With less than a month to go until a make-or-break election in Hungary, consecutive four-term prime minister Viktor Orbán is desperate to distract voters from the dire state of the economy and his government’s finances.

He and his Fidesz party have turned the dial to 11 in their campaign against Péter Magyar’s Tisza movement, who - they claim - plan to sell-out Hungarians to the EU and to Woke globalists while forcing them into joining Ukraine’s war against Russia.

Independent polling suggests the demonisation of Ukraine and its president may be only working with voters at the margin. The electorate seems to be motivated more by Hungary’s stagflationary environment, which has not been helped by the surge in oil and natural-gas prices caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The outlook for growth in Hungary “might be made a lot worse by ... the energy-price shock that Europe is being hit by now,” says Twenty-Four Two co-host Pepijn Bergsen. “If the suggestion is that Hungary would probably be hit harder than many others in the region, I don’t think that they have a good answer to that. Just trying to cap retail-energy prices is not going to work. It’s too costly, which is why you also get Orbán explicitly arguing for sanctions reductions, particularly on Russian energy. The rest of Europe isn’t going to go along with that anytime soon”.

In this episode, Pepijn and co-host Tim Jones discuss the latest polls, the vicious turn in the campaign, Volodymyr Zelensky as Emmanuel Goldstein, and the overdue fiscal and political bill from 16 years of Orbánomics.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

With just five weeks left before Hungary’s most nail-biting election in 20 years, independent polls show prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement trailing Péter Magyar’s Tisza party by an average nine points.

Yet, a system rigged in Fidesz’s favour by 16 years of unconstrained gerrymandering, media control and pre-election fiscal bribes could still see MAGA’s closest European ally returned to office.

“Hungary is trailing behind Russia by ten years and that’s true for almost everything,” Márton Schlanger, a political polling analyst at the Republikon Institute, tells the Twenty-Four Two Podcast. “It’s the same in ways of campaigning and how blatantly, outrageously confident the governing party can be in manipulating the public and manipulating the elections”.

Hungarian polling has become deeply politicised as independent firms like Republikon, Medián, 21, Závecz and Publicus publish surveys diverging radically from those released by government-aligned bodies including pop-up organisations claiming Fidesz leads. Medián, in particular, is accused by Orbán and allies of manipulating data to produce a bombshell poll, which calculated a 20-point Tisza lead among voters who had chosen a party and would definitely participate on April 12.

“I’m not sure if I’m flattered or scared about all of the attention that polls are receiving in this campaign, not just in the past months, but ever since the [2024] clemency scandal and Tisza appeared on the field, it has been immense,” says Schlanger.

The US-Israeli war with Iran and Fidesz’s intensified campaign against Ukraine has diverted attention from the incumbents’ economic mismanagement and corruption that has been driving support for Magyar and Tisza. “It could help Fidesz but, overall, I don’t think that this will turn the tide in itself,” says Schlanger.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

Six weeks from an election could see them defeated after 16 years of creeping authoritarianism, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party are pulling out all the stops - turning Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky into an outright enemy of Hungary and campaign mobiliser.

For weeks, billboards and digital publications have been flooded with AI-generated pictures of warmongering EU leaders and Péter Magyar, Orbán’s challenger, loading Zelensky with money. Now, Orbán has taken this a step further by blocking the release of €90 billion from the EU to Kyiv after Russian oil supplied via the Druzhba pipeline was suspended due to damage at a western Ukrainian pumping station.

To talk about this dispute and energy nationalism generally, Magyar’s increasing advantage and Fidesz’s growing panic, fears of a false flag operation and an election delay, Orbán’s miscalculations around “Peak Trump”, Ukraine’s European ambitions, and the EU’s wilful policy inertia, Twenty-Four Two’s co-hosts Tim Jones and Pepijn Bergsen are joined for a panel discussion by energy-geopolitics analyst Bill Farren-Price and veteran EU journalist Simon Taylor.

