This article was published in The Bulwark. Not only do I predict what will happen in Hungary’s election, but I explain why making this prediction is easy – because Hungary’s not a democracy.

This first two paragraphs of the article are below. You can read the full article here.

“On April 3 Hungarians will cast their votes in a national election that many observers expect to be close. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does not appear overly concerned. He never bothers to mention his opponent by name and has refused to debate him. Instead of a candidate, Orbán considers himself the father of the nation and a man of the people.

“In one campaign video Orbán stops by a village to join in a traditional Hungarian pig killing. He downs shots of brandy with the men and shows he knows how to peel skin off a pig. So richly do these images evoke Hungarian folk traditions that many viewers may have been reminded of popular folktale about a pig killing that goes horribly awry. According to the story, a poor family slaughters its only pig and hangs the stomach in the attic to be used later to make a special kind of Hungarian sausage. One day the mother sends her eldest daughter to fetch the stomach, but when the poor girl enters the attic the little pig tummy opens wide and swallows her up. After waiting for what seems like a reasonable amount time, the mother sends her second daughter to the attic, who gets similarly inhaled. The next child suffers the same fate, until even the parents are eaten up by the insatiable pig belly. By this point the belly has grown so big and fat that it breaks off the hook on which it is hanging, rolls out of the house and into the street. From there it consumes everyone and everything in its path until, having grown enormously large, the stomach explodes, freeing the digested villagers to return to their lives as if nothing had happened.”

Read the full article here

Categories: Hungary, Politics

Tags: Hungary, Politics, Viktor Orbán