This is not a hate post, just a genuine question. I'm from the Netherlands, and with Wilders recently coming to power, I'm concerned about the direction our country is heading. Wilders and Orban are known to be friends and share similar ideas. I'm pretty sure that if given the chance, Wilders would implement many of the same policies as Orban, such as undermining independent media and judicial independence.
I'm aware of the constitutional changes Orban has made and have a general idea of what he has done since coming into power. However, I don't know what it feels like living under such conditions. For those of you who live under Orban, how does it feel? What changes have you noticed?
Edit: I am just adding that Wilders always talks very highly of Orbans policies. He has a great admiration for him. https://x.com/geertwilderspvv/status/1289123010134278145?t=TRG5cCrrJ55Nc4Rh3xgkcg&s=19
by Julesscare
27 comments
both healthcare and education are going down the shitter and everything costs a lot… these are the biggest changes
in our everyday life we dont really feel governmental pressure, that is experienced by people speaking out in public, opposition members and independent journalists.
He is doing everything slowly so people don’t really realize what’s going on… propaganda also works unfortunately. People believe what he says 😞
Also he puts some huge event all over the media when he wants to try to hide something.
wilder would be exectured if he stole 0.1% of what the orban dictatorshop did. hungary is a 4th world country with subhuman population, while netherlands is part of the civilized world. i wouldnt be afraid.
It’s more what doesn’t happen – while other countries progress, the nepotism and cronyism holds Hungary back – money increasingly goes into vanity projects and not the essential services people actually use. A complete lack of imagination in a government stuck in the past means the country becomes a hub for low paid labour. A small core group of people have become fantastically rich, while economic mismanagement send the huf down the toilet and cost of living/inflation way higher. Constant noise and childish nonsense from the government, Orban spending more time creating conflict with allies and neighbours for his own ego and relevance.
Imagine not being able to talk to your closest relatives, not because you don’t agree on politics, but because you can’t agree on what’s reality. After a decade of slowly increased brainwashing, people just can’t admit to themselves that they believed so much stupid lies.
I’m pretty convinced that the information I receive is generally closer to the truth, because I make better predictions about the future than they do.
For example Orban’s main propagandist, Zsolt Bayer said that “anyone who thinks Russia will attack Ukraine is retarded”, two days before the attack… at that point I’ve already seen many different analyses convincingly claiming the opposite. But the stock market is also a good measure of propaganda vs reality.
In my opinion Budapest was awesome a decade ago, and now everyone I know considers escaping.
Nothing, things are just expensive and social safeties are dogshit.
Literally like every other eastern european country.
Or england
r corruption skyrockets, the state mafia: if you don’t hand over your company, you’ll be wiped out.
Prosecutor’s office, police, courts working for them.
Cult of leadership,
If they want something, they change the laws and the constitution to suit them.
Constantly making enemies.
The rigging of democratic elections.
Mindless, hypocritical religiosity_ about Texas reload.
Shall I go on?
Lol, most of this thread were a child or young adult before him (if you add 98-02, it’s even more).
The average Hungarian has always been barely interested in politics, if at all. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, there was an unwritten agreement that if the people mostly refrained from engaging in politics, the system would sustain a relatively good standard of living.
Orbán’s system is somewhat similar. As the general public’s political attention span remained virtually unchanged during the last 30 years, what little they do care about politics is entirely served by state media and related publishers under the direct control of Orbán and his people. And it reaches way beyond politics.
It changed the quality of any public discourse. People increasingly communicate in a style recognisable from state media and its related publishers, with the same hateful and resentful tone, about the same self-centered, self-aggrandising, nationalistic themes, and will unknowingly regurgitate the talking points they heard on the news.
This level of control over the narrative is a cornerstone of Orbán’s regime, and the damage it’s been doing will unfortunately long outlive his rule. This is how he managed to turn a somewhat Russophobe Hungary to a generally Russophile one in a matter of months. It might not be all that relevant to the Netherlands, as this technique heavily relies on the prëxisting closed worldview of the Hungarian people, but keep an eye out for the subtle changes controlled media might instill in everyday life.
For me, the worst is the propaganda and seeing people falling for it. Even your closest relatives. It’s endless, unavoidable and eats your brain away even if you try to actively resist it.
His greatest sin in my eyes, is how his rhetoric strengthens division and splinters our society.
There is a divide beetween conservative and progressive minded, old and young, rural and urban people. Always has been and will be. But communication should be possible, even if we can not agree, we should be able to respect each other, live with each other.
