https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/how-viktor-orban...
Nonetheless, in 2014, five center-left parties formed the Unity Alliance. One center-left party (LMP) refused to join, splitting the center-left opposition vote. This cut in half the number of constituencies that the opposition would have won that year, allowing Fidesz to capture 91 percent of the constituencies with just 45 percent of the vote. Still plagued by infighting, the opposition remained fragmented in 2018, even as it gained strength in Budapest. With 49 percent of the vote in 2018, Orbán won 86 percent of the constituencies, losing in Budapest but winning almost everywhere else. The 2014 and 2018 results showed that only a unified opposition that spanned the political spectrum could defeat Orbán’s system.
The biggest issue is that the majority of the media is controlled by the government. Also they own jurisdiction and have been gradually rewritten the constitution. Most people who support this regime do that because they believe the propaganda. Many people I know have been bitterly trying to tell their family members that they are watching / listening propaganda (unsuccessfully, for years). Most of Orban's supporters don't know much about politics, they just want to live their lives, so they believe whatever is on TV, radio, online media, posters, etc. For many it is very hard to see what is true and what is lie.
But there are many, many people here who don't like this and want a change. The country is in a state where positive change towards democracy is really hard at the moment, many of us still want to believe it is possible.
By the way, we could see this madness around the world in the past years: Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro… many people can be led by their nose. Not just in Hungary. I really whish if people would learn from Hungary's mistakes, and don't let the same thing to happen in their countries.
Many people actually do that, because in their minds alternative is "left" that will do the same but with added bonus of supporting LGBT, fight against climate change, unrestricted immigration and such. And getting traditional true patriot of country X rich is preferred to fattening this dirty commies traitors on the "left".
And one point generally - please lets stop calling whats happening in Ukraine in any other way than War. putin's war - its a perfect name I'll keep repeating till it sticks around, or I'll die trying.
Its relatively personal to me, my home country (former Czechoslovakia) was basically enslaved by russian cough cough soviet forces for decades, people shot or electrocuted when trying to escape (around 500 recorded officially), tens of thousands murdered in other indirect ways (gulags or uranium mines with no ticket back, or just beaten to death in some cold dungeon). I see basically 0 change from that russia to modern one and how it values things like human life, freedom etc.
It looked briefly better, much better, but those times are over for good and russia is firmly back at cold/not so cold war with whole western world. Currently trying to subvert quite a few places in Africa. I hope western 3-letter agencies are few steps ahead.
And yes, I understand Turkey's geographical position giving it power over sea routes, and why that was desirable to NATO. But choosing to include a fickle ruler in a unanimous-decisions-only organization is just asking for trouble.
(The Baltics wanted in on NATO, and it's good that they got in. They're largely decently run small countries in a tough spot, not world stage bullies.)
edit: note if you're trying to find Turkey by searching on that site, it uses the endonym Türkiye
It's better for Turkey and NATO, that Turkey is in NATO. I would say it's far more important than Sweden or Finland being in NATO.
In the US, only wingnuts and "useful idiots" (really the same group) are repeating this talking point.
Even people pretty forgiving of his essays acknowledge he's habitually at odds with basic facts and history.
Not a wingnut, per se, but on the same spectrum of people divorced from reality. It's too bad as well, because US foreign policy is deserving of more scrutiny than it gets, and it gets a fair amount.
I think he errs a bit in suggesting such behaviour is normal for all great powers. The Americans and Chinese while imperfect aren't that bad. And the EU if you can call it a great power does nothing like that - the rape pillage invade stuff. Though of course a couple of centuries ago Europe was invading all over the place. It goes to show these things can change. Probably with Russia we need to make things enough of a pain the the neck for them that they'll see the wisdom of changing eventually also.
Which is at odds with what Putin has said many times, that Ukraine is not a real nation, but a part of Russia, and Kyiv historically was central to the Russian empire. It's really clear that Putin wants all of Ukraine, not just bits of it. Putin has almost (but not quite) come out and said it. It's an open question on whether Putin would stop with Ukraine (we'll find out only if he takes Ukraine), but there's things he's said which hint that he won't.
> On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.
So far. At some point, he's going to have to reckon with all the stuff Putin has said about his ambitions that he ignored.
