I watched a few minutes of the press conference after their dinner/lunch meeting, with Orban taking his turn to answer questions after DJT had spoken. As an outsider, your PM seems to me to have done a good job of using his EU veto to dampen Brussels-centric hysteria and bear-poking over the last few years. Keeping the US onside has to be a massive lift for his international profile as well. All of which will have Queen Ursula hyperventilating of course. I enjoyed your colourful description of Hungary's geographical neighbourhood by the way.....
It's nice to have America on your side, but the Americans have their own interests and make you pay a steep price even when they're friendly, and their C-17s can take off any moment, leaving you behind to deal with your local adversaries, alone.
It's unwise to burn local bridges, to antagonize neighbors because a superpower one ocean away stands behind your back. The Polish Right learned it the humiliating way, having to suck up to Biden once the Ukraine war started.
It's more valuable to have the Visegrad 4 back together, than the fleeting and unreliable support of the White House. One of the major European powers flipping (abandoning national suicide) is also more valuable.
Absolutely. I am sure that Orban knows that “America First” means exactly that, and the Trump administration will have its own geopolitical and possibly strategic interests uppermost-at all times. He is walking a fine line, it seems. Perhaps Germany at least will have some sort of a non-terminal shock to end the steady march over the green cliff. Maybe rolling but short blackouts or brownouts will be the sort of jolt required under the political classes. And you are right of course: we all need good , functional relations with our next-door neighbours. The most cost-effective trade arrangements are almost always local. But I wish him well, in any case. Just a few thoughts from a UK observer, with no pretensions to any insights!
When I saw "The Joules did this", my immediate reaction was Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends", thinking "Joules" was a conflation of "Jews" and "Jules" (short for "Julius", a common-enough Jewish name), and that you'd written yet-another "something" (Welcome Back!) about Israel, Gaza, and European-Judeophobia. So, a pleasant surprise. EROEI is both educational and entertaining (try saying it, and see if, in your mind's-ear, you don't hear the Flying Monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, chanting it -- "E-RO-EI, yo-ho, E-RO-EI, yo-ho"). Welcome back... I hope we'll see you again, more frequently.
Hey Paprika! Where's the new post? You say that nothing substantial happens, but this weekend it's certainly not true!
Viktor was the final European thorn in the side of the Globalist Empire.
(I refer to the one which loudly rejects Trump as The False Emperor, and will deposit him anyway after he does the dirty work in Iran)
Peter is *nominally* anti-immigration RW. And yet, everyone from Barrack Hussein to Queen Ursula is as giddy as a 12yo girl seeing Taylor Swift waltz into her classroom.
What gives? Is this really ONLY about the pivot on Ukraine?
Or is he about to stick the huge dildo of multi-culti globalism up Hungary's ass?
Will he be gentle? Will it be only to tickle the prostate a bit? Or will he ram it so hard that it comes out of Hungary's mouth?
Don't keep us in suspense, give us the inside view!
I'm mostly active in Hungarian. It's the season for post-mortems, one Substack post here that I'll be publishing in Hungarian is the disaster that "illiberalism" as a meme became:
Thanks. Good article on Fidesz's communication mishaps. I mean, I'm online, I knew immediately what they meant by illiberalism. They meant anti-shitlibism. But you can't communicate it that way either.
The online will understand illiberalism and anti-shitlibism equally well.
The normie won't understand the latter at all, and will horribly misunderstand the former.
Yeah, they SHOULD have known better than saying that. Shitlibs have been waging a words-meaning-redefinition war for bloody DECADES, with little to no opposition, and you can't just pop out of the trench and expect to not be immediately mowed down.
But what we non-Hungarians are truly wondering about at this point, is Peter. Do you trust him? Will he service his voters? Or will he service Soros and Leyen and the domestic "GDP number go up" ghouls who'd sell their own grandmother let alone everyone else's granddaughter?
Eh, hydrocarbs... the one thing USA has no lack of. (at least if they beef up the shale-specific refineries a bit, which is very doable)
But the Russian output is blocked off, now the Persian Gulf output is blocked off, and UK+Norway were never enough for Europe.
Hungary is not much worse nor better off on that front than the average European country. But - alongside Poland - it was the only one that wasn't _completely_ Brussels' lapdog.
I have to disagree with Menyhei. From where I sit, Orban seemed deeply shaken, not relieved. (Gather info but never outsource your own discernment.)
Regarding the selection, you might find the grayzone’s article interesting. I fear that the parasitic globalist grew roots in Hungary. (NB: I never voted Fidesz).
I know you didn’t ask me, but I can’t help to share my own opinion :) feel free to ignore it.