But his propaganda thrives in this division, spreads hate and creates barriers. It’s become so hard to find middle ground, that people just avoid talking about politics. This serves his agenda, helps perpetuate the propaganda – and causes unmeasurable grief and frustration.
But I’m sure your country will fare a lot better. You had a lot more experience living in democracy, understand it better and probably treaure your democratic rights more.
our people are so brainwashed left and right, they blame everything on the opposition and its leaders, while people in the UK sent the Tories away with little to no campaign on Labour’s side, here people will still blame the opposition when their last pair of pants are ripped off of them by the governing party…
simple, slave minded, narcissistic, but insecure people we are… hope that your people do better…
Hungary is so amazing that even after a gigantic buffoon such as Orban leading it for 14 years, life is still pretty darn good here. Not even kidding!
Greatly depends on where you live, but for example in Budapest aside from healthcare and education you can ignore it if you really want but this doesn’t mean you can avoid it. Propaganda is everywhere and prices are going up. The issue is that with a good enough job you can avoid most of these inconveniences. There’s no violence against you for having a different view or at least not by the government.
However the gap between poor and rich getting wider and there are barely any social safety net for you if you fall under a certain level of wealth.
I you are interested in politics and wish for the country do better than it’s hard to not feel a constant stress and anger because of your inability to force change. Like for example most of our natural resources are sold out to eastern electric battery companies with complete disregard to any regulation. The government have no long time vision other than keeping themselves in power. And this is something that angers me the most because even countries that do everything in their power lessen the effects of climate change can do only so much but we do nothing, and even actively making it worse.
tl;dr: if you don’t care about is and have decent job than you are fine for the most part, but if you do than it’s really hard to endure the feeling of powerless.
If what you say (ie Wilder implementing Orban’s policies) happens, you are done for, as a country.
However this won’t happen in the Netherlands, because the Dutch society is much stronger and richer in independently thinking people, and the people would never let the Hungarian rot to be repeated in lovely Holland.
Hovewer you can expect that as the leadership gets stronger, the worms will also feel like they are entitled to have a stronger voice, and they will be encouraged from above. Unfortunately this happens in some extent almost everywhere, although not as strong as in Hungary, or say, Russia.
To be honest, it really feels like shit to live in Hungary for anyone who has independent goals in life, and the feeling that this likely won’t change in our lifetime is also depressing. Let’s put it straight, Orban single handedly destroyed the country for at least half a century, although not without the support of our fellow citizens.
Awful. Leaving to Sweden tomorrow, only coming back to get my diploma in december and to visit my family time to time.
Cringe…Retro…Struggle
Contraselection, first and foremost. Corruption is an aspect of this, but what truly happens is that everything that matters is taken over and then driven to the ground. Then taxpayer money fills in the holes. Anyone truly caring about a certain field in the economy either have to flee or learn to STFU, or sell to the ruling class. And yes, there is now a ruling class, a system of oligarchy that owns basically everything – electricity, water, telecommunication, transportation, whatever you can think about. Even if they lose an election, they own everything now.
On top of this is petty vindictiveness. When they fuck up something they of course not admit it, but even worse, they tend to continue it _in spite_. Because fuck you citizen, we take revenge on you for our faults, too. The peasants should not be _just_ exploited, they should be properly and thoroughly humiliated, too.
Its a country that now exists only for the “family” and “friends of the family”. They don’t even care how many people leave, they just laugh, good riddance, bye, bye!
Fuck this government and their voters
I hope you are aware that this sub is the biggest hate fanclub Orbán has and they are obsessed with the guy.
What hasn’t really been mentioned yet is how the society is now divided. And they do this on purpose on several things.
You can barely find a person with whom you can disagree with about Orbán without the discussion turning into a personal attacks and judging each other harshly.
The general idea of the propaganda is that Orbán makes his voters scared of any situation where he isn’t in power;
Because then – according to Orbán – Gyurcsány (the previous shitty PM) comes back, or the immigrants are gonna come in and rape your daughter, son, mother, grandma AND you, or George Soros does whatever, or they say that the opposition wants to make Hungary join the war.
And loads of people just don’t follow politics closely, or at all, so they either don’t vote or fall for the propaganda. Here, especially in older generations it is somehow considered appriciatable to not follow and not discuss politics, like that’s something to be proud of, or like political opinions are something to hide. This is most likely due to the commie era where society was encouraged to stay the hell away from the party’s business if they disagree.
