Hungary’s election shows democracy can fight back

Just a week after Hungary's landmark election, democracy advocates, scholars and labor leaders came together for the third webinar in the AFT's and the Albert Shanker Institute's "Defending Democracy" series to examine how Hungarian voters were able to end Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's 16-year hold on power-and what it could mean for people around the world, including in the United States.

Hosted by AFT President Randi Weingarten and ASI Executive Director Mary Cathryn Ricker, the webinar featured Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former member of Hungary's parliament and author of Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary; Thomas Melia, an election observer and former USAID and State Department official; and Péter Krekó, a disinformation expert and executive director of the Political Capital Institute in Budapest.

Together, they offered a close analysis of Péter Magyar and the Tisza party's victory over Orbán's openly declared "illiberal democracy." They also drew a broader lesson about what it takes to resist authoritarianism: persistence, courage, independent institutions and a refusal to give up on democracy.

"We thought it would be important to ask our friends and our colleagues … to help us understand what is going on in Hungary," Weingarten said, "so that we had a real understanding of what is going on in different places in the world, as we fight for democracy or fight encroaching authoritarianism."

For years, Hungary has been held up as a warning of how democracy can be weakened using its own mechanisms. Panelists described how Orbán spent more than a decade consolidating power, weakening checks and balances, pressuring civil society, taking control of much of the media and leveraging the state to chip away at independent institutions and basic freedoms.

Szelényi said the significance of the election results cannot be overstated.

"This was a regime," she said. "It was not just 15, 16 years of consecutive powers. During these 16 years, Viktor Orbán had a constitutional majority, which this government used basically to shape the Hungarian state for their own partisan interest."

And yet, despite rigged rules, controlled media and years of democratic backsliding, Hungarian voters delivered a decisive rebuke.

Szelényi pointed to several reasons the opposition broke through: anger over corruption, economic decline, inflation, the rise of a new opposition leader, and a younger generation of voters who did not want Orbán's Hungary to be their future.

She also underscored a strategic lesson that recalls current U.S. political battles: The opposition did not allow itself to be dragged into the culture wars where Orbán thrived.

"The new opposition leader systematically avoided entering the culture war," she said. "I think that entering the culture war, you cannot be successful."

Melia, who observed the election in rural Hungary, said the government's control over political messaging was impossible to miss. Billboards portrayed Orbán as a strong leader in dangerous times and painted his opponents as threats allied with foreign enemies-specifically Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But, he said, voters were not swayed.

"Hungarians were able to see past the propaganda and see what their actual truth was," Melia said. "Which is the corruption at the highest levels in the Hungarian government."

He also described a calm voting process, with representatives from rival parties sitting together in polling places, counting ballots and accepting the results. That matters, he said, because democracy depends not just on voting, but on trust that the vote is real.

"That's why election monitors matter," Melia said. "There's no question about the process or the outcome. There's nothing to argue about."

Krekó said the result showed that fear and propaganda can lose their power when people are offered a credible, hopeful alternative. He said voters were tired of Orbán's constant rhetoric of enemies and crisis, and that years of work by journalists, researchers, civil society groups and independent media helped expose abuse and corruption.

"Persistence pays off," Krekó said. "For 12 years, it seemed totally futile.… But persistence pays off."

He also pointed to teachers as an important part of the resistance. In recent years, Hungarian educators protested government efforts to restrict their rights and narrow academic freedom. Krekó called their stance "reluctant courage," noting that many of them were not public figures and had little protection.

Weingarten connected that struggle to the AFT's own work and to the themes of her book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers.

"When autocrats get power, and they're worried about whether or not they will keep power, who do they go after?" she said. "They go after the educators."

That pattern will sound familiar to many Americans: attacks on collective bargaining, attempts to censor curriculum, and efforts to erase history and weaken critical thinking. The webinar made clear that defending democracy and defending public education are closely connected.

Panelists also cautioned that winning an election is only the first step. Hungary's next government will have to meet high expectations while tackling corruption, restoring trust, strengthening public institutions and showing that democracy can still deliver for ordinary people.

For people outside Hungary, the panelists said the job is to stand with those doing the hard work of democratic resistance and keep paying attention.

"It's only people in a country that can actually decide for themselves what they want their country to be," Weingarten said. "And frankly, that is what Hungary did last week."

The AFT and ASI launched the "Defending Democracy" series to help educators, union members and advocates better understand the global fight against authoritarianism. Previous webinars have discussed South Korean labor unions and resistance movements in Latin America.

[Melanie Boyer]