To me, Orban is the symptom of a larger problem. If the majority of Hungarians are against him and the ruling party, stopping him will be a matter of having massive protests and forcing him to resign. The hard part is breaking his spell over Hungarians.
A lot of us who have the means to protest left the country instead as a form of protesting, because it's so easy to move inside EU.
A huge other part of Hungarians who Orban gave votes to were born and poor people living in Romania and getting just a little bit of money from the country to vote for Orban, but they are not paying taxes (representation without taxation is just as bad as taxation without representation, which was achieved in Magna Carta).
Hungarians living in Hungary had 1 day to vote, while Hungarians living in Romania had weeks and could vote in letter.
This sounds like the “politicians picking the electorate” that is complained about in the US when amnesties happen, and about debate about mail in voting and so on. I think there’s a valid discussion to be had about this but it doesn’t seem completely unprecedented.
This... world has no shortage of hyper-inflated egomaniacs who would like to rule a galaxy or two if they could, regardless of their actual skills. If this is combined with smooth-talking, these people, albeit being horrible leaders and bad for future of nations, tend to get re-elected over and over by folks you don't see nor hear about in the news, aka silent majority.
Same as ie Putin - for every protester/leaver this year there is literally 100 that are +-content enough to stay, maybe sometimes throw a complaint or two and continue business as usual. And vote for him. Even with some corruption and election rigging I'd say (and happy to be mistaken) they are properly majority-popular, just not 96%-popular. Then one realizes part of population is plain stupid in rather unfixable way, and the choices become being cynic for rest of life or simply leave.
> for every protester/leaver this year there is literally 100 that are +-content enough to stay
I've never been to Russia. The impression I've formed is that there is a strong nationalist/imperialist camp among the Russian population. I'm inclined to trust the Levada polling organisation, and they say that Putin (and his invasion) have broad support among Russians.
We tend to personalize these things; e.g. it's all Putin's fault. I think that's a mistake; if you don't acknowledge that the nationalist/imperialist sentiment is widespread in the population, then you'll attack the wrong target, e.g. by trying to assasinate Putin. But if the xenophobia and nationalism are just part of the national sentiment, that's not going to work.
I have no idea how one might set about combatting nationalist/imperalist sentiment in a foreign country; traditionally we use spies and trouble-makers, but I don't think that works well.
>I have no idea how one might set about combatting nationalist/imperalist sentiment in a foreign country
When it goes beyond sentiment and into a genocidal war of aggression, like it did in Russia, there is one approach that no one in their right mind would advocate for, but it does work. It certainly worked in Germany and Japan.
Sure; strategic bombing (I suppose that's what you mean). Actually, my understanding is that both countries were militarily defeated; I believe that strategic bombing was really just political theatre.
Well Japan gave up immediately when Soviets entered the war with them, fire bombing of cities wasn't doing much on decision making. And Germany was literally defeated to last soldier standing, so yes strategic bombing definitely didn't defeat neither of those, just helped starve army for resources
