I'm going to point at this as an example of a very traditional, very political example unproductive thinking. One of the lessons people refuse to see in politics is that the people who vote for things they don't like might, potentially, be upset about something. There is a lack of reflection on how rational people might have ended up here.
I know nothing about Hungary. But I am quite confident that a happy, well organised society labouring under the grip of sound economic policies tends not to radicalise very easily. People get radicalised when it becomes obvious that politics as usual is not going to work out well for them. There are cases where the cause is lost and there is an intransigent radical group. Usually there is a long lead up to that of a group who is systemically not having their needs met.
It is totally correct that hate leads to win-lose deals. That seems like a very reasonable option to people if the alternative loving approach is a win-lose deal but with the winners and losers reversed.
And through pure boredom/decadence, they were radicalised through years of negative messaging from the populist press into 'caring' about things like Brexit, immigration, welfare claimants, etc.
These are people that have most of their needs met and are comfortable, yet their emotional buttons were pushed over the course of years into making them foam at the mouth about things they largely don't fully grasp and that definitely don't have an impact on their lives.
I'm glad you added "(to generalise)" in there, because I'd class myself as 'lower middle' and most of my family/friends in a similar bracket absolutely cannot function without both partners working, and a majority are renting rather than buying their home. I'd argue that what you've described is only true of those OLDER lower middle class folks (like my parents) who struck it lucky before the housing market lost its mind.
The only reason I personally fit into your description (well, I only have one car) is that I was lucky to find my way into the software industry which pays a heck of a lot better than most...
Someone is really hurting. Either production is collapsing and people are losing good jobs, or it is directly going to result in household pain.
I suppose it would surprise me if 20% of a country's electricity can disappear, almost half its primary energy production is gone, the population grows by 10% and everyone is cheerful. It looks like a situation ripe for rage, tension and people asking angry questions.
This is basically the pigeonhole principle at work. If energy availability is going down and population is rising, someone is going to be developing some profoundly anti-migrant views.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom
Every other topic that has emotional potential can serve as a scapegoat for distraction ("we have to fight the common enemy first, then we can care about the poor"): immigrants, the EU, Jewish/Marxist conspiracies, homosexuals etc. It does not _necessarily_ mean that there are no problems related to other topics (e.g. EU bureaucracy etc.), but that is hardly relevant in these cases. You see this playbook in many countries inside and outside of Europe (e.g. Brazil, USA, UK, Russia, Poland, Slovenia, Turkey, ...).
8/10 top parody comment. You could have strengthened it by suggesting they turn to brioche if they don't have enough bread to eat though.
Yes, but is the thing they're upset about and the thing they're directing their anger towards actually linked?
It's often hugely successful in politics to say "all your problems are the fault of this external bad actor" rather than "we have a problem and it's going to take a lot of hard work to fix it". It's very easy to blame external Jewish financiers (George Soros always gets a namecheck) and gay people for all your problems. The last time people did that en masse in Eastern Europe it ended up with extermination camps and millions dead.
Arguably Hungary's problems are due to the international finance industry, but there's nothing especially Jewish about it, just good old mis-selling. See e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/6c27cfbc-f50b-11e2-94e9-00144feab... - Orban took on the banks, which has to have been a big help to his popularity.
The EU is not blameless in this: https://www.escp.eu/news/eu-convergence-narrative-played-key...
Is Germany in Eastern Europe now?
Brazil experienced 12 years of prosperity from 2003 to 2015, with some trouble starting in 2012, but still with solid numbers in unemployment, for instance. Still a hate-based disinformation campaign managed to overthrow a re-elected president for accusations later proved unfounded, paving the way to the election of a far-right president who is ripping apart the fragile fabric of Brazil's still young democracy.
This is why we need to deal harshly with such hatred/disinfo campaigns, ruthlessly deplatforming fringe elements and denying them the chance to drag the Overton window their way.
In the past century Europe saw the construction of facilities used exclusively to commit murder at an industrial scale, designed to be the cheapest way to kill whole populations.
It's people like Orbán, the Le Pens, Jörg Meuthen, Nigel Farage, among many, many others, that took this continent there and, if we don't act, they'll do it again.
