The biggest mistake, or rather sin, of the left-wing opposition is that it does not pay attention to the Hungarian society internally, but to the outside, abroad, for them Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Washington and, of course, the global elite are the main and defining point of reference.

After the greatest success of the Fidesz-KDNP in the 2022 elections, we can say that the democratic change management is on hold, after the fourth consecutive reshuffle of the Orbán government, the dominant party system remained in Hungary - this is a huge success for the national side, this is already in Kálmán Tisza and can remind us of an era marked by the name of István Tisza.

We, nationalists and conservatives, are happy with this, because we know that the country has remained in good hands, which was almost a necessity in the current, truly critical world situation characterized by war, the ongoing struggle for the reorganization of the world, economic crisis, and inflation - if in the hands of the opposition power, Hungary - and this is no exaggeration - could have been in a life-threatening situation.

However, it is not in the nature of a conservative person - as it is even more so in the case of the left-liberal side - to rush as a winner with merciless force at his heavily defeated opponent lying on the ground and ram him into the ground. No, we conservatives, after a few days of joy, look almost pityingly at the other political-ideological-worldview landscape and wonder how these unfortunates could have gotten to this point.

And will they be able to get off the ground by 2026?

Before we try to answer this, let's summarize once again what led to their almost total failure - with the exception of their last refuge, the capital (although the competition has become tighter there as well).

The first and most important explanation: they lost touch with Hungarian society, with the Hungarian soul, slowly fifteen or twenty years ago. I have written and said it several times, but I will repeat it again: on the night of the 2014 parliamentary election, after their second defeat by two-thirds in a row, a socialist politician resignedly said: we lost so much because we no longer know Hungarian society.

And that was in 2014.

Eight years have passed since then, and we can say that their situation has only gotten worse from this point of view: Momentum entered the picture, a party whose leaders and members have as much to do with rural Hungary as, say, I do with lithology or archaeology. But this is also true for the other left-liberal opposition parties, Jobbik has been losing its rural bases since its shift to the left, perhaps even in DK a modest rural presence.

If a political party is not embedded and integrated into the given society, it has almost no chance of ever winning an election.

Although this was not always the case on the left: the MSZP was able to win the 2002 elections because their local bases inherited from the Kádár era were still partly preserved, which of course were built on the petrified communist party apparatuses, local workplace party secretaries, council leaders, and although already obsolete, the post-communist network started up once more, and to the astonishment of all of us, they were able to translate after four good years with Fidesz. (Although those elections were indeed not free of abuses, let's put that aside for now.) The post-Kadar society still existed at the time, the MSZP was therefore still partially integrated, it still "caught" something from the mood of the people - albeit without Gyurcsány's dirty campaign tricks even then they wouldn't have won either.

And as for Gyurcsány: well, it was precisely in his era, that is, from 2004 onwards, their post-communist social embeddedness gradually disintegrated, and then more and more quickly, especially after the 2006 Öszöd speech and the police brutalities. With Gyurcsányal, the MSZP lost its credibility in the eyes of the public, their heavy defeat in 2010 could be covered up since 2006. Your fall and its consequences brought moral deterioration to the left, and this had a fermenting effect on their networks as well - this is where their separation from society and their falling into the vacuum can be traced back to.

Conversely, this is the period, the 2000s, when Fidesz very consciously built up its local bases, in which the civic circles played a prominent role, which were organized in almost every part of the country and served as a base for further networking, into the "small circles" of society ” as integration in a good sense.

But does the left even understand this problem? Do you understand something from all this, and if so, do you understand it correctly?

The first signs are alarming. The 20,000 of their people who applied to the local election commissions later wrote reports about the people in the countryside on their social media pages, which shows that they not only got closer to the people living there, but also convinced themselves that they have nothing to earn there. they have nothing to do with the "jerks, peasants from Mucsa" who live in villages and small towns.

Let's remember! What did Miklós Tamás Gáspár write in the run-up to the first free elections in 1990? "Fuck and fear - or a free democratic majority. There is no third way.”

Isn't it the case that today's politicians and public figures are still characterized by the same racist prejudice that TGM was? The statements of Judit Csáki, the momentists and other liberals rather show that they have distanced themselves even further from rural Hungary, that they now feel a distinct disgust towards the people who live there, something that perhaps even TGM did not feel.

Looking at it from this point of view, building bridges between the government and the opposition, building bridges between the two Hungarys, seems an almost impossible undertaking.

For the sake of objectivity, let's add: there are voices among the left-liberals who have recognized something of this problem, including Márki-Zay - but his conclusions are not correct, to say the least. He talked about the need to go to the countryside, to the villages, and talk to the people living there as a "tavern partisan", get closer to them, and get to know their opinions.

I would like to inform MZP that it is clear that he did not understand the essence of the matter either. What he says is the attitude of the elite from above: "we go down to the field", we question people in pubs, if they are not drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning, and then we will understand their language and thoughts very well.

Well, that's exactly what's wrong. Rural public life is not as MZP imagines; the public life in the countryside, the public atmosphere there is primarily determined by the local intelligentsia, to whom people still listen today, these include the teacher, the doctor, the priest, the engineer, in the best case the mayor, the head of the cultural center and so on. The pub is not the center, but rather a reflection of how people with local authority form opinions about life, economy, politics, and the world. You don't have to "descend" to this world in a misunderstood pub, but you have to live with it, be part of it, identify with it if you are preparing for a role in public life, not to mention politics, or even governance.

The biggest mistake, or rather sin, of the left-wing opposition in Hungary is that it does not pay attention inward, to Hungarian society, but outwardly, abroad. For them, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Washington, and of course the global elite are the main and determining point of reference, and what they dictate from there the liberal mainstream, that is what they want to "give" to the people living in the countryside. This is even the way it is in the capital - in the countryside, they will never have a chance to win any elections.

In other words, the key phrase: there is only a globalist left in Hungary, and no national left, no national liberal side (respect to the few exceptions). And this "recipe" has been in our country for a hundred years.

Well, that's why the current opposition can't expect anything good - with the exception of Mi Hazánk, because that's a completely different issue, their future role requires a separate analysis, which I won't undertake here.

But, seeing that even after the elections, the Ballib opposition is exactly like the Bourbons, that is, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing - should we, nationalists, conservatives and sovereignists, just be happy, because the opposition is no longer in the tree line? Yes - and yet not completely. After all, we are also democrats - as opposed to the left.

And that is precisely why we know that one of the defining sine qua non of democracy is the existence of a strong opposition, the ability to replace the government at all times. If there is no strong opposition, there is no strong control over power. And of course every power needs control, every nation needs a political alternative.

That is why we, nationalists and conservatives, should support Hungary once and for all to have a thoroughly national, democratic, decent and moral left. For this, however, the entire current left-wing set would have to be pushed into the background, obviously led by the corruptor of Hungarian democracy from the beginning.

But if that doesn't work, the world won't collapse either: we know what we have to do, and we can exercise self-control if necessary.

The author is a political scientist and a research consultant at the Center for Fundamental Rights

Source: Hungarian Nation

Cover image: MTI/Zsolt Szigetváry