I am not going to repeat what I wrote half an hour earlier on Menyhei’s recent post. But, in essence, look at one’s track record and you will be able to anticipate their future behaviour aka the leopard cannot change its spots. And, the Magyar Zelensky’s track record is that of a deeply disturbed conman!
As I noted on the newest article, I am indeed most interested to understand what's the inner story of 140 individuals who found themselves to be MPs.
What are their real allegiances. It's Peter's loud theatrics that got Tisza a 70%-of-seats kind of victory. I'm not impressed by Peter's acumen nor temperament nor narcissism nor manners, to put it mildly, but am very curious to see what will Tisza MPs truly do at this point.
Correction. Seems that Peter told the EU he will fulfill 4 of the 27 requests, and that they can stuff the others - including the asylum/migrant one - where the sun don't shine.
I've been happy to have been wrong before, but it's been a while since being wrong made me *this* happy.
I mean, it really boded bad when I saw everyone from Soros to Hillary convulsing in ecstasy, how could it not? Turns out Peter did ram a big dildo, but not where I'd expected him to.
It won't matter that much in 30 years' time if it was 30 billions or 30 silver shekels, but it will matter a lot if Hungary is >95% Hungarian or not.
For the carbs... you'll live. There may come a day that not one drop comes out of the petrol pump, that not one whiff comes out of the gas pipe, but today is not that day. Nothing special in that regard, you're in the same boat as lots of other countries. More scarce yes, more pricey yes, but that can be absorbed better than a divided population. It will push towards increased autarky, and replacing bullshit jobs with locally useful ones. This is not a "sour grapes" talk, but an observation on natural adaptation.
I watched a few minutes of the press conference after their dinner/lunch meeting, with Orban taking his turn to answer questions after DJT had spoken. As an outsider, your PM seems to me to have done a good job of using his EU veto to dampen Brussels-centric hysteria and bear-poking over the last few years. Keeping the US onside has to be a massive lift for his international profile as well. All of which will have Queen Ursula hyperventilating of course. I enjoyed your colourful description of Hungary's geographical neighbourhood by the way.....
It's nice to have America on your side, but the Americans have their own interests and make you pay a steep price even when they're friendly, and their C-17s can take off any moment, leaving you behind to deal with your local adversaries, alone.
It's unwise to burn local bridges, to antagonize neighbors because a superpower one ocean away stands behind your back. The Polish Right learned it the humiliating way, having to suck up to Biden once the Ukraine war started.
https://www.magyar.blog/p/how-many-poles-can-you-fit-on-a-c
It's more valuable to have the Visegrad 4 back together, than the fleeting and unreliable support of the White House. One of the major European powers flipping (abandoning national suicide) is also more valuable.
Absolutely. I am sure that Orban knows that “America First” means exactly that, and the Trump administration will have its own geopolitical and possibly strategic interests uppermost-at all times. He is walking a fine line, it seems. Perhaps Germany at least will have some sort of a non-terminal shock to end the steady march over the green cliff. Maybe rolling but short blackouts or brownouts will be the sort of jolt required under the political classes. And you are right of course: we all need good , functional relations with our next-door neighbours. The most cost-effective trade arrangements are almost always local. But I wish him well, in any case. Just a few thoughts from a UK observer, with no pretensions to any insights!
If there's one force in Europe I respect and fear is the German tendency to stay zealously committed to an idea until the bitter end.
There's an infinitesimally slim chance that they come to their senses. I'm an optimist, the glass is 0.1% full.
When I saw "The Joules did this", my immediate reaction was Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends", thinking "Joules" was a conflation of "Jews" and "Jules" (short for "Julius", a common-enough Jewish name), and that you'd written yet-another "something" (Welcome Back!) about Israel, Gaza, and European-Judeophobia. So, a pleasant surprise. EROEI is both educational and entertaining (try saying it, and see if, in your mind's-ear, you don't hear the Flying Monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, chanting it -- "E-RO-EI, yo-ho, E-RO-EI, yo-ho"). Welcome back... I hope we'll see you again, more frequently.
It's a reference to this ancient meme:
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/29734f/ronaldo_always_blaming_the_scapegoat/
I'm thoroughly disinterested in the Middle East, so no worries.
I didn't think it would happen. It's also only for a year ( which i guess is a good deal for everyone involved...) Choose wisely in April 8-[
I expect the 2026 results to be very similar to 2022.
Hey Paprika! Where's the new post? You say that nothing substantial happens, but this weekend it's certainly not true!
Viktor was the final European thorn in the side of the Globalist Empire.
(I refer to the one which loudly rejects Trump as The False Emperor, and will deposit him anyway after he does the dirty work in Iran)
Peter is *nominally* anti-immigration RW. And yet, everyone from Barrack Hussein to Queen Ursula is as giddy as a 12yo girl seeing Taylor Swift waltz into her classroom.