The latest EU-Hungary standoff over aiding Ukraine reveals the “learned helplessness of the leaders of one of the richest continents on earth being held back by the prime minister of a country of 10 million,” says Pepijn. “Guys, just throw together some guarantees, go to the markets, borrow some money, send it to the Ukrainians. It is literally that simple. Just set up a Zoom call without Viktor in it and get this done”.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

One of Orbánism’s greatest successes during its 16-year dominance of Hungarian politics has been its taming of the media.

Mainstream publications Népszava and HVG have held the line but today, directly or indirectly, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz controls 80% of Hungary’s media market and actively hinders the work of independent outlets. The country now languishes in 68th place out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom index.

As they lost their freedom to report, journalists founded alternative outlets - Telex, 24.hu, 444.hu, Partizán, Átlátszó and Direkt36 - or, like Szabolcs Dull, attracted a paying audience on Substack. But they all struggle to survive faced with an official campaign of harassment including smears, SLAPP suits, surveillance and legislative threats. After using a 2023 “sovereignty law” to investigate Átlátszó for allegedly serving foreign interests, the government introduced a bill last year to facilitate broader inquiries. In his new year speech last weekend, Orbán promised his post-election cabinet would finish the job and “clear out” unsympathetic media.

To talk about 16 years of media capture, this week’s guest is András Pethő, a co-founder of investigative-journalism hub Direkt36. We discussed the founding of the company, reporting in a backsliding democracy, lessons from The Washington Post and Direkt36’s successful transition to film-making with The Dynasty and The Trap.

This is the eighth podcast in a special 242.news series on the April 12 Hungarian election that could see Trump ally Viktor Orbán removed from power and replaced with Fidesz defector Péter Magyar. András and his colleagues wrote an insiders’ account of the failure of the opposition at the last election in 2022. This time is different, he says. “Fidesz, of course, never acknowledge it officially that they are behind in the polls but they are behaving very, very differently. They are much less confident than I’ve ever seen them in the last 20 years. So it’s a very different … campaign. But I think we’ve also learned one thing in the last 20 or 30 years … You can never underestimate [Orbán] and, and his party … This is a really, really crucial election for them because the stakes are super-high”.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - newsletter focused on the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

In a little over 50 days, Hungarians will vote in a pivotal election that could remove Trump ally Viktor Orbán after 16 years as prime minister and replace him with Péter Magyar, a defector from Orbán’s Fidesz movement. If you want a respite from US politics but crave the battle between the open society and its enemies, subscribe to this weekly podcast covering a campaign that is rapidly turning into the dirtiest in the post-communist era - culminating in the threatened release of a illicitly filmed Magyar sex tape.

The tricks could get a lot dirtier, warns this week’s guest Géza Jeszenszky, Hungary’s first post-communist foreign minister. Together with prime minister József Antall, he began the process of Hungary’s accession to the EU and NATO and sought to repair the now century-long damage caused by the Trianon treaty that ceded more than 2 million ethnic Hungarians to modern-day Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine.

At every election since 2010, Orbán has created bogeymen like George Soros to motivate his base. In 2022, he stoked fears that Hungarians would be sucked into a western war against Russia. In the four years since, his peacenikery has since evolved into a full-on anti-Ukrainianism that is growing as election day approaches. In the past week alone, Orbán has described Ukraine as Hungary’s “enemy” and the EU’s plans to fast-track Kyiv’s accession as an “open declaration of war” against Budapest.

Jeszenszky fears this hysterical rhetoric is less about mobilising support and more about laying the groundwork for a constitutional coup - a fear that only grew after reports in the Fidesz-allied media of threats by a ‘Ukrainian soldier’ to bomb schools in Hajdú–Bihar county. “My fear is that the very opposite is in his mind or in the mind of people around him: to postpone the election, not to hold the election,” he says, pointing out that the Fidesz-dominated parliament recently extended Hungary’s Covid-era emergency laws until mid-May. “Many of us, many Hungarians who are not really too friendly to Orbán can imagine that a kind of false flag operation may be committed - obviously directly by Russians or with the help of Russia - and something may happen, which can be presented as an act of aggression against Hungary”.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - newsletter focused on the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

On April 12, Hungarians will vote in an election with ripple effects well beyond their borders. For the first time since 2010, MAGA icon Viktor Orbán looks beatable – at the hands of Péter Magyar, a defector from his Fidesz movement.

