Hungary is a small country. There are 10 million people here, and for five hundred years they've been subjects of one or another foreign king - until the 90's (I count the USSR as a foreign king for the purposes of this post).
In short, they're a country governed by rank amateurs.
Orbán in particular is an odd duck, as well as the Fidesz party. They're a student protest movement who abruptly found themselves in control of a whole sovereign nation. As such, they have a lot of ideas about how to fix things - most of which are harebrained.
In the last election, Fidesz obtained a supermajority of Parliament, meaning that whatever Orbán says, becomes law. And here's the thing: Orbán says a lot. And Fidesz says, "Hyuck, hyuck, sure, let's write it down and pass it!"
Then the other 10 million Hungarians try to figure out how to pay for it, what kind of procedure might be involved, how to make decisions fairly - all in the sure and certain knowledge that those clowns in Fidesz are going to change it all next month anyway.
It's easy to look at something like this surveillance law and think "OMG! Hungary will be 1984!" - but no. First, nobody even knows who would be in charge of the surveillance. Who will pay for the program. What procedure will be followed. It'll be yet another clusterfuck of massive proportions.
Case in point from two months ago: Fidesz suddenly decided that tobacco sales would require a permit, and that there would be a fixed number of permits, effective immediately. Since the corner tobacconist is a staple of the retail distribution system here, this immediately put a large number of long-term family businesses at risk.
So they sued. It came out that Spar automatically got permits - and Orbán openly said, "Sure, I've got financial interests in Spar, so it's natural we'll trust them." But Fidesz swore that other than that political considerations would not determine who got permits.
Until somebody got recordings of some local Fidesz mayor determining who would be given permits, based on their Fidesz loyalty, and people sued to see the procedure. No, Fidesz said, that's confidential. Well, but procedure can't be confidential by law. So Fidesz wrote a new law retroactively declaring confidentiality for that class of procedure.
They still have to win an election in 2014, and right now people would be perfectly happy to stew them up and eat them whole. The only stick they've got is maintaining that if people don't vote Fidesz that Jobbik will win - and we all know what fascists they are! That, or the Socialists will win - and we all know how corrupt they were!
Point being, people see through this shit and mostly just get on with their lives, because it's all Keystone Kops anyway. Short of closing the borders, Orbán can't actually impose a dictatorship, and if he actually tried to do it, what real force would he have? The military isn't going to back him up. He's already pissed off the police by calling their union clowns (remember the cops dressing as clowns in protest a couple of years ago? No? Maybe because that doesn't fit with the budding-fascism story line?)
In short, it's chaos. Interesting times indeed! But it's not the Third Reich, and it's not going to be. Racism is a real problem, that's true. The only thing that would fix that would be economic prosperity - and honestly, Orbán has been doing pretty well resisting Union demands for austerity, so I'll give him that much.
Discount the gloom-and-doom. It's just more theater.
Sure, they are born evil people. They would sacrifice their own children just to kill others - anyone who differs in skin color.
Am I right?
There were multiple cases of Jobbik supporters rallying in Roma populated cities, for various reasons. Nobody got hurt. Nobody will. How fascist are them then exactly?
The Roma are not your problem, man, no matter how many knife attacks there are - and I know there are. But there aren't as many as you think, and there are plenty of violent attacks in the other direction, like people burning Roma houses down with the Roma still in them.
As to your point of Jobbik rallies in Roma cities - yeah, that's true as far as official rallies go. I do quite clearly remember a strongly Jobbik demonstration over near the Tisza last year that was not exactly sunshine and butterflies, though. Hatred does not pay.
And if you think the taxes going to support Roma kids are sapping your economic strength - there are a few ethnic Magyarok who stole 100 trillion forint from you thirty years ago and still have it. You could stack every Roma baby in the world end to end and they wouldn't be as tall as that. Those guys are your enemy, and they are Magyar, not Roma.
Jobbik is misguided, but I don't think they're fundamentally misguided. Their nationalistic principles show promise, like I say. Somebody has to start keeping the money in-country, and they'd be likely to work on that if they can get their heads out of their asses long enough.
Add to that the fact that Jobbik will have to be part of a coalition if they do gain more representation in Parliament (there's no danger whatsoever of a Jobbik supermajority!), and that would temper them a little and let them learn about government, and I think there's hope for the future.
Hungary has only been newly independent for twenty years. They've got time to make a few mistakes before everybody has any right to throw up their hands and say they can't be trusted.
All that said, yeah - your topmost point about the rhetoric used to paint the Jobbik as a threat is 100% dead on. They're all just Nazis reborn! Look at the laws Hungary is passing! Oh, wait, that's another party? Oh, well, all Hungarians are the same anyway.
I personally know multiple politicians who are members of the Jobbik. None of them want to burn Romas. None of them even blame them, they blame the government.
But fair's fair, I haven't personally been at any such demonstrations - but I'll bet you haven't been at any knife fights, either.
As to the media - after 25 years of marriage to a Hungarian, and now a year living in Budapest, my Hungarian still sucks. I can keep up my end of a conversation if I've had enough sleep and I can read text fine, but I usually have to ask my wife what any given news story is about. Most of my exposure to current events consists of her watching the news while I'm finishing up one job or another on the laptop. So I'm not 100% up to speed on detail.
The media here honestly seems less slanted than in the States, but that is a really vaguely anecdotal judgement. It would be nice if a study were actually possible, but such is the nature of media that it isn't, really.
You live in Budapest you say. That's an entirely different place then the rest of the country.
The amount of poverty and suffering people endure in the country side is almost unimaginable. Unfortunately I can imagine it because I grew up in it.
PS:
I have been at knife fights unfortunately. That can happen when you want to drink an orange juice in a pub here.
PS2:
How do you like the Hungarian language? I am a natural language geek. What do you think how does it sound? Any thoughts appreciated.
Fidesz is likely to lose the next election; they've really been overstepping their power. But it's a small country. As long as nobody outside supports them, they'll move on.
What you read in Western European media is Eurocorporates being sure that if Hungary should ever endanger the profit they extract from the Hungarian poor (which is essentially everybody), they'll be sure to be knocking on the door with military force in the name of democracy. I think we know whose playbook that came from.
Source: I'm an American living in Budapest.
Racism is a convenient way to marginalize those who see inequity. They so very much want to understand why they don't have the money they see on TV. The answer is simple, as it always has been to the Eurogentile: the Jews took it! The Gypsies took it! It's never "The Swiss banks took it by giving you loans in a foreign currency knowing that the forint would slump", and God forbid it should ever be "Two years' worth of the Hungarian GDP was stolen and deposited in Swiss (and Cayman, etc.) banks by the old regime when it became obvious the handwriting was on the wall."
This is the first I'd heard of this ridiculous law. There's a reason it's a problem when one well-disciplined party gets a supermajority so they can pass whatever the hell law they like. I hope the door strikes them soundly on the ass as they leave next year.