Latest news with #Hungary
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iron Maiden have played a surprise-stuffed first show of their 50th Anniversary tour
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Iron Maiden have played the first show of their 50th-Anniversary Run For Your Lives Tour. The band completed a 17-song set at the 12,500-capacity Papp László Sportaréna in Budapest, Hungary, and packed it with songs they haven't played in years. Maiden, with new drummer Simon Dawson behind the kit, opened with four songs from the Paul Di'Anno era in Murders In The Rue Morgue (which hasn't been played since the Eddie Rips Up the World tour 20 years ago, Wrathchild, Killers (a song the band haven't played this century) and Phantom Of The Opera. Elsewhere, there was a return to the set for the much-loved epic Rime Of The Ancient Mariner for the first time in 15 years, while other returnees included The Clairvoyant, Powerslave, 2 Minutes To Midnight and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. Full setlist below. Despite Iron Maiden urging fans to keep their phones in their pockets during the tour, fan-shot video from the first show is already online (below) Maiden return to the Sportaréna in Budapest for a second show tomorrow tonight (May 29), before travelling to the Czech Republic and a booking at Prague's Letnany Airport. Full dates below. More Run For Your Lives dates outside of Europe are expected to be announced soon, with the tour set to extend into 2026. A 50th-anniversary Maiden documentary film will come out later this year. Murders in the Rue Morgue Wrathchild KillersPhantom of the Opera The Number of the BeastThe Clairvoyant Powerslave2 Minutes to MidnightRime of the Ancient Mariner Run to the HillsSeventh Son of a Seventh Son The TrooperHallowed Be Thy NameIron Maiden EncoreAces HighFear of the DarkWasted Years May 28: Budapest Aréna, Hungary *May 31: Prague Letnany Airport, Czech Republic *Jun 01: Bratislava TIPOS Arena, Slovakia *Jun 05: Trondheim Rocks, Norway ≠Jun 07: Stavanger SR-Bank Arena, Norway *Jun 09: Copenhagen Royal Arena, Denmark *Jun 12: Stockholm 3Arena, Sweden *Jun 13: Stockholm 3Arena, Sweden *Jun 16: Helsinki Olympic Stadium, Finland *Jun 19: Dessel Graspop Metal Meeting, Belgium≠ Jun 21: Birmingham Utilita Arena, UK ^Jun 22: Manchester Co-op Live, UK ^Jun 25: Dublin Malahide Castle, Ireland *^Jun 28: London Stadium, UK *^Jun 30: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK ^ Jul 03: Belfort Eurockéennes, France ≠Jul 05: Madrid Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano, Spain **Jul 06: Lisbon MEO Arena, Portugal **Jul 09: Zurich Hallenstadion, Switzerland **Jul 11: Gelsenkirchen Veltins-Arena, Germany **Jul 13: Padova Stadio Euganeo, Italy **Jul 15: Bremen Bürgerweide, Germany **Jul 17: Vienna Ernst Happel Stadium, Austria **Jul 19: Paris Paris La Défense Arena, France **Jul 20: Paris Paris La Défense Arena, France **Jul 23: Arnhem GelreDome, Netherlands **Jul 25: Frankfurt Deutsche Bank Park, Germany **Jul 26: Stuttgart Cannstatter Wasen, Germany **Jul 29: Berlin Waldbühne, Germany **Jul 30: Berlin Waldbühne, Germany **Aug 02: Warsaw PGE Narodowy, Poland ** * = Halestorm support^ = The Raven Age support** = Avatar support≠ = Festival date
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- General
- Bloomberg
Hungary's Top Court Strikes Down Police Ban on LGBTQ Gathering
Hungary's top court struck down a police ban of a pro-LGBTQ gathering in Budapest, in a test of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's escalating culture war before elections next year. Police failed to adequately justify why a constitutional amendment approved in April — which Orban had said would create legal grounds for banning LGBTQ-themed events in public — applied to one planned for Sunday, the court, known as the Kuria, wrote in a ruling. It was the first time authorities had tried to use the legislation for this purpose.
