Note: This is the first post in a new format I am trying out. Unlike the other posts in Reading , which are mostly devoted to books, Reading Lists feature a roundup of articles on a particular topic and usually following a short(ish) intro. This first one got a bit long-winded, sorry…

Depending on where you are sitting when you read this, you may be wondering why it seemed like the entire planet was watching last week’s national elections in Hungary, a small, landlocked central European nation considered one of the poorest in the European Union.

If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s the short version: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, the upper echelons of MAGA and the U.S. far right, as well as a big chunk of the far-right populist movements across Europe, all wanted to see the incumbent prime minister, Viktor Orbán, remain in power. Most Hungarians and the rest of the Europe were pulling for the opposition Tisza Party led by Péter Magyar (yes, his name literally translates to Peter Hungarian).

Why?

On the European side, Orbán had increasingly allied the country more with Russia and away from the rest of NATO and the EU (Hungary is a member-state of both). One example: He repeatedly blocked EU efforts to send financial aid to Ukraine.
He and his political allies in the Fidesz Party also rewrote the Hungarian constitution to consolidate power and make it harder for political opponents to run for and win election at any level.

As for his fandom in the United States, its current leaders saw in Orbán’s rule a model for implementing their brand of “national conservatism.”

Anne Applebaum, in a 2025 article for The Atlantic, explained it this way:

What is this Hungarian model they so admire? Mostly, it has nothing to do with modern statecraft. Instead it’s a very old, very familiar blueprint for autocratic takeover, one that has been deployed by right-wing and left-wing leaders alike, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Hugo Chávez.
After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system; and repeatedly changed the constitution to give himself electoral advantages.
During the coronavirus pandemic he gave himself emergency powers, which he has kept ever since. He has aligned himself openly with Russia and China, serving as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy at EU meetings and allowing opaque Chinese investments in his country.

From our vantage point in Germany, we wondered if the election would bring further creep of the far-right gaslighting we have experienced more and more of over the past three years.

At times it can feel like we’re being stalked by The Borg, targeted for assimilation.

Up is down. Right is left. The EU regulating social media is an attack on free speech. But the U.S. jailing individual people for what they say is protecting national security. Europe will achieve energy independence by buying Russian oil, not investing in renewables.

Latest example: JD Vance jetting across multiple time zones to tell Hungarians who to vote for while complaining that the EU was interfering in their election.

Is resistance really futile? We watched with bated breath.

Writing on Substack, Hungarian political analyst Péter Dósa explained the impact on his country of the 16 years of Fidesz rule. Was the U.S., maybe the whole world, destined for the same fate?

“Sixteen years of a free press slowly replaced by a captured one, not in a single dramatic seizure but the way these things usually happen now: acquisition by acquisition, owner by owner, until the media landscape people woke up to each morning was one Orbán had, in every meaningful sense, approved. Courts packed with loyalists so that the law could not be turned against the people writing it. A constitution rewritten to protect a single political project and then presented, without embarrassment, as the will of the nation.
…
Sixteen years of being told that this was simply how things were now.”

Peter Dosa. “This is Our 1989.” The Hungary Report.

Then, the results. Fidesz was defeated, with numbers too overwhelmingly high to ignore or contest.

If this were a movie, this would be the time of the happy ending and the victor gets lifted up on his comrade’s shoulders. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief that democracy won.

But this isn’t a movie.

In the real world, this is where work of recovery begins.

Many people in Hungary are warning that unless Magyar and Tisza move to implement reforms quickly – the Orbán loyalists who remain embedded at all levels of Hungarian government and society will be ready take control again.

Already the people who were hoping he would win are arguing that his acceptance of the election results means he was never actually an authoritarian in the first place.

Apologists trying to credit Orbán for conceding are intentionally missing the point. He would’ve done anything to stay in power had he thought it possible. Hungarians made it impossible.
Trying and failing to destroy democracy receives no credit. He didn’t stop; he was stopped.

-Garry Kasparov, Substack, April 13.

I am not any kind of expert on Hungary or Europe.

Just one of millions of people watching to see if liberal democracy and the rule of law can prevail. Or, are we all destined to a neo-feudal future where a tiny elite hoard the world’s wealth and resources and we are all forced to rent a subsistence existence at their pleasure.

I put together the reading list below of the best articles and blog posts I have seen on Hungary, the election, the possibilities for its future, and why it matters to the rest of the world. For articles that are paywalled, I have tried to use a gift link that is valid to read for a limited time.

I hope you’ll check them out.

The List

• The Atlantic: America’s Future is Hungary
• The Hungary Report: The Morning After
• Paul Krugman: Autocracy = Corruption
• France24: Orbán’s Opponents Targeted by AI-Driven Disinformation Ahead of Hungary’s Elections
• Axios: Hungary election: Trump ally Orbán Defeated After 16 Years in Power
• The Bulwark: The Nationalist Right Isn’t Taking Orbán’s Loss Well
• Thinking about … The Hungarian Candidate
• Atlantic Council – Dispatches: Experts react: Hungary just voted out Viktor Orbán. Here’s what to expect in Europe and beyond
• The Economist: Péter Magyar’s Victory Will Keep Hungary in the Spotlight