They aren’t spending enough on education and healthcare, hospitals and schools are mostly in horrible conditions, there aren’t enough healthcare professionals and teachers and the ones left are mostly rude as hell due to exhaustion because they de working below a living wage OR they are just not good enough at their job because any dummy has been able to can get uni for a while now if they choose this degree. They actually want to train soldiers to become teachers due to the shortage.
So, in bulletpoints:
-Society is divided
-You can’t discuss politics because most people either don’t or just get mad at you for having a single different thought
-Healthcare system and education is rotting away right in front of our eyes, the average kid is doing worse on PISA tests than ever before.
And most people just don’t give a fuck about all of this. It feels like living in that ‘Don’ t look up’ movie.
Overall it feels depressing and demotivating like we are just doomed.
constant frustration
Here, most of the redditors are leftist-liberals, so I would suggest you, not to beleive these comments. You can come to Hungary if you want, it is really a beautiful and nice country with nice people.
Oh, and btw, (and I stop for today because I got too worked up), we are under the _state of emergency_ since COVID (2020 11th March), which got extended, then replaced with the reason of having a war in the neighborhood. They govern with edicts now, the parliament is mostly for show. **4 fucking years** continuous “emergency”.
There’s policy and there’s corruption. Policy often fuels the local corruption in Hungary. So a lot of policies that seemingly don’t move the needle, but allow special exemptions that are beneficial for a single transaction, businessman, etc..
What changed:
– powerful private monopolies and business man established on state money, small/mid sized companies ran out of business or bought up in many sectors
– entrepreneursship severy scaled back
– traditional print and TV media is 95% propaganda. Previously mentioned private business holdings with political ties bought them all out
– constant state of emergency (since COVID we’re in one, PM has right to decree anything without parliament vote if he wants to), even before we were always at “war” with Soros, the migrants, Brussels/EU, globalists, transparency activists, foreign companies, trans/gays/wokes, literally anything. Somehow there won’t be a single year where your country is not in existential threat
– sharp decline in pension values from state
– deep cuts into social programs, especially ones that benefit minority groups, the ones still ongoing never receive any increased funding
– sharp decline in education quality
– sharp decline in public healthcare quality (plenty of government close businesses operate private clinics now)
– sharp decline in birth rates
– sharp increase in income/wealth inequalities
– abolishment of progressive step based taxes in favour of flat taxes, which benefits the elite disproportionately
– a complete disconnect of politics from policies. People vote based on party colour, party platforms or plans are completely irrelevant
– lots of national debt to supplement lost EU funds (we survive on EU funds, this very likely doesn’t apply to NL)
– deep societal divide between pro-orban and anti-orban people. Completely separated communities, with Orbán voters living in an alternate reality almost. This splits up families, marriages too.
– dismantling of judicial system. Friends of the government never face consequences for anything. Theft, murder, rape, pedophilia, a small slap on the wrist, 1 year suspended prison maybe.
– dismantling of the tax service. You don’t have to pay, if you know people high up, they’ll never investigate you, or if they do, it’ll be thrown out.
– new taxes, lots of new taxes…
– recently military reforms, planned “nationalism” classes in schools, creation of a loyal (to Orbán) military
– public service jobs in small towns are directly related to who you vote for. If you voted for an opposition mayor candidate who lost, you might never get a job there, or some companies might fire you
You came to the worst place to find this out. This sub is big time infested by a Orbán and Fidesz hater cult members. Good luck finding objective opinion here.
To bring in another perspective, because this sub left leaning.
He did great things in the first 8 years. Then more and more corruption creeped in and now the party needs the corruption to stay in power.
People in Hungary on both sides always compare hungary to the west.
The right wing always talks about avoiding crappy immigration and its terrible consequences seen in the west – which will never happen because hungary has no welfare state.
The left always talks about deterioting economy and social services but doesnt recognice, that thats a common theme/occurance in the west aswell.
If you ask the average József, which is not on reddit, i guess on average the will evaluate the first 8 years as positive, and then a certain decline.
I am significantly worse off and I feel like shit in my own country, that is what it feels like.
Several of my family members have needlessly died because of the government’s negligence, that’s what it fucking feels like.
A lot of people I grew up with fled abroad, that’s what it’s like.
I saw my present and future getting stolen, our potential getting squandered, my values and our national interests betrayed. That is what it’s like.
Being poorer day after day, being more and more reviled, being looked down upon, reviled and hated for where I was born, that is what it’s like under Orbán.