The US can make demands and so can anyone. In the case of Cuba they were met by the Soviets willingly who withdrew their missiles and made a deal with the US.
Russia objects to NATO membership because it makes bullying and invasion of those with NATO membership impractical. It doesn't threaten Russia but rather it weakens Russia's hand and that is its main complaint. It didn't have a basis for a deal with NATO or the US. Russia has had nukes adjacent to NATO countries for a long time.
There is no moral justification for invasion unless you've already been invaded by that party.
There are good meticulously researched articles about their businesses here (one of the few remaining independent, reliable sources in Hungary): https://www.direkt36.hu/en/
It is clear from listening to the podcast that Russia has always been nightmare to live in (unless you perhaps belonged to a tiny elite) or have as a neighbour. Serfdom wasn't abolished until 1861.
Regarding change from "that Russia" to the modern one, I'm afraid there has been change, to the worse. The Soviet incarnation of the empire was at least nominally bound to the progressive ideas of socialism (which is completely orthogonal to wether those ideas are workable or not), whereas the current incarnation is openly worshipping the fascist ideas of strength and domination, and the struggle to get there.
When Russians claim that they don't understand why someone would willingly ally with others who don't prove worthy by actively coercing them, chances are it's genuine, they really don't understand. Sometimes I wonder if their language even has a word for friendship based on equality that is separate from an asymmetric allegiance based on status gradient. Perhaps all the non-gradient terminology was gobbled up by socialist ideology and now the very idea of peers is out, except where seeing it through the socialist lense still fits?
Ukraine is giving us (or at least the collective west) the best deal we've possibly ever given - dealing a mighty blow, hopefully the final one, to what used to be Soviet Union and its imperial ambitions. Without a single western soldier having to enter the battlefield. Indeed Ukraine may be the first ally in the long history of regimes that US has supported in their struggles since the end of WW2 that has a will and a skill to take the weapons of war that were developed to battle the commies in the first place and put them now into their intended use in killing russian invaders[nsfw] and destroying their machines of war[losses].
Now, if Ukraine were to fall, especially because US should decide that it is not in it's best interests to support them, this has a high likelihood to result in a world where Europeans now have to alone face the wounded and angry bear living next to them, and starting to arm themselves to the teeth. Historically nothing good has come from Europeans arming up, but this will also limit European countries ability, and willingness to support an ally that was, in other parts of the world. With US influence waning, this will lead to increasingly difficult situations in the middle east and Africa. Soon the willingness of US to support its other allies in Asia would be put to test in Korea. Failing to fight the good fight there, but this time with American skin in the game, then the Taiwan is likely to fall to China like a domino piece, putting an end to pax americana, and post world war 2 world order. And at least in the west, to one of the most peaceful periods in [modern] history.
If instead we will help Ukraine deal a decisive and lethal blow to a country that has terrorized its neighbors since the times immemorial, this will send a strong message to every dictator wanna-be, that the rules based world order is the one where we the free people of this planet choose to live in. In democracy, with all its flaws.
[nsfw] https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1b8f... [losses] https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/dfbcec47-7b01-400e...
Note that “Ukraine” is now preferred to “the Ukraine”; the latter term was used in Soviet times to diminish its autonomy by implying it was just a region of the USSR.
Source ?
But the theory that this has any impact on how English speakers view sovereignty is also completely bunk. While English does indeed use "the" for some geographical regions and features (but not universally; English rarely is so simple), in international contexts and sub-regions, that's swamped by more salient examples. Look right there at your use of "the" USSR. We don't talk about "the Scotland" and "the England" as part of "United Kingdom", nor about "the California" and "the Texas" as purely internal regions of "United States", but quite the reverse, reserving. In keeping with groups of smaller units, there's also the EU. There are also many examples of full names that include qualifying adjectives that take "the" -- i.e. the Central African Republic, the Dominican Republic, and historically the Czech Republic (now Czechia is preferred, of course).
There are also, of course, countries named after geographical features that traditionally do have the definite article, but this is rarely taken as a slight against their sovereignty or an accusation that they're not a real country: the Ivory Coast, The Netherlands, many, many island nations.
And why would the Russians even think to use articles to make this distinction? Neither language even has a definite article! There is a history of using different prepositions in these languages ("in" vs "on", roughly) which does have this suggestion, but it really doesn't parallel English usage of articles.