Last summer Viktor Orbán predicted that 2017 would be “the year of revolt.” People under the thumb of a liberal political elite incapable of understanding the real needs of the citizens would rebel in the voting booths and vote for right-wing parties like the Austrian Freedom Party, the German Alternative für Deutschland, the Dutch Party for Freedom and Democracy, and the French National Front of Marine Le Pen. Since then, three elections were held, and in all three cases Orbán’s predictions turned out to be wrong. There is one more to go: the German election in September, but the likelihood of AfD winning is about zero.
Since the stakes were highest in France, Emmanuel Macron’s win was perhaps the most disappointing for Orbán. He could hardly hide his bitter feelings in his very brief congratulatory letter to the new French president. While he was the first EU politician to congratulate President Recep Erdoğan on winning the referendum that endows the Turkish leader with practically unlimited power, Orbán was in no hurry in Macron’s case. The perfunctory letter is most likely a true reflection of Orbán’s feelings toward Macron’s victory. “I look forward to our cooperation and trust that in the future we will have the opportunity to further develop our bilateral relations and also to discuss our ideas with relation to the future of Europe.” President János Áder was a bit more expansive. He said in his letter that Hungary considers France an important ally; he talked about the “thriving relationship” that exists between the two countries, which he hopes will be further “enriched in the coming years.” He added that he hopes that he and Macron will have an opportunity to discuss these issues in person in the near future.
Over the years I have been collecting relevant articles on Hungary’s bilateral relations with other countries, but I never managed to find even one event that significantly furthered relations between France and Hungary. I remember only one visit of Orbán to France, in November 2010, when he more or less invited himself to several EU countries, allegedly to discuss matters pertaining to Hungary’s presidency beginning in January 2011. Today, the relationship isn’t exactly, to use Áder’s adjective, thriving.
Viktor Orbán was a great deal more cautious in the case of the French election than he had been in the U.S. election when he openly supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, whom he considered to be a disaster for Hungary. When Orbán was asked by reporters of Le Monde a couple of weeks before the election whether he supports Le Pen since the two share similar worldviews, Orbán was evasive. “My star among the candidates was François Fillon, whom I fully supported…. We worked together. We had our differences, but I still have an exchange of letters which is a basic document on modern friendship between men.” Orbán, as usual, might be overstating their friendship. He first met Fillon in November of 2010 when Fillon was prime minister of France. The meeting lasted less than an hour. By May 2012 Fillon resigned, after which he “retired” from politics.
Macron is an ardent supporter of the European Union and no friend of Viktor Orbán. Just the other day Macron said that the National Front’s “program of protectionism, isolationism, and nationalism leads to economic war, misery, and war in general.” It was at this point that the candidate said: “We all know who the friends and allies of Mrs. Le Pen are: Orbán, Kaczynski, and Putin. These aren’t regimes with an open and free society. Every day freedoms and rules are violated there along with our principles.”
István Lovas, a journalist with a checkered career who recently moved over to Magyar Idők as an “expert” on foreign affairs, doesn’t hide his antagonism for everything Macron stands for. Lovas is pro-Russian and by and large anti-American. He sang the praises of Donald Trump for a while, but lately he is no longer sure what he can expect from the new president. Lovas got the job of writing an article on the French election. He opted for a press review of sorts on Macron’s victory, which was an easy way to keep his opinions of the man to himself. Quoting Ryan Heath, the author of “Playbook Plus,” a regular feature of Politico, he stressed that Macron is “shell-shocked” because of the difficulties he is facing. And there is “Macron mania in Brussels.” French people voted for him just because they were against Le Pen. Not outright unfriendly, but Lovas’s disappointment is clear.
His deepest feelings are normally reserved for a blog in which he writes scores of short notes on his readings in the Russian, American, German, and French press. A day before the election he quoted Russia Today, which pointed out that Libération broke the campaign silence imposed on the French press by running an ad for Macron. Lovas introduced this bit of news with: “This is how liberal villains break the French campaign silence.” If one goes to the source, it’s not at all certain that Libération broke the law. But some people on Twitter thought it had.
A few hours later he quoted Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in a misleading fashion. In the Lovas version, “the campaign team of Macron said to be victim of a hacker attack” (Macron választási csapata hekkertámadás áldozatának mondta magát). The original states that “Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team announced later Friday night that it had become the victim of a massive hacker attack” (Das Wahlkampfteam von Emmanuel Macron teilte am späten Freitagabend mit, dass es Opfer eines massiven Hackerangriffs geworden sei). The Hungarian version intimates that the campaign team’s claim might not be true. The German original is a simple statement of fact. Moreover, the title of Lovas’s note is: “French authorities: No one should dare publish information on Macron acquired by hackers,” which, though true, subtly suggests that the French authorities were suppressing important evidence in favor of Macron and thereby were working against Le Pen.
In his last note Lovas quoted an American publication called The Gateway Pundit, according to which “Macron Busted! Lied about Tax Evasion?” For those (like me) who were unfamiliar with this source, Wikipedia describes it as “a conservative political blog…. It is allied with Donald Trump and elements of the alt-right and extreme right in American politics and is often linked to or cited by Fox News, Drudge Report, Sarah Palin and other well-known conservative people and sites. The website is known for publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.” It’s depressing that István Lovas, the foreign policy “expert” of the foremost government paper in Hungary, receives his information from publications like The Gateway Pundit. Foreign news is filtered through people like Lovas before it reaches the readers of Magyar Idők and other government media outlets.
I suspect that a propaganda campaign against Macron will start soon enough. Such a strong supporter of European integration and an enemy of nationalism will by definition be a foe of Viktor Orbán.