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Something has gone wrong in our culture when people opt for ‘fur babies' over real babies
Recent Hungarian research generated a slew of headlines about people choosing dogs over having children. Some went as far as to blame it for the decline in birth rates. Fortunately, the study is much more nuanced. Prof Enikő Kubinyi from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest suggests that the relationship between rates of pet ownership and having children is complex. Dogs don't cause lower fertility. Instead, declining fertility rates may be increasing the importance of dogs in people's lives, with pets filling the emotional space left by fewer children and more fragile family networks. Kubinyi cites an intriguing statistic. If a woman raises two children instead of five, the number of same-generation relatives (siblings and cousins) is reduced, on average, from 44 to five. READ MORE Fewer family connections lead to more fragile real-life social networks. Family relationships create what sociologists call 'closed triangle' connections – situations where all members of a group know each other directly. This builds stronger, more stable social ties. These closed triangles are much less common in friendships. Somewhat ironically, dog ownership can increase the number of closed triangles, because people out walking dogs or discussing them can develop relationships based on their mutual love of pets. The Hungarian researcher is not the first to highlight change in the number of relatives. In China, the one-child policy led to the decline not only in siblings, but in cousins, aunts and uncles. There is also a serious gender imbalance in favour of male children, the so-called emperor children. The one-child policy has become self-reinforcing even though China is now desperate to reverse demographic decline. It may explain why by 2030, China's pets will outnumber children under four by a ratio of two to one. The estimate came from Goldman Sachs , which says the pet market will be worth $12 billion (€10.6 billion) by then. Urban Chinese, in particular, are opting for pets. The same Goldman Sachs report noted that in Japan, there are already 20 million pets, roughly four times the number of humans aged under four. Japan's pet food market is eight times larger than its infant formula market. Kubinyi suggests that many people do not currently experience an optimum level of social connection, leading to greater isolation, depression and loneliness. However, human beings are hard-wired to exist in small yet dense human networks. It is unsurprising, then, that humans turn to companion animals, with their capacity for unconditional love, to fill that need. Dogs are increasingly being bred to have characteristic features like human babies – big eyes, flatter faces and cute cuddliness. As someone who grew up on a farm where dogs were working animals and kept outside, I admit to being nonplussed by people's current relationships with dogs, particularly the first time I saw a dog buggy, complete with what seemed like a perfectly healthy dog being wheeled along. Dog clothes, including Halloween costumes, make me worry for the dog. And what pooch benefits from a puppucino? Pet ownership confers many benefits on humans. It is lovely to see elderly people light up when a dog is brought into a nursing home. But there is something askew in our culture when pets are expected to function either as substitutes for unconditional love, or as babies. Loyal creatures like dogs are not designed to be fur babies, a term that makes me deeply uncomfortable. Dogs are pack animals with strict hierarchies. The pack leader enforces strict boundaries and roles that allow the dog to relax. Expecting dogs to act like substitute humans is unfair to dogs and not great for human prospects, either. One thing that the Hungarian study may overlook is that while it correctly points out that the number of people who view their pets as children is small, it is likely to grow as a trend. Currently in Hungary, despite multiple pronatalist policies such as women who have four children being exempt from income tax for life , only 6.2 per cent of the population is aged under six. As family sizes shrink and childbearing is postponed, many adults do not have young children in their households or extended social networks and this becomes the norm. Anna Rotkirsch, a Finnish demographer , says that having children has moved from a rite of passage into adulthood to a 'capstone' experience – something you do after you have exhausted all the individualised pleasures, such as satisfying work and travel. But women's biology knows nothing about capstones. By the time people feel they are in the right place, or that they can afford children, women's fertility has often declined to the point where it becomes increasingly difficult to conceive. Rotkirsch also points out that it has become socially acceptable to say that you don't like children, and it's the only demographic that you can ever say that about. There is something sad about any society that does not have enough faith in the future to prioritise having children and ensure that women are not penalised for having children earlier. No amount of doggy cuddles will ameliorate the demographic catastrophe we are facing everywhere from Ireland to India.
