake of keeping the grand coalition united for 2022.
The Hungarian front lines on gay stuff has been frozen for at least two decades now. The first Budapest Pride was in 1997. It never moved double digits on either side, and the opposition was not looking to retest its own base’s support on this issue just before an election.
The foreign focus trap
People like to belong to clubs, and East European elites love to belong to West European clubs. Such cabals have little love for Orban, so it’s an easy match for our Left, their praise and attention gives our opposition a well-needed legitimacy in the eyes of the Hungarian electorate. It comes at a cost though.
Part of the reason these Western elites despise Orban is his newfound love to focus on foreign policy, one that opposes Them. As a result of this ongoing, abstract and distant battle, Hungarian domestic issues have become international issues thanks to the Western, retaliatory obsession with our small, rebellious country.
A more independent Hungarian opposition would not necessarily have to pick up a rainbow flag and double down in this fight, but they’re too intermingled with Orban’s Western opposition to avoid participation.
An unwilling participation in a fight that was set up by Fidesz, on a hill they guaranteed to die on.
Rainbow coalition
The grand coalition is held together by a single ideology: anything but Orban. This low bar allowed it to gather up anyone from any walk of political life with no regards to skeletons in their respective closets.12
It is a predominantly Left-wing entity, with a bit of far-Right.
Jobbik, one of the prominent members was a far-Right party. Or still is, even Western sources who missed the memo often characterize them as such. Fidesz likes to use Jobbik as a gotcha: look at the rainbow coalition that includes neo-nazis!
While Jobbik did make huge changes to appeal more to the Center in the latter half of the 2010s, as far as gotchas go, calling them far-Right is still a solid 6.5/10.
Jobbik’s base is not liberal in any sense. Some of them are former Socialist Party voters who came onboard when Jobbik was hardcore far-Right, and stayed through their new party’s troublesome transition back to the Center, finding themselves back within the broader anti-conservative block.
From Left to far-Right and back, a great journey to analyse in a later time. For now their surprising flexibility should serve as an indicator of the distinct flavors of Leftism Hungary has to offer.
Heterogenous Left
Since 1989 the Left has never been homogenous: liberals, economic socialists, neoliberal technocrats, communists, the whole menu was present with the occasional overlap13.
The three Left-wing governments of Hungary (1994, 2002, 2006) were all a coalition between the Liberals and the Socialists. They coexisted, but remained separate. The former appealing more to the voters in Budapest and major cities, the latter competing in the countryside.
The current rainbow coalition is an even wilder mix, but one thing has remained: Liberals are still a fringe. Even if it wasn’t for Jobbik, there’s a huge Leftist voting block that finds socially liberal ideologies alien. Urbanite progressivism is not a working class thing, and Hungary still has a significant working class.
They’re not PC to begin with, they don’t care about the pet issues that Liberals live and die for, and the Liberals don’t like these rubes either, but they have to work together to have a chance in 2022.
You want to defeat Orban because he’s hurting the trans community? Come along! You want to defeat Orban because you’re a white supremacist and you think he’s a gypsy? Sure, come along, the more the merrier! It works, for a while, until this coalition is put to the right test.
And so it was.
Fractured and bleeding
The law eventually passed, and Jobbik voted for it, meanwhile all opposition MPs —save for one — chose to abstain. It shows that they really didn’t want this fight, at least not on Orban’s terms.
Every day this topic surfaces, the Liberal side of the grand coalition has to proclaim their support for child sexualization. Even if they manage to frame it for the Center as something more appealing, it’s still gay stuff, which is a no-go for their formerly far-Right partners and their socially conservative working class base.
Fidesz managed to find an issue that can make anything but Orban a bar too high, meanwhile his international opposition reacted, as expected, by pouring petrol on the flames, pressuring the West-dependent Hungarian opposition to keep sacrificing domestic political capital on an unpopular, fracture-inducing and — as of 2021 — lost cause.
The kompromat theory is still in play.
By Fidesz I refer to the ruling coalition of Fidesz and KDNP, the latter being the Christian Democratic People’s Party, a political appendix, a vestigial organ that doesn’t do much, so it can be omitted for clarity’s sake.
Or a change of existing laws. With Fidesz having 2/3 majority and the President of Hungary signing any law that passes in the National Assembly, they can do whatever they want. I advise anyone against looking into the actual letter of the law: it can change on a whim so it’s a waste of time. Focus on the intent and the surrounding narrative.
Also Minister of Interior during Orban’s first (coalition) government from 1998 and 2002, that’s 15 years holding this position combined. He should be taken seriously. Rumored to have an inhuman work ethic.
Although one could argue that such kompromat has a greater use keeping the bad apple loyal, I’ll assume that the current players in the opposition lack the nerve to keep such evidence to themselves in an airtight manner, as they’ve leaked plenty of compromising material on each other over the years. It’s too hot to touch for such an indisciplined group, let alone to hold on to for years. If there’s a bad apple, they’re already a dead politician walking. The only question is who breaks the inevitable story and when, how close to the election.
Not a millimeter deeper than that per it’s presentation to and it’s perception of the Hungarian electorate as of 2021. You can argue that it’s not that shallow, but this is the electorate we’re dealing with for the foreseeable future. To them:LMBTQ = sex
Unless you’ve been asleep since 2014, this should be obvious.
more relatable to the general public (Merriam-Webster)
“the focus of the law is the protection of children from any kind of sexuality – hence it cannot, by definition, be discriminatory” - Judit Varga, Hungary’s Justice Minister
Age of consent in Hungary is 14. Hypocritical? Maybe, but that’s the electorate you have to work with.
My rules for capitalization: Left, Right and Center are capitalized if it means ideological stance. Socialist is capital S if it’s a party, lowercase if it’s the broader ideology.
To be fair it took a very long time for the participants to learn to suppress their gag reflex, but eventually they did so.
Example: some of the Socialist went neoliberal in the Blair era with — ultimately — disastrous results.