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Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats to organize against autocratic takeover by Trump

Democrats must organize urgently for the 2026 midterm elections and avoid a “it can’t happen here” mentality to stop Donald Trump from staging a full-scale autocratic takeover, a Hungarian opposition parliamentarian has said.

Katalin Cseh, a critic of Hungary’s strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told a forum on authoritarianism that the central European country’s experience held vital lessons for Trump’s opponents in their attempts to resist his assaults on US institutions and democratic norms since his return to the White House.

Hungary was important because Trump and his “Make America great again” (Maga) movement have used Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party as a role model, she said.

“I invite everybody to study the processes that happened [in Hungary] and elsewhere, because autocratic learning is real,” said Cseh, a member of Hungary’s opposition Momentum Movement. “Backsliding just went by us like a train, without anybody realizing how far it had gotten. So it’s very important to pay attention from the very beginning … [and] to mobilize.”

Hungary, a European Union and Nato member, is often cited as an example of a formerly liberal democracy devolving into a competitive autocracy. Orbán – who has trumpeted his belief in “illiberal democracy” – has cemented his power over the courts, the media and universities during 15 years in office and four consecutive election victories.

Addressing a webinar organized by the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based thinktank, Cseh warned US voters against believing their country was immune to such developments.

“I do believe that many Americans that think this is something that also only happens to others, and I think that mindset has to be fought,” she said.

“Start preparing for the midterms like yesterday. Go to every protest, go to every march, stand right beside everybody who is being attacked, no matter if it is a group you belong to, or something that you do not share personally. You have to stand side by side [with] each other and help and support those who might feel isolated and alone.”

She urged Democrats and activists to form a widely inclusive “movement” and find “candidates for the midterms or any election that is coming your way who can get people excited – not necessarily the same old faces they have been seeing all the time that they don’t really trust that much, but visionary leaders … who are part of a community, who are being persecuted.”

Leaders such as Trump and Orbán could only be effectively opposed, she said, by ditching a “legalistic, technical, technocratic approach” in favor of “something for the electorate to be excited about”.

“Autocrats are not always good in governing. So cost of living, crisis of healthcare, education – if the focus is shifted to these areas, and not only technical descriptions of what’s going on in the courts, this is something that people can relate to more.”

The parallels with Hungary came as opinion polls show Orbán on course to lose next year’s general election to the opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, a former member of the prime minister’s party.

In a striking sign of Orbán’s declining authority, his government’s attempt to ban last month’s annual Pride march in Budapest backfired when an estimated 100,000 people took to the streets in defiance. Previous such events have been attended by a few thousand LGBTQ+ activists.

Szabolcs Panyi, a journalist with the Hungarian website Direkt36, said Trump’s approach to the media drew on a playbook used by Orbán, who deployed a range of measures to curtail journalists’ independence.

These included banishing established outlets from briefings in favor of friendly journalists and “propagandists”, an approach emulated by the White House, which has excluded journalists from the Associated Press and invited representatives from rightwing organizations and social media influencers.

“What particularly rings out is how certain large media outlets or owners or large conglomerates try to appease Donald Trump by settling lawsuits or by firing journalists [or] editors,” he said. “It really resembles what happened in Hungary in the 2010s.”

Paramount Global, the owners of CBS, reached a $16m settlement with Trump this month after he lodged a $10bn suit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, his 2024 Democratic presidential opponent. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15m last December after he sued over an inaccurate characterization of his conviction over sexual assault allegations brought by the writer E Jean Carroll.

Panyi said Trump’s attempts to slash funding for public broadcasters such as PBS and Voice of America were also inspired by Orbán.

“[Orbán] went after public radio, public TV, and in a matter of a couple of months, it was already transformed into propaganda,” he said. “It’s scary to see similar things happening in the United States. Solidarity is especially important, so whenever there are similar things happening, there should be protests. Journalists should support their colleagues and tell readers that if it happens to one outlet, it can happen to others as well.”

Ceylan Akçe, a member of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy party, said more than two decades of rule under the country’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had demonstrated that political opponents should not “wait for the storm to pass”.

“It’s going to continue to rain,” she said. “If you wait for it to stop, it won’t, and while you’re in the eye of the storm, you have to continue to mobilize and never be discouraged.”

Tamara Tripic, an opposition parliamentarian in Serbia, where Aleksandar Vučić, the president, is accused of instituting an autocracy that has provoked waves of opposition protests, warned that modern authoritarians camouflaged their actions behind a cloak of legality.

“We have to be aware that they are using [tools that] are usually legal but misused, institutional but hollowed out, democratic in appearance but authoritarian in essence,” she said. “It doesn’t look like dictatorship, but it’s functioning like one. Our problem, especially if you are progressive, is that … usually people are afraid of the freedom we are offering. They are willing to trade some … freedom for the illusion of order, identity and security.”

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