First, sometimes the wrong people come to power anyway. If they can't do it by blatant misinformation and propaganda, they'll do it by "wolf in sheep's clothing" tactics. Once they get power, the machinery is there, just waiting for them to use it to enforce their narrative. Sure, by protecting the narratives that are allowed, you might make it more difficult for such a one to come to power, and therefore less probable. You can't make it impossible, though. And if the thought of such machinery in Orban's hands (or Trump's) doesn't terrify you, you're not thinking.
Second, power changes people. You might be a perfectly fine, democracy-loving person. Give you that kind of power and you might not be the same person forever. As Elrond said, "I fear to take the ring to guard it. I will not take the ring to wield it" - and for very good reason. Too much power is a danger even to the good.
I can't help but to smile the smile of mild horror that calls to overreaching and overzealous censorship of wrongthink ( hate is sufficiently innocuous and broad to cover just about any kind of wrongthink - just the fact that it has been accepted by mainstream as a good enough reason is horrifying ) is so common that is used with adjectives like ruthlessly without any feel for the irony.
I can certainly feel the hate.
You are right in the sense that eradicating poverty will probably have a stabilizing effect on many societies, but, in Brazil at least, it wasn't the poorest who supported the rise of fascism - this was driven mostly by the middle class.
In Germany it was the hate speech, the scapegoating, the xenophobia of the nazi discourse, the framing of other people as sub-human, evil and unworthy of living. This led to seemingly normal people inflicting unspeakable evil upon others. And it's frighteningly easy to make a human do that.
That's quite literally Nazi propaganda, although the narrative was born in the US with Keynes as Americans were oddly keen on washing the Germans of their sins, shifting the blame everywhere else and go back to business as usual.
The Treaty of Versailles was nothing particularly odious, Germany could have coped with it fine if it stuck to the terms. It didn't, it broke its economy on purpose to avoid honoring the treaty.
And many people rightly saw that the prosperity that happened during Lula's time was because of booming commodities market and exports booming, not because anything he did in particular.
Brazillians voted for Bolsonaro not because he is right wing, but because he promised he would end corruption, and the workers party IS corrupt.
Now that Bolsonaro has proven that he won't end corruption either (starting with him protecting his son), I doubt he will be re-elected, instead whoever else promises to end corruption and is not corrupted that has a good shot.
Ah, the familiar sound of facts being twisted and turned to conform to what you wish reality had been. We’ve been hearing this same rhetoric of denial since before their government ended. Somehow we should believe that a country of 200 million people was just “going through its motions” for over a decade and the figures in power were just spectators. I guess that leaves room to say the same about the current government - the ongoing destruction of the economy is “not their fault” either.
There are a thousand different policies implemented in those years that helped the country achieve growth. A huge number of them already reversed in the past 5-6 years. Hand waving all of it as “the commodities market boomed” is of such a despicable, willful ignorance.
EDIT: on why I find this so aggravating: to have a decent government you need people to vote based on proposals, political stance on specific issues, policies, not empty promises (like ending corruption). This kind of discourse just continues to poison the well by taking focus away from real economic/political issues and into a red vs blue team mentality.
You are talking about Lula, who was jailed after massive procedural "errors", mishandling of evidence, witness intimidation (bordering on torture), evidence inflation and many, many others, conducted by a partisan judge who would be named by the election winner (a win Moro helped him secure by preventing Lula from running) to head the ministry of justice.
Dilma's maneuver was later considered legal and not grounds for an impeachment.
(1) If you believe that hate-based disinformation campaigns routinely unseat good people ... I might suggest that normalising ruthless deplatforming of "fringe elements" is a strategic blunder?
There is a stereotype of ye goode olde Nazi/Communist regimes. It involves tropes of ruthlessness and deplatforming of fringe elements.
(2) I'm not sure dismissing political opponents as "far right" and "fringe" when they are winning elections is rhetorically feasible. It is hard to get away from the fact that winning an election involves convincing swing voters that a plan is acceptable. It is worth asking some what? and why? style questions. Then getting to answers that don't involve the public becoming suddenly and unexpectedly susceptible to hypnosis.
Orban is seen as hateful or radicalising because he is against illegal immigration. He has made a big marketing point about this.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate concerns about illegal immigration that Hungarians might have. Just because Western european nations have decided they don't mind if they add 1-2% yearly to their populations of a culturally totally different type of person, doesn't mean that that is normal or "good".
Orban is using these emotions for his own purposes. That's true. But it's not Orban that is creating these issues, or the concerns about them.