If you need a detox from US politics but still crave a nail-biting battle over the future of liberal democracy, this is the podcast series for you. Dropping every Sunday between now and Hungary’s election night, we bring you the latest campaign news plus expert guests covering politics, economics, history and culture.

This week, that guest is Zselyke Csaky from the Centre for European Reform in Brussels - author of a recent report on the election. A specialist in the EU’s institutions, elections, the rule of law and democratic backsliding, Zselyke was previously a researcher at EUI and Freedom House and is a graduate of the Central European University and Corvinus University Budapest.

We discuss how Magyar’s foreign policy would differ from Orbán’s, whether Magyar could form an eastern counterweight to the EU’s Franco-German axis, his chances of getting his hands on €18 billion of suspended EU funds for Hungary, and Donald Trump’s failure to provide meaningful support to Orbán.

“Trump hasn’t been the boon to Orban that many expected,” says Csaky. “Certainly he has received support rhetorically, and perhaps - although, at this point, it seems unlikely - Trump will visit Hungary before the vote. But, for Hungary itself, Trump hasn’t been that much of a success story - with the trade tariffs, with the uncertainty economically”.

Most EU countries and its Brussels institutions would welcome a change of government in April, she says, but “at the same time, I think there are expectations among some in Brussels that may be unrealistic. One expectation is that once Orbán is gone, everything will be fine. I would just like to dispel that myth, because it’s easy to point to Orbán as the person who blocks everything in Brussels right now. But we know that, behind him, there are other member states who like to hide, depending on interest. If Orbán is gone, these disagreements might come out into the open”.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - newsletter focused on the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

In April, eight million Hungarians will vote in an election whose results will resound across Europe and the US. For the first time in 15 years, MAGA icon Viktor Orbán looks beatable – at the hands of Orbánist defector Péter Magyar.

Have you been deranged by a decade of Trumpism? Do you need a nail-biting battle over the future of liberal democracy, but without Orange Man? If so, this is the podcast series for you. Dropping every Sunday between now and election night in Hungary, we bring you the latest campaign news plus expert guests covering politics, economics, history and culture.

This week’s guest is Gábor Bojár, one of Hungary’s richest men – a “red baron” who supports the opposition and welcomes a wealth tax. Under Orbán’s crony capitalism, “a lot of entrepreneurial spirit is killed or depressed,” he says. “So, a lot of energy can be freed and … it can happen easily because people are waiting for change, so there is a huge expectation, just like the expectation which happened at the time of the system changing in ‘89”.

“I do not feel that, from his soul, Péter Magyar would be a liberal democrat. He is not. But he will do what the people want, and we want liberal democracy,” says Bojár, reassured by Magyar’s choice of shadow ministers for finance, foreign affairs, and energy. But could he be just another Orbán? “There is a risk. No question, this risk is there, but at least there is a chance … If Orbán stays, it’s sure”.

Gábor Bojár founded Graphisoft as a two-man firm in 1982 under communism; by the time he sold it in 2007, it was a global leader in 3D building-modelling software. Worth more than €80 million today, according to Forbes, Bojár oversees the Aquincum Institute of Technology (AIT), which he founded.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - newsletter focused on the remaking of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

Donald Trump’s greatest success so far has been in bypassing Congress, packing the Supreme Court, and populating agencies and law enforcement with political loyalists.

He failed to do this in his first term and paid the price in 2020. But, by sticking to the Project 2025 programme inspired by Viktor Orbán’s 15-year-long capture of Hungary’s institutions, Trumpism has made itself harder to dislodge.

To Trump’s great frustration, however, the Federal Reserve has proved resilient despite his constant attacks on Chair (“Too Late”) Jerome Powell, attempts to remake the board of governors, and a criminal inquiry. Powell’s successor, who will be named next week, knows what to expect if he fails to deliver rapid interest-rate cuts.

