Hungary is objectively an authoritarian regime because it

removed separation of powers,

stacked court with political appointees,

closed down virtually all independent press,

made state TV into a propaganda piece for Fidesz,

etc.

Not because it "disagrees with the EU".

You can be an authoritative regime and still hate Russia and its puppets with passion for what atrocities they did in last century (1956 for Hungary, less but still bloody 1968 for Czechoslovakia).

How great to have a choice of authoritarian regimes!

I don't see how that's related to the conversation at hand. How did Russia get in the conversation?

Stacking the court with appointees? Something the US will never do.

Hungary (and Poland) have been quite clever in how they undermine freedom: almost every individual thing they've done can be justified in isolation by saying, "Look, countries X, Y and Z do the same thing!", but when you look at all those things together and look at how they interact you realise that the situation is really quite bad there - even compared to the USA! Or that's my understanding of the situation; I'm not really an expert in the constitutional law of central European countries.

> removed separation of powers,

This has become de facto meaningless in most of the EU countries as European law is over-writing local laws, in effect making the local (i.e. national) separation of powers meaningless. The German Constitutional Court is trying to fight this [1] but I think it's a losing battle, it's either accept the inevitable (meaning European law supersedes local law) or go the Brexit way.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-germany-eu-ana...

I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

E.g. the head of the German constitutional court has been a recent member of parliament for 12 years. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth

How is that not a political appointment?

And I have not yet seen any state TV which is not sympathetic to the government bureaucracy. If you are being paid by the state, you are not going to be too critical of the state. You don't see much critical of the German government in the supposedly independent German state TV, except maybe statements that restrictions of basic rights are not drastic enough...

So either Germany is also an authoritarian regime, or what is happening in Hungary is not that out of the ordinary.

Are you seriously using whataboutism on Germany about Hungary's current situation?

Go get more informed, please, here are some resources:

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/01/hungarys-authoritarian-t...

[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0409/From-democr...

[3] https://djilp.org/hungarys-road-to-authoritarianism-through-...

[4] https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/ten-years-viktor-or...

>I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

That's a pretty colossal scale of failure, IMHO.

Inability to conform to platonic ideals of democracy and transparency != blatant autocracy.

So you think the head of the constitutional court being an active politician with 12 years in parliament is a minor deviation from a platonic ideal? That is exactly the same as what the OP mentioned.

The German constitutional court is stacked with political appointees.

Sure, the situation in Hungary might be even worse. But western countries in the last decade have completely lost the moral high ground.

You can not imprison journalists like Julian Assange in solitary confinement in conditions that amount to torture, and then complain about lack of press freedom in other countries.

You can not pick your party colleague to lead the constitutional court and then complain about political court appointees in other countries.

This kind of selective outrage is just ridiculous.

That's one guy in a constitutional court of 16 members, and he wasn't a political appointment but was elected by the German parliament (something like a parliament, I'm no expert on the german system).

Assange was put in prison for being a bail jumper wanted on rape allegations. He's now in a perfectly ordinary British prison, going through the usual extradition process under politically independent judicial authority. There's no guarantee he will even be extradited.

Viktor Orban is now functionally a dictator ruling by emergency decree, and has effectively neutralised the constitutional court. They even retroactively invalidated all decisions made by the court before 2012 for goodness sake! There is no way shape or form in which this can be meaningfully equated to anything else in the history of the EU.

In Germany we have the biggest restrictions of fundamental rights since the existence of the federal republic of Germany.

We are all on indefinite house arrest. Millions of people are not allowed to work.

And the constitutional court does not even want to hear cases objecting to this. They will make a decision in 1 or 2 years when it has become irrelevant.

So it seems we don't have any fundamental rights at all. So spare me the outrage about Hungary.

Ok, I'll explain the difference. The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population. If this was not the case, you would expect to see the politicians and parties that instigated the lockdowns severely punished for it in upcoming elections, but that won't happen. It's not a significant issue in the elections. Once the pandemic passes, the restrictions will be lifted. No permanent changes to the fundamental constitutions of Germany have been enacted using emergency laws justified under the pandemic, and if there were they'd still be subject to judicial review and accountability to the electorate. None of that has changed.

I will freely admit Orban does have a lot of support in Hungary, but he has used that to erase the country's judicial constitutional history, not just influence one judicial appointment nut utterly stack the entire judicial system, institute permanent constitutional changes under emergency powers, ruthlessly suppress independent journalism and undermine the entire electoral process in Hungary. He's not even coy about it, he just flat out says that's what he's doing.

There is no level of equivalence, which I'm sure you are completely aware of and fully understand, but this weaselly whataboutism is very tiring. If you actually support what he's doing, just be honest about it and say so, and tell us why.

> The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population.

Fundamental rights are not supposed to be subject to majority approval. I might be in the minority, but I would still like to leave my house after 22:00 without risking arrest.

But this discussion is pointless.

If you seriously believe that e.g. what is being done to Julian Assange has anything to do with an independent judicial system, there is nothing to discuss.

This discussion is pointless because you keep talking at people and not to people, and talking over the argumentation to soapbox your own thoughts instead of engaging with the arguments. Then it isn't a discussion, it's you trying to find a good soapbox to do an exposé of your opinions, it's fucking tiring.

Ah, you are one of those fundamentalists... Yeah, there is also a pandemic going on, look at us here in Sweden how well it works to leave to personal responsibility and self risk assessment to follow health guidelines.

Of course, but both of them can be true at the same time. I wouldn't call either of those countries an authoritarian regime, but they've both moved several steps in that direction.

Your parent said: "disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out". And that definitely happened, the EU has been saying "we're concerned about that" for a while now, and the only response has been "nah, it's fine".

Good thing the parent did not said that. What he said was that these countries are "not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population" and that they dont like when someone in EU points that out.