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Ireland's tennis star Conor Gannon: ‘I think I have a chance to do something not many Irish people can dream of'
Last week it was league tennis in France, this week Conor Gannon took his first steps from the cosseted world college tennis in Tennessee on to the International Tennis Federation professional tour. It was like the first bike ride without stabilisers, a finding exercise. Swapping the comfort blanket of college for the cold winds of the lower tier of tennis was for Gannon the answer to his question, after four years in the USA, of what to do next. He will find his way to Hungary, Slovakia and then 'another eastern European country' before Germany, Ireland and maybe the hard-court swing in Asia. For him, becoming what he had always wanted meant taking one of two choices. One was pragmatic and commonly practised – get a job and play social tennis. The other was to set out at 22 years old into the foothills of tennis Everest. READ MORE There were no forms to fill in at the tour office, no performative signing of papers or clicking cameras. Gannon just said goodbye to his family and friends, then slipped away to the clay courts of Europe. 'You don't have to sign anything,' he says. 'You get up and do it. It's straightforward. So ...'. Equipped for what to expect, Gannon has read Conor Niland's biting memoir The Racquet – On tour with Tennis's Golden Generation and the other 99 per cent and has been helped along organisationally by Scott Barron, who competed in the 1996 Olympic Games for Ireland with Owen Casey and reached a world ranking of 263. Gannon has taken the advice, knows the pitfalls and he is, he says, a dreamer but not a fantasist. 'Yeah, of course a lot of self-doubt comes into play,' he says. 'It wasn't a straightforward decision either. It was a decision in my life where ... there were two different paths I could go down and get a job, quit tennis and just play socially, or go the route of my dream. I have dreamt of playing in a Grand Slam for as long as I can remember. 'But it's scary trying to do that because of the work behind the scenes and the different thoughts that come into your head, like if you are good enough. 'The years in college went so fast and then all of a sudden it's right at me. It's my decision now. It was a really tough decision to make. But in 20 or 30 years if I didn't do it I think I'd be kicking myself. I have a dream. I have to go get it and in my opinion I think I have a chance to do something not many Irish people or even tennis players can dream of. I think if I have just a slim chance of that, then 100 per cent go for it. 'You have to be optimistic. You have to be a dreamer. You can't be infiltrated by people's negativity. You have got to be a complete optimist to try to play tennis. You have got to be a dreamer to achieve it.' James McGee was the last Irishman to compete in a Grand Slam event when he qualified for the US Open in 2014, losing in the first round. In 2011 Niland and Luke Sorensen also qualified for the main draw at the US Open, while Niland also played in that year's Wimbledon. Ireland just doesn't blow through the Grand Slams very often. Gannon is not unaware of how difficult it is to set foot in the All England Club, Flushing Meadow or Roland Garros. The three Irish players who did had to get through a qualifying competition by winning three matches before the main event. Niland's top ranking of 129, McGee's 146 and Sorensen's 175 were not good enough to automatically earn them one of the 128 places in a Grand Slam draw. Gannon's hopes are on the face of it simple. Learn, improve and earn ranking points. It is difficult, although even a defeat in the first round of Wimbledon earned players €71,000 last year. If a player got into the four main Grand Slam draws and did not win a match, they could generate an income of almost €300,000 a year. But that is the sugar-coated part of the tennis dream. 'I don't really mind what other people think of my decision, but I have to pat myself on the back because not many will go out and do it, travel around the world to get ranking points and try to compete in the Grand Slams,' says Gannon. 'It's not easy. It's a tough life. But I'm fortunate to be in a position to make that choice. 'I think people don't get enough credit for trying something and failing. I hope that won't be the case. Even going out and trying for how many years I do it, maybe I'll become successful, maybe I won't. 'It is a solo sport, you've got to be selfish, although from my own ethics, I don't want to be that selfish person. But you must take opportunities, and I completely understand that. I don't want someone else to take an opportunity away from me, so you must be gritty out there.' Currently ranked at 1,317, Gannon has ground to make up. He knows his level is better than that number and has beaten players ranked around the 500 mark. He doesn't want to put a number on what he hopes to achieve and end up playing hostage to it, but in time he needs to get close to a 100 ranking to play in the lucrative events. Survival and staying healthy is the height of current ambition as he hits the first rungs of the game. There will be dog days there over the coming weeks. 'I haven't played a tournament since last summer,' he says. 'I know my level is there. I know I can play. It's about believing in myself that I belong there and playing enough tournaments to know how everything works. 'It's a new job. I'm sure when other people go into a new job, they don't know how things operate. You have got to find your feet and if I lose the first three weeks in a row it's not a big deal. I expect the best but you've got to be realistic and keep ticking the boxes. 'Of course I'm going to get fed up at some stage. Of course. I could be in Romania playing a 25k [ITF tournament with $25,000 in prize money] and lose in the first round and it's like I want to quit. I'm going to do it right. I'm not going to half-ass it, take time away and put energy into something else. 'All my energy and focus I want to go into my tennis. I don't want to go coaching at night when I should be recovering or stretching. I don't think Novak Djokovic would be doing that so why would I?' The money will come from parents, hopefully tennis, begging and borrowing. There is little funding in Ireland to launch a tennis career and few clay courts. before leaving there was difficulty finding hitting partners. But there again he doesn't want to launch his career blowing off on frustrations and kinks in the Irish system. That, he says, invites defeatism, kills good energy. 'In third year I didn't think about tennis once,' he says. 'The only thing I wanted to do was rugby [in St Michael's College]. One hundred per cent I saw myself playing for the SCT [the Senior Cup team], maybe outhalf or second centre, maybe Leinster U18. 'But I've always imagined the best possible outcome in each sport I played. I've always wanted to get a little bit more out of everything.' And out of life too.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
He is the strongman who inspired Trump – but is Viktor Orbán losing his grip on power?