Hungary has been here before. After Orbán returned to power in 2010 and tamed the media, universities, regulators and the judiciary, he turned on the central bank (MNB). In 2013, he imposed his right-hand man as governor, who cleaned house and imported heterodox policymaking. Orbán got his low interest rates but Hungary eventually paid a price in lost policy credibility, high inflation, weak growth and a devalued currency – factors threatening Orbán’s re-election in April.

As an MNB deputy governor from 2007-13, Júlia Király experienced this annexation of the central bank from the inside. Now a professor of finance and monetary economics at the International Business School in Budapest, Júlia talks about this, the bill that eventually came due and the huge fiscal challenges facing the next government.

“The way she talks about it, this was the central bank take over of MAGA dreams,” says Twenty-Four Two co-host Tim G. Jones. “Not only did they manage to get all their people in and get the people who were not aligned with Fidesz out but they also managed to carry out a discretionary monetary policy”.

Twenty-Four Two is hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen and is a podcast from 242.news - a newsletter focused on the remaking of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

When Hungarians voted in elections to the European Parliament in 2024, Dániel Róna was alone in predicting a 30% vote for the insurgent campaign of former regime insider Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.

Since then, Magyar’s support has only grown so that, as a national election approaches on April 12, Róna’s 21 Research Centre – in common with all independent pollsters – is convinced that Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement are at their most vulnerable since taking power in 2010.

“We conduct many polls – face-to-face polls, phone polls, hybrid surveys, online surveys – and all of them show the same tendency that Tisza has a sizeable lead over Fidesz, and other parties became more and more insignificant,” Róna tells the Twenty-Four Two podcast. Until now, Orbán’s opposition cannibalised each other’s votes and made little attempt to appeal to the soft Fidesz electorate. “Péter Magyar is the first one who has the priority to do that, and that matters a lot … That’s one of the reasons why Péter Magyar is a much more dangerous opponent for the government than any other former challenger”.

However, Róna still believes the April election is a toss-up. “I know it sounds strange because, in most democracies, with such a significant lead ... the chances shouldn’t be that close. But it’s Hungary. It’s not a liberal democracy. It’s an authoritarian regime or a hybrid regime or spin dictatorship”. Fidesz has a huge financial and media advantage and an electoral system that means Tisza needs at least a five-point popular lead to secure a one-seat parliamentary majority.

Twenty-Four Two is hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen and is a podcast from 242.news - a newsletter focused on the remaking of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

Very soon, eight million Hungarians will vote in an election whose results will resound across Europe and the US. For the first time in 15 years, MAGA icons Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement look beatable - this time at the hands of a defector, Péter Magyar, and his Tisza party.

Have you been deranged by a decade of Trumpism? Do you need a nail-biting political battle over the future of liberal democracy but without Orange Man and his cult? If so, this is the podcast series for you. Dropping every Sunday between now and election night in Hungary, this special series will bring the latest campaign news and expert guests covering politics, economics, history and culture.

This week’s guest is Stefano Bottoni - an Italian-Hungarian historian and one-time Orbán admirer, whose critical biography of the prime minister sold more than 18,000 copies and topped Hungary’s best-seller lists despite ghosting from local publishers.

When opinion polls were tight in 2022, Stefano still expected Orbán’s re-election but now he’s not so sure. “The point here is not how strong Tisza is; Tisza is strong and won’t weaken. The point is how Orbán could react to a possible defeat, and we have heard every kind of rumour here from postponing the elections due to the ‘state of exception’ ... or switching to a presidential system ... allowing Orbán to become president of the republic”.

Aside from Fidesz’s perpetual gerrymandering and media dominance, the government is also throwing money at pensioners, who make up 30% of the electorate. The Fidesz “regime is not like the old communist regime in 1989 - accepting almost gladly that it’s over: ‘we can hand over the government, so now the ball is yours and do whatever you want. We are done with it’. Orbán is not this kind of guy ... and we also had very different international surroundings in 1989. The US president was called George Bush Senior and the last secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev. Now, we have Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Both of them, for very different reasons, are greatly interested in keeping Viktor Orbán in power”.

Twenty-Four Two is hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen and is a podcast from 242.news - a newsletter focused on the remaking of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com