The nationalist right in Europe now faces a question it has long deferred: what follows when the architect of its most successful experiment is removed from the stage?

The direction of Magyar’s gestures gives these first days their charge. Orbán used symbolism to elevate power, protect it, surround it with history and make it feel inevitable. Magyar is using symbolism to lower power, expose it, return it to public view and make it feel answerable.

Read my new article below. Have a great weekend everyone!

Check out my new essay !

Just a small note to say thank you for all the support here. I’m much more active on Substack, where I share all my updates, reporting, and news first. If you’d like to follow my work more closely, you can subscribe here: 👉🏻 thehungaryreport.substack.com

Every cover-up ends with someone taking the hit.

Check out my new opinion article.

Check out this week’s Cartoons!

🇭🇺❗️Orban was booed at his own election rally. In response, he broke down, began accusing them of promoting Ukrainian interests.

This week’s Clown of the Week is genuinely elite-level embarrassing. One is reportedly briefing Russia mid-EU meetings. One is selling war like a timeshare. One is passing the hat to oligarchs to keep a war going. You decide who wins 🤡

Orbán, for years, ran on a promise of stability and reliability. After sixteen years in power, he has proved true to that promise: reliably corrupt and consistently useful to the Kremlin. Read my new opinion article below.

Orbán, for years, ran on a promise of stability and reliability. After sixteen years in power, he has proved true to that promise: reliably corrupt and consistently useful to the Kremlin. Read my new opinion article below.

💥Due to Putin’s ex-interpreter Daria Boyarskaya playing a key role in the OSCE PA’s election monitoring mission, Hungary’s leading NGOs are limiting cooperation and withholding non-public information. Boyarskaya is sanctioned by Poland and was previously detained by Lithuania.

Viktor Orbán built his politics on the language of sovereignty and foreign interference. Yet one of the most reliable vote pools in his favour sits outside Hungary’s borders, in a system that is legal, politically convenient and far less transparent than it should be. Read my new article below.

The great Trump wind-down: bigger, louder, and somehow still out of fuel.

Some decisions in this administration are strategic. Some are classified. And some apparently come with hash browns.

Trump does not just sound ridiculous. The ridiculousness works. Incoherence is not a bug. It is a feature, factory-default, never patched, deployed daily, and somehow still getting five-star reviews from the people it actively confuses.

Planted flags, a mystery syringe, eighty-two million in seized gold, Russian election interference, and a government that has stopped losing the plot and started selling signed copies.

Kremlin man inside the EU? Orbán’s relationship with Russia has long raised the same question: how far does Hungary’s leader go in serving Moscow’s interests from within Europe?

New edition of Cartooning Politics Weekly, check it out below!

Vote now! open.substack.com/pub/cartooni...

Vote now! open.substack.com/pub/cartooni...

Orbán built the model. Trump admires the method. My latest for The Hungary Report on how democracy in Hungary wasn’t destroyed outright, it was bent until power could live comfortably inside it.