110 Opinion and Analysis Orbán’s dangerously familiar discourse, John Mastadar

Goodbye liberal democracy, hello Christian Democracy

Orbán’s annual speech in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad (Tusnadfürdő

in Hungarian), in Hungarian Transylvania, reveals the main trends in Hungarian
foreign and domestic policies and thinking. After having formulated the concept
“illiberal democracy” in 2014 – taking its roots from the Putin-era concept “Rus-
sian sovereign democracy” and giving life to Fareed Zakaria’s warnings – Orbán
has confirmed the rise of a model he created before the April 2018 Hungarian par-
liamentary elections and announced in his speech at the beginning of his fourth
mandate: Christian Democracy (a rhetorical and ideological concept distinct from
Western European centre-right Christian democratic politics).
Orbán’s formation of Christian democracy is unique in European political think-
ing in the sense that his Christian democracy is challenging the whole political
and social architecture of the EU. Orbán has openly opposed liberal democracy –
painting it as a model composed of multiculturalism, pro-immigration and pro-
moting a fluid model of the family. In contrast, his Christian democracy promotes
Christian culture and the Christian model of the family and is largely anti-immi-
gration. His speech in Tusnadfürdő does not give any leverage for interpretation:
“In Christian Europe, work had prestige, man had dignity, men and women were
equal, family was the basis of the nation, the nation was the basis of Europe, and
states guaranteed security. In today’s open-society Europe there are no borders, Eu-
ropean people can be readily replaced with immigrants, the family has become an
optional and fluid form of cohabitation, the nation, national identity and national
pride are seen as negative and obsolete notions, and the state no longer guarantees
security… Liberal democracy has become ‘liberal non-democracy’: there is liberal-
ism, but without democracy.”
He added that a sign of this lack of democracy is the censorship and restric-
tions on freedom of speech have become general phenomena in Western Europe.
A closer look at the speech shows the main pillars of Orbán’s conception of
“democracy”: anti-media; scapegoating external enemies; a fear of a global com-
plot against Hungary (the “Soros Plan”); a rejection of “decadent” western values;
respect for traditional values; and a regaining of Hungary’s lost pride. The expres-
sion of western decadence varies in the political rhetoric. In Russia, the emphasis
is mainly put on societal values and diversity within European societies, whereas
in Hungary the focus is put on the lack of solidarity and “democratic” practices,
though this kind of rhetoric has changed since September 2018 with an emphasis
now on societal differences between Western Europe and the Visegrad countries.
The result, however, is the same: Hungary and Russia consider themselves as the
guarantor of European morality against allegedly catastrophic western decadence.