What gives? Is this really ONLY about the pivot on Ukraine?
Or is he about to stick the huge dildo of multi-culti globalism up Hungary's ass?
Will he be gentle? Will it be only to tickle the prostate a bit? Or will he ram it so hard that it comes out of Hungary's mouth?
Don't keep us in suspense, give us the inside view!
I'm mostly active in Hungarian. It's the season for post-mortems, one Substack post here that I'll be publishing in Hungarian is the disaster that "illiberalism" as a meme became:
https://www.magyar.blog/p/fcd1-branding-theres-bad-theres-worse
Thanks. Good article on Fidesz's communication mishaps. I mean, I'm online, I knew immediately what they meant by illiberalism. They meant anti-shitlibism. But you can't communicate it that way either.
The online will understand illiberalism and anti-shitlibism equally well.
The normie won't understand the latter at all, and will horribly misunderstand the former.
Yeah, they SHOULD have known better than saying that. Shitlibs have been waging a words-meaning-redefinition war for bloody DECADES, with little to no opposition, and you can't just pop out of the trench and expect to not be immediately mowed down.
But what we non-Hungarians are truly wondering about at this point, is Peter. Do you trust him? Will he service his voters? Or will he service Soros and Leyen and the domestic "GDP number go up" ghouls who'd sell their own grandmother let alone everyone else's granddaughter?
Peter's freedom of movement is severely restricted by the situation Hungary is in. Orban seemed relieved to lose.
Damn, sad to hear that. But also, inside insight *is* what I wished to hear, even if it's that.
At the very least, we can hope that Peter remembers it is his voters who put him in power, and not Brussels.
(presuming that is indeed the case - which I had some trouble believing after seeing the assorted reactions, and I do hope I'm wrong)
Brussels can't help him, us. They can't print or mandate hydrocarbon energy. They can only play pretend.
Eh, hydrocarbs... the one thing USA has no lack of. (at least if they beef up the shale-specific refineries a bit, which is very doable)
But the Russian output is blocked off, now the Persian Gulf output is blocked off, and UK+Norway were never enough for Europe.
Hungary is not much worse nor better off on that front than the average European country. But - alongside Poland - it was the only one that wasn't _completely_ Brussels' lapdog.
If Brussels can't help, can it control?
I have to disagree with Menyhei. From where I sit, Orban seemed deeply shaken, not relieved. (Gather info but never outsource your own discernment.)
Regarding the selection, you might find the grayzone’s article interesting. I fear that the parasitic globalist grew roots in Hungary. (NB: I never voted Fidesz).
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/01/10/eu-plotted-orban-resistance/
I know you didn’t ask me, but I can’t help to share my own opinion :) feel free to ignore it.
I am not going to repeat what I wrote half an hour earlier on Menyhei’s recent post. But, in essence, look at one’s track record and you will be able to anticipate their future behaviour aka the leopard cannot change its spots. And, the Magyar Zelensky’s track record is that of a deeply disturbed conman!
I hope that time will prove me wrong!
Your opinion is more than welcome. All opinions, as long as we keep it civil. The rest of the internet is rude and retarded.
My substack is fun and semi-retarded.
Thanks, interesting article.
As I noted on the newest article, I am indeed most interested to understand what's the inner story of 140 individuals who found themselves to be MPs.
What are their real allegiances. It's Peter's loud theatrics that got Tisza a 70%-of-seats kind of victory. I'm not impressed by Peter's acumen nor temperament nor narcissism nor manners, to put it mildly, but am very curious to see what will Tisza MPs truly do at this point.
Correction. Seems that Peter told the EU he will fulfill 4 of the 27 requests, and that they can stuff the others - including the asylum/migrant one - where the sun don't shine.
I've been happy to have been wrong before, but it's been a while since being wrong made me *this* happy.
I mean, it really boded bad when I saw everyone from Soros to Hillary convulsing in ecstasy, how could it not? Turns out Peter did ram a big dildo, but not where I'd expected him to.
It won't matter that much in 30 years' time if it was 30 billions or 30 silver shekels, but it will matter a lot if Hungary is >95% Hungarian or not.
For the carbs... you'll live. There may come a day that not one drop comes out of the petrol pump, that not one whiff comes out of the gas pipe, but today is not that day. Nothing special in that regard, you're in the same boat as lots of other countries. More scarce yes, more pricey yes, but that can be absorbed better than a divided population. It will push towards increased autarky, and replacing bullshit jobs with locally useful ones. This is not a "sour grapes" talk, but an observation on natural adaptation.
Again... good luck.
Give him 100 days before making a judgement. That's our custom with newcomers.