The Autocrat’s Legacy

“We have destroyed the myth that Fidesz is unbeatable,” Gergely Karácsony said after defeating Viktor Orbán’s party in Budapest’s mayoral race in 2019. Now, he hopes to prove it at the national level too.

After 12 years, Orbán claims near-complete control over Hungary’s public funds, its institutions, and its media ecosystem. Hungarian elections are “free in the sense that no one stuffs the ballot box,” Péter Krekó, the director of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute, told me. “I think we are heading towards a point of no return where it will be practically impossible to replace the government through elections.”

Karácsony, to Orbán’s dominance, is undeterred. Speaking from his office in the Hungarian capital, he told me the country’s best—perhaps its only—chance at defeating Orbán lies in opposition parties banding together, as they have since the beginning of the year. While the individual parties in this united coalition each claim only a fraction with Fidesz when the country heads to the polls next spring. For the first time in more than a decade, no one knows what the outcome of the Hungarian elections will be. “It might be the last chance,” Karácsony said. “If we lose now, that would have major consequences.”