I'm not going to go into the topic of migration and the "legality" of it. But the reason Orban is considered "radical" by many is not because of his stance on immigration first and foremost but because he's been dismantling democratic institutions left and right, starting with NGOs, the media, academia and to some extend even the judiciary. The fact that his rhetoric is hung up on blaming everything on George Soros does also not help.
This is precisely where I claim you've gone wrong.
> NGOs
NGOs are not democratic institutions per se. NGOs can be incredibly detrimental to societies, whether intentionally or through incompetence, and can be used by billionaires to social engineer societies as they see fit.
> the media
The media are not democratic institutions per se, even if they can in principle be used to communicate information needed to make sound political decisions. In practice, they've owned by someone with a view that's inseparable from the writing. So far I've seen corporate media banned and very often, in that part of the world, the corporate media are owned by powerful foreign interests, thus often becoming instruments for social engineering and propaganda.
> academia
A healthy academia can, again and in principle, be very important for the maintenance of an informed society, but here, too, they are not democratic institutions per se, and they have demonstrated enormous susceptibility to ideology (which is quite a charitable claim; they are, in fact, the breeding grounds of many of the ideologies that later enter the political sphere). Through funding (gov't and private foundations often backed by billionaires) and biased hiring, ideologues can be promoted and concentrated within the ranks of the university.
So I have to say I am a bit frustrated by the pervasive myopia about the reality of these kinds of political issues. What I see is often a credulous attitude toward the false narratives that corporate media have published.
Whether Orban is using appropriate means to achieve certain ends is the subject of another discussion, but that Hungary and other countries are the subject of foreign imperialist ideological bullying is not an open question as far as I am concerned. Whatever flaws Orban might have, realistically, I do not see any other forces that can mount a serious enough defense against these threats. (Mass immigration is only one thing Orban takes issue with, btw.)
What is it that makes non-government organizations so democratic? Do they let the general public vote for their leaders?
Most migrants weren't Syrians, btw. But more importantly, I wish to remind you that when this mass migration was inflicted on Europe, the Left was very much in favor of this shitshow. There was no "dealing with the Syrian crisis" then (whatever anyone means by that). Nor was there any acknowledgement that the majority of migrants weren't fleeing Syrians. Syrians should have been helped on the ground in Syria, but only a few states seemed to promote that approach (Poland comes to mind).
All of this should suggest that the mass migration was weaponized.
This sounds like comments to the effect of "If you don't like how America does X, then leave X." It also frames things in a relativistic sense, as if consent is unconditionally binding and nothing but consent has any moral weight.
Anyway, this isn't as simple as it sounds. First, joining did not give the EU license to make all sorts of weird impositions and to demand these countries cooperate against their own good. Second, countries aren't people. Politicians in those countries at the time put a great deal of energy into promoting entry into the EU among the populace, and referenda results reflected a wish to deal with frustration caused by domestic political realities, and feelings of inferiority, more than some kind of reasoned and responsible decision (I recall speaking with political analysts at the time who felt that entry into the EU was a bad decision, at the very least a premature one).
> I think Brexit showed the way
This may be the only option. But this is politics. The EU is unjust (put aside the propaganda please) and so the moral high ground is not to be found in Brussels. For now, tolerating and resisting bullying from the EU is likely better than exiting. But I don't expect the EU is last another 25 years at this rate, so it might be a matter of waiting out the storm.
There is also a difference when you get immigrants of somehow similar culture vs large amount of immigrants from one that is completely different (and it being the same as ISIS, doesn't help, how one can differentiate infiltrator from legitimate refugee?).
It is all good if amount of immigrants is not large influx.
But what most Hungarians (and Poles) didn't take into account is that most of those immigrants prefer to get to western Europe, so blocking them was pointless. They would quickly go West.
Which European nations did this and how? Did Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, etc. do this? If you're talking about colonialism, then if Western Europe has a guilty conscience, let them pay the price. Don't punish nations that had nothing to do with any of that and who themselves were oppressed under foreign imperialism during that time. (Though two wrongs don't make a right, so I would avoid the insane rhetoric of "reparative cultural and national self-destruction".)
Besides, the idea that the world is poor because of European nations is a simplistic claim and the sum benefits and injustices. These weren't typically wealthy nations that those European devils colonized, even if they later took part in exploiting or mistreating those peoples. Odd that only the West receives that attention and no one else.
