Jobbik has become a party without consequences, as they failed to change the government or the opposition, Erik Tóth pointed out when asked by the Magyar Nemzet. According to the deputy research director of the Fundamental Rights Center, the continuous leakage of internal conflicts, the weakening ability to assert interests, the discredited policy that scares off former Jobbik sympathizers, and the top management that accumulates error after error all show that Jobbik has been reduced to a media party based on loud statements by 2022 .
Since Jobbik was founded in 2003, it has never been as close to extinction as it is now, in 2022, Erik Tóth stated. The deputy research director of the Fundamental Rights Center said that the party's social support has at least halved compared to 2018, and its organizational structure has weakened significantly. While the period between 2010-2018 was characterized by step-by-step construction, the four years between 2018-2022 were characterized by decommissioning. During the presidency of Péter Jakab, the party's organization and social support further weakened. While in the parliamentary elections in 2018, the formation gradually shifting to the left had more than one million voters, by now they have lost 500-600 thousand of their former sympathizers, which means that the former radical organization may disappear for good in the political sinkhole of the left.
Erik Tóth/ Source: Facebook
According to Erik Tóth, Jobbik has now become a party without consequences. As he said, in the 2022 election campaign, several candidates were launched - with the support of left-liberal parties - who had previously made anti-Semitic statements and movements. Today, these scandalous candidates partially sit in the Parliament. All of this proves that although Jobbik has distanced itself from the radical right in an ideological sense, in terms of its personnel and politics, it still agrees with the extreme right. The deputy director of research added: just as they failed to change the government or the opposition, the so-called "clean" coalition is full of politicians with a dubious past.
This is confirmed by the events of the past months. After several media outlets reported on the rape scandal within the party, the representatives and leaders of the organization tried to pretend that nothing had happened, the case was not investigated on its merits, and the left-liberal press, which had previously shown great sensitivity to such scandals, did not put pressure on them, assisting the case to cover it up.
The analyst also touched on the fact that Gábor Vona handed over a Jobbik that was stronger than ever, but positioned too high, to the politicians who came after him. His successors inherited Jobbik's once high social support, but they were unable to preserve it.
The Gyurcsány–Jakab pact repelled former Jobbik sympathizers, and the integration into the left-wing coalition scared everyone else away.
Even his own party members are dissatisfied with Péter Jakab's leadership style, as evidenced by the current coup attempt against him. All of this is not surprising: Jakab performed poorly in the left-liberal party's house race as a candidate for prime minister, he was unable to organize the party's parliamentary faction into unity, and he also managed to settle an account with his own chosen deputy president, Anita Potocskáné Kőrösi, in less than a month.
The continuous leakage of internal conflicts, the weakening ability to assert interests, the discredited policy that scares off former Jobbik sympathizers, and the top management that accumulates error after error all show that Jobbik has been reduced to a media party that hits the headlines due to its less professional and loud statements.
The initially successful party, which took a critical stance towards globalization in the early 2010s, turned in a fatal direction under the leadership of Gábor Vona and the shortcomings in the strategy creation of subsequent presidents. All this while their 2003 foundation remained unchanged: "The primary task facing the Jobbik Movement for Hungary is to remove the communist successor party and the extreme liberals associated with it from political power," reminded the deputy director of research.
Jobbik was the biggest loser of the left-wing joint launch strategy, Erik Tóth stated. According to his words, the coalition lost 700,000 former sympathizers, a significant part of them due to the incomprehensible politics and "reprogramming" of Jobbik.
As a result, Gyurcsány is slowly crushing not only the MSZP, but also Jobbik completely under him, according to his ideas of creating a unified "democratic" party.
Jobbik is now confident that it will be able to regain the trust of the voters, but neither the infrastructural nor the personnel conditions are given for this in 2022. The continuous scandals and showdowns within the party will not be able to restore public trust. In addition, adds the analyst, Jobbik has an "heir", Mi Hazánk. The party led by László Toroczkai was able to take advantage of Jobbik's change of direction, successfully appealing to the party's former voters based on the election data. The Jakabs have thus found themselves in a tight spot: they can no longer move to the left in any meaningful way, but they cannot take back their original position either.
Source: Hungarian Nation
Featured Image: Facebook
