MAGA lost big in Hungary -- but the battle for Europe isn't over

MAGA lost big in Hungary — but the battle for Europe isn’t over
Donald Trump has turned toxic and Viktor Orbán is toast. But the authoritarian threat isn't going away

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published April 19, 2026 11:20AM (EDT)


(Salon) It wasn’t a great week for the far right’s self-appointed crusade to reconquer Europe as a fairytale paradise of whiteness and Christianity. Maybe that’s because that whole idea is vaporware, rooted in a nonsensical social and historical vision and devoted to a losing battle against economic and demographic reality. But that quality of noble, doomed struggle toward impossible goals is both the far-right movement’s fundamental weakness and the source of its power and danger.

Viktor Orbán, the pudgy poster boy for “illiberal democracy” and object of a mysterious man-crush by legions of American conservatives, suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat in Hungary that felt, at least for a day or two, like the global MAGA movement’s Waterloo moment. As for Donald Trump, what is there to say? The entire world is over him, big time, and it’s the unique curse of America’s narcissistic self-regard that we’re still stuck with him, dominating the headlines day after day with his empty, contradictory and randomly-punctuated blather. Trump heads into the latter stages of his presidency as a damaged and toxic figure, a human AI meme desperately trying to spin his way past the massive humiliation of the Iran war he chose to fight and the global energy crisis he single-handedly created.

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If Orbán is already yesterday’s man and Trump is most of the way there, those guys are only the visible symbols of a seething, enduring discontent that can be found both percolating upward and trickling downward throughout the Western-style democracies. Those currents have multiple overlapping causes and cannot entirely be described in terms of right and left. It may be comforting to the liberal mindset to insist that it’s all Astroturf outrage orchestrated by Machiavellian billionaires, or that racism, xenophobia and other forms of small-minded bigotry are the only salient factors. That doesn’t mean it’s true.

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Magyar’s big win, in other words, feels rather too much like Joe Biden’s one-sided victory in the pandemic-year presidential election of 2020. It’s nearly impossible to remember now how much that felt, for millions of Americans — and many more millions around the world — like a moment of redemption and release, and like the sure and certain end of the Trumpian nightmare. As drastically different as Hungary and the United States are, the central quandary remains the same: Pulling together a pro-democracy coalition to bring down a reactionary regime is one thing; managing democratic governance in a way that disempowers or defeats the deeply entrenched reactionary forces within Western society is quite another. ........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/04/19/maga-lost-big-in-hungary-but-the-battle-for-europe-isnt-over/