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Whenever the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik is mentioned in the international fake news media, the phrases “far-right” and “neo-Nazi” usually aren’t far behind. Not so much in the domestic media, where Jobbik successfully banned Hungarian radio and TV outlets from calling them “far-right” according to the country’s libel laws. Jobbik has long been the choice of voters who think Viktor Orbán is a feckless soyboy, or at least they were until Jobbik leader Gábor Vona started mainlining soy himself.
Founded in 2003 as an anti-Gypsy student movement, the rising tide of nationalism helped lift Jobbik’s boat in 2010, when they became the third-largest party in the National Assembly in the same blowout election that swept Orbán into power. They repeated the same feat in 2014, then in the subsequent European Parliament elections, they became the second-largest party after the Összefogás (Unity) alliance between the leftist opposition fell apart. Polling for the 2018 election consistently shows Jobbik as Hungary’s second-most popular party, though it trails Fidesz by 15-20 points.
Jobbik has long been a big tent organization for both sensible nationalists and cranks, similar to the American alt-right (as it was defined prior to Donald Trump’s election). In between sounding the alarm on globalism and demographic displacement, Jobbik entertains politically unpalatable weirdness such as Turanism (the idea that Hungarians have more in common culturally with Turks and Central Asians than Europeans) and anti-Zionism. The party even had its own paramilitary wing, the Magyar Gárda, before it was forcibly disbanded by the government in 2009.
And to their credit, Jobbik played a large part in making nationalism cool in Hungary again. The party helped popularize the issues of Gypsy crime, the European Union, and Muslim migration among Hungarian youth; to this day, Jobbik is the most popular party among young voters. Jobbik’s platform was so smart that Fidesz swiped it in its entirety (save for the dumb parts), making Jobbik essentially irrelevant. The only thing Jobbik had left to run on was opposing Fidesz’s corruption, a nonstarter given that politics in Eastern Europe are always corrupt and Fidesz is objectively better at governing the country then the Socialists it defeated in 2010.
This is most likely why Jobbik has been moving to the left in an attempt to keep itself alive. The party has sided with the leftist opposition on several of Orbán’s major initiatives, such as the closure of George Soros’ Central European University. Gábor Vona has disavowed the party’s anti-Zionist views and is even advocating that Hungary adopt the euro. He’s also been on a bizarre apology tour, offering sappy Hanukkah greetings to the country’s Jewish community and constantly photographing himself with cute kitty cats because… huh?
None of this has improved Jobbik’s standing at the polls; for every left-wing or centrist voter they pick up, they lose right-wing voters to Fidesz. Leftist pundits are now claiming that the left-wing parties need to cooperate with Jobbik in order to topple Orbán, since Jobbik is the only opposition party whose poll numbers are in the double digits. While some parties have suggested they might do this by withdrawing some of their candidates in certain constituencies (to allow the anti-Fidesz vote to coalesce around a single candidate and prevent vote splitting), the Democratic Coalition—one of the largest leftist parties—has categorically ruled out working with Jobbik due to the party’s past “anti-Semitism.”
To make matters worse, Jobbik was fined by the State Audit Office two months ago for accepting illegal financing. The fine is 660,000,000 Ft (about $2.6 million), which Vona alleges will put the party out of business. Vona has also been on a soyboy rage bender in recent months, constantly sniffling about how Viktor Orbán called him a faggot. Not exactly the image a prospective leader wants to project.
To put it in an analogy, if Viktor Orbán is Donald Trump, Gábor Vona is Ted Cruz: a whiny, estrogenic weasel who cries like a bitch and doesn’t know how to fight. Vona has the chutzpah to accuse Orbán of not being a “true” nationalist (much like Cruz accused Trump of not being a “true” conservative) while he tacks to the left, defending George Soros, hobnobbing with András Fekete-Győr (the head of Momentum, Hungary’s far-left/SJW/antifa-wannabe party), and taking cringeworthy cat selfies.
Jobbik’s primary purpose in Hungarian politics was keeping Orbán’s feet to the fire, preventing him from betraying his nationalist constituents by offering them an alternative in the voting booth. They also provided a nice foil for Orbán on the European stage by allowing him to point at them and say, “If you get rid of me, these guys will be in power instead.” But with their constant cucking, Jobbik has outlived their usefulness. While they will likely become the largest opposition party in the coming election, that’ll just make them the biggest losers.
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