Hi all,

I’m a PhD student in political science interested in voters and voting behavior, and I am currently working on a survey covering the entire EU during the 2019 elections to the European Parliament. My research focuses on supporters of right-wing populist or far-right parties, and so I am currently busy identifying these parties in each participating country.

Hungary is one of the countries that I am less familiar with, and I find it somewhat tricky to pin down Jobbik. Some years back, it may have been one of the most infamous far-right parties in Europe. But I’m aware that the party has moved closer to the center in recent years, and I am not sure how it should be classified in 2019 (which is relevant for my current research), or indeed today.

By 2019, its ideological softening appears to have produced an off-shoot called Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk), which would suggest that Jobbik was considerably less radical at that point. But just how radical was it still during that time? Could it be described as a centre-right conservative party then, or was it more than that? Where did it stand compared to Fidész?

In other national subreddits where I posted there was some concern that I use anonymous Reddit comments as a basis for research. So let me just clarify that I have [this](https://popu-list.org) scientific list to work with. But I spotted some inaccuracies in the countries that I am familiar with myself, so now I’m trying to make sure the rest of the data is good. For what it’s worth, they consider Fidész-KDNP, Jobbik and Mi Hazánk as right-wing populist or far-right.

I’d appreciate any comments or explanations on where you’d say Jobbik stood and stands!

10 comments

  1. Jobbik’s what? (let’s consider this as a rhetorical…)

    >Where did it stand compared to Fidész?

    Where at the moment their own self-interest requires it.

    I’ve never been a Jobbik supporter, but since they passed the government’s homophobic law, they’ve gone down the toilet for me permanently.

  2. I knew that the unpredictable behaviour of our domestic nazis and fascists would become a serious area of research.

  4. I don’t think that their evolution makes any sense at all (especially after 2020), so not really

    > Could it be described as a centre-right conservative party then , or was it more than that?

    I mean you could, if you were their PR manager at that time you would probably say that. You could also call them right-wing populists.

    Those who could reasonably be called fascists have already left for Mi Hazánk at that point

  5. >But just how radical was it still during that time?

    It wasn’t, starting from 2014 Vona kept sidelining and blackballing the more radical elements – like Novak, Duro and Toroczkai who are the headliners of Mi Hazánk – and was moving to the centre since he believed that Fidesz was siphoning off far right voters and that moving to the centre/becoming a people’s party would result in them winning the general elections in 2018. Although they did end up as the second most popular party, they’ve lost, Vona kept his promise and resigned and then the whole party imploded and fell apart.

    After that there was a lot more infighting, they almost went bankrupt after getting hit with a massive fine and now they’re just an irrelevant remnant of their former selves. For what it’s worth, the leadership since 2018 has been pushing the same “centre-right/people’s party” ideology.

  6. Jobbik voted with Fidesz and Mihazánk on the anti-LGBTQ law. In culture war/identity politics issues they’re kind of similar.

  7. As they moved to the centre they became more and more marginal. Hard to say how much they moved to the centre eventually, because at the same time they ceased to exist for all practical purposes. I don’t think the share of extreme far right voters changed in the last few years, they just changed parties. Maybe Fidesz got a fair share of them in recent years, if Fidesz became more centrist, Mi Hazánk would get stronger.

  9. Hi, it looks like you are quite knowledgeable.

    So in a nutshell: they started as far right cause especially in 2009 there was space there (MIÉP was dead).

    But after 2010 Fidesz incorporated more and more far right things. Sometimes they passed laws that Jobbik mentioned first.

    In a few years Jobbik realized too that the left-wing is not the issue (currently) (when they formed, they formed mainly against left wing MSZP), but Fidesz hegemony, so to reach more people they tried to become the “new old fidesz” meaning a regular right wing people’s party. They were so confident that they thought they could win in 2018 alone. They were very mistaken.

    Mi Hazánk formed because the old neo-nazis and far-alt-rights of old Jobbik didn’t like the new direction. But they are quite the lapdogs of Fidesz.

  10. IMO it was never a real right wing party. It was a puppet party created by secret services to list those people who are radical, and might be a threat to the system and the ruling class. For me the proof of this was when it OFFICIALLY turned out, that Szegedi Csanád, the most antisemitic member turned out to be a jew and just moved home to israel.

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