> Allowing free movement of goods and services without free movement of people entrenches inequality and makes the problem worse
Inequality is not the problem. Poverty and unjust treatment are.
Also, free migration actually does actually make the world worse. It leads to the destruction of the host nation by flooding it with people of a different culture beyond a rate at which they can be absorbed, but also the draining of the origin nations of labor, expertise, etc. It's bad for everyone. Maybe corporations benefit in some myopic way. They're the one who will print the bleeding heart op eds that tug at sentimentalist moralizers.
I've travelled a lot in Eastern Europe and I think I know where this is coming from.
When communism fell, people rejoiced in joining the EU and getting all the benefits of a free society. However what really happened was that those spoils went to the people who were desirable employees. Meaning mainly the young (and those happy few with money or connections). Meanwhile the old communist cronies stayed in power and simply became capitalist oligarchs.
On the other side, older people's built up state pensions were cut or removed due to their jobs being privatised to shady agencies owned by these ex-government oligarchs. An easy way to cheat them out of their benefits they worked for. For all its failures, communism did provide them with a sense of continuity and job security that is now lost.
As a result there is now a strong separation between those with opportunities and those without. The haves and have nots. The older people have been abandoned. Of course these people tend to have traditional values and this is what people like Orban target.
I don't think Orban will really make things better for them, he is just a populist seeing a niche to take advantage of. But the disillusionment is real and very clear to me. I've spoken to some well educated poor people that were just too old to be of interest to capitalist companies. And thus ending up living in an apartment with plastic bags for windows (in -20 degrees C). I spoke to a very well educated school teacher who was begging on the street to pay for her husband's cancer treatment. She wasn't one to fall for these populists as she was way too sharp. But I was shocked how society has let an entire class of hard-working people just drop away into insignificance. In Western Europe we have built a balance between capitalism and welfare, but in Eastern Europe they moved straight to a caricature of hard neoliberalism. It caused a big culture shock and left a whole class of people behind.
We (as the EU) have let this happen by letting these states change their industries to capitalism overnight without setting up a proper welfare system. This will not go away until we find a way to give everyone a decent life in these countries. For some people the EU has been nothing but broken promises. Of course that's a breeding ground for dissent and populism.
Please don't generalise. Have you been to Czech Republic or Poland? There are no such neoliberalisms (I would say same about Hungary, but considering Orban, I'm not sure, I haven't been there)
We have good welfare and educated people don't beg on streets, not to mention plastic bags on windows.
Your description looks more like one for Ukraine.
The plastic bags on windows were really common though. There was a really poor apartment block just beside the office and I always felt so guilty looking at it. From the well heated office with free coffee.
As for neoliberalism: in Poland the usual way of employment, called "umowa o dzieło", gives the employee pretty much no rights whatsoever. It's almost as bad as in the US in that matter, and not comparable at all to Western Europe.
It's not just that we (the EU, or even the West) let them switch to capitalism without a proper welfare system. We let them without giving them a government that knew how to run a capitalist country (because we didn't give them a government at all). But we let them have the expectations of a functioning Western government, instead of the expectations of a transitioning country that didn't really know how to do either democracy or capitalism.
It worked out pretty well for Germany and Japan to be conquered, and have the US spend a decade showing them how to do both democracy and capitalism. Just saying "Welcome to capitalism and democracy! Glad you're here!" turns out not so well. (The problem, of course, is that when you aren't a conqueror, the country doesn't want you to run it. And when you're fighting against the "evil colonialists" meme anyway, taking over is a really bad look, whether or not the results would be better in the long run.)
The world would be a better place if we did that more often.
However, win-lose deals can indeed happen, although they're rather rare. Consider the example of diminsmished agency, e.g a fentanyl addict "choosing" to buy more fentanyl. Or consider agency conflicts of interests or information asymmetries as examples where deals can turn out to be win-lose.
And one of the lessons other people refuse to see is that appeasement of hate generally just leads to more hate. This is what we're seeing in the US right now, where what seems to be a majority fraction of one of the major parties is captured by an escalating rhetoric of hate. The angrier they get, the more votes they get. You can't placate that, because at the end of the day it's feeding on ITSELF, not a fundamental injustice.
You really think that American voters are so outraged about vaccines or masks because of a genuine concern for good modern medical practice? No, they hate that stuff because it's pushed by the people they already hate. So now they hate them more.
