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The Joy of Choosing Democracy
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-joy-of-choosing-democracyI really enjoy Garrett Graff’s Doomsday Scenario newsletter. Bold emphasis mine in the excerpt below. It was Magyar’s rallying cry, and something like it should be ours.
SNIP
Last night, after a 16-year reign, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán — Europe’s would-be authoritarian — was defeated in a massive landslide by Péter Magyar and his opposition Tisza party. A democratic country that across the 21st century has slid steadily toward autocracy rose up, resisted, and — for now, apparently — chose a different path. It is as titanic an achievement for democracy as we have seen in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, one to stand alongside Ukraine’s Orange Revolution or its Maidan protests in 2014 that led to the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych.
The election mandate was so huge that Tisza secured the supermajority that will allow it — if it follows through with its campaign promises — to amend the national constitution and prohibit the rise of any future Orbáns (or even the return of Orbán himself). Perhaps most importantly of all, Magyar in his victory speech said he and his party were coming for all the “Orbánists” who enabled the corrupt regime, demanded the immediate resignations of cronies installed across government, and promised “never again a country without consequences!” In return, the victory night crowd chanted a warning to all the corrupt lackeys and self-dealing cronies who made Orbán possible: “To prison! To prison!”
SNIP
How to follow the model of the Hungarian opposition, though, is itself an important case study for Democrats and the pro-democracy opposition here in the United States; the Financial Times’ Ed Luce made an important observation: “People will be closely studying how Hungary’s opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump’s corruption.”
To me, “Never again a country without consequences!” is as good an organizing principle as we can have for this moment.
Last night, after a 16-year reign, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán — Europe’s would-be authoritarian — was defeated in a massive landslide by Péter Magyar and his opposition Tisza party. A democratic country that across the 21st century has slid steadily toward autocracy rose up, resisted, and — for now, apparently — chose a different path. It is as titanic an achievement for democracy as we have seen in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, one to stand alongside Ukraine’s Orange Revolution or its Maidan protests in 2014 that led to the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych.
The election mandate was so huge that Tisza secured the supermajority that will allow it — if it follows through with its campaign promises — to amend the national constitution and prohibit the rise of any future Orbáns (or even the return of Orbán himself). Perhaps most importantly of all, Magyar in his victory speech said he and his party were coming for all the “Orbánists” who enabled the corrupt regime, demanded the immediate resignations of cronies installed across government, and promised “never again a country without consequences!” In return, the victory night crowd chanted a warning to all the corrupt lackeys and self-dealing cronies who made Orbán possible: “To prison! To prison!”
SNIP
How to follow the model of the Hungarian opposition, though, is itself an important case study for Democrats and the pro-democracy opposition here in the United States; the Financial Times’ Ed Luce made an important observation: “People will be closely studying how Hungary’s opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump’s corruption.”
To me, “Never again a country without consequences!” is as good an organizing principle as we can have for this moment.