MAGA\u2019s European darling<\/a>. \u201cExcept, the overwhelming ambition was there,\u201d he observed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI think it\u2019s what drives him to go in directions where he thinks he can gain power,\u201d he explained. \u201cIf the political constellation had been such that the liberal route offered that, he probably would have remained a liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Political journalist P\u00e1l D\u00e1niel R\u00e9nyi, who wrote a 2021 biography of Orb\u00e1n, agreed. \u201cI think he\u2019s fascinated by power itself. I think that\u2019s what drives him most. If we were living at a time when liberalism was on the rise, he\u2019d be a liberal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Instead, Orb\u00e1n \u201crealized in the \u201890s that being a nationalist, being a conservative would give him more freedom about how he could govern and control and build communities. It\u2019s easier to build communities in Hungary if you\u2019re a traditionalist. And in the 1990s, there was a huge socialist party and quite strong liberal party, while the conservative party, the MDF, was falling apart,\u201d R\u00e9nyi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Metamorphosis Moln\u00e1r, now an academic and a slam poetry champion, highlights an unremitting drive for success in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[31,32,2000,299,5187,2348,210057,41727,2190,1106,660,6563,6657,6565,332,116923,1781,333,335],"class_list":["post-859429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-history","tag-hungarian-elections-2026","tag-hungarian-politics","tag-hungary","tag-judiciary","tag-kremlin","tag-media-freedom","tag-migration","tag-populism","tag-russia","tag-silvio-berlusconi","tag-viktor-orban","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116315746937291997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}