On a sunny April afternoon in Budapest, a handful of reporters crowded around the back entrance of the Dorothea, a luxury hotel tucked between a Madame Tussauds waxworks museum and a discount clothing store in the city's walking district. Most had spent hours outside the hotel, hoping to confirm reports that Donald Trump Jr was inside. News of his visit had leaked two days earlier, but much of his agenda remained shrouded in secrecy, save for a meeting with the Hungarian foreign minister. Reports had also circulated of a closed-door speech the US president's eldest child and Trump Organization executive was slated to give on bridging governments to the private sector at the five-star hotel reportedly owned by the son-in-law of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Few other details emerged from the visit. But it was a hint of the outsized role that this small central European country, home to 9.6 million people, is playing in the US's political conversation. Trump and those around him have long talked up Orbán's Hungary, depicting it, in the words of one Hungarian journalist, as a sort of 'Christian conservative Disneyland'. The veneration of its alliance of populism and Christianity has persisted, even as the country plunges in press freedom rankings, faces accusations of no longer being a full democracy, and becomes the most corrupt country in the EU. As Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation thinktank that produced Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for Trump's second term, once put it: 'Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.' Orbán, the prime minister who once described Hungary as a 'petri dish for illiberalism', has been lauded by Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon as 'Trump before Trump'. The US vice-president, JD Vance, once characterised Orbán's purge of gender studies in academia as a model to be followed. The US president last year called him a 'very great leader, a very strong man'. He added: 'Some people don't like him because he's too strong. It's nice to have a strong man running your country.' Since Trump began his second term in January, the adoration has seemingly turned to emulation at a frenzied pace. Trump, like Orbán before him, has seized on state powers to pursue rivals, embraced dark rhetoric to demonise political opponents and purge 'wokeness' from institutions, in what analysts described as the Orbánisation of America. For rights groups, journalists and activists in Hungary who have long pushed back against the steady erosion of rights by arguably the modern world's most successful populist leader, the parallels are eerie. Over the past 15 years they have challenged a playbook that has now gone global, turning them into a singular source on how Americans – and others around the world – can fight back in the face of democratic backsliding. 'Sometimes it might seem kind of tempting to say: 'OK, we're just going to make this compromise, and it might go away,'' said András Kádár of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based NGO. 'But the Hungarian example shows that they always go one step further; we always hit new rock bottoms. It's very important to fight every inch and bit of this process.' Much of what Orbán is doing follows in the footsteps of Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or Russia's Vladimir Putin, he said. But one crucial difference explained why Hungary had captured imaginations in the US, Kádár said. 'It's unprecedented in the sense that you have a full-fledged democracy … in the heart of the European Union, which very consciously chose to go this way.' In the course of Orbán's 15-year rule, there is little his government hasn't tinkered with. After targeting judges and recasting electoral policy to make it harder to oust his party, universities were purged of gender studies courses and public institutions were put under the control of Orbán loyalists. His critics have accused him of using state tenders to line the pockets of loyalists and of wielding state subsidies to reward pro-government media outlets and starve critical media. Some of the weakened media outlets were later snapped up by entrepreneurs loyal to Orbán and transformed into government mouthpieces, with his Fidesz party and its loyalists now estimated to control 80% of the country's media. Throughout it all – in an echo of a strategy that would later be replicated in the US – there was one constant. 'This whole process has been going on behind this smoke screen of hate propaganda, with different targets,' said Kádár, pointing to Orbán's targeting of Brussels and the EU as well as migrants. 'Then they say we need all these powers, these unchecked and uncontrolled powers to protect the people from those enemies inside and outside.' When it comes to the US, many in Budapest highlighted the differences in how things were playing out. 'Compared to what's happening in the United States, here it was rather slow,' said Péter Krekó, the director of the Political Capital Institute thinktank. 'So here it's more like the frog boiling in the water model, while in the United States, I think it's a coup, practically.' Hungary's transformation, however gradual, has been striking. At the start of the 21st century, the country was a regional leader when it came to the quality of democratic institutions and their independence. It is now the region's worst performer democratically, after what Krekó described as the 'Hungarian propaganda machine' drilled the government's line into people. 'It's all over the country, on every billboard, radio spots, on TV. It's an Orwellian campaign, but on many topics it can shape public opinion very efficiently.' What had emerged was a country where the notion of who belongs had been recast, said Ádám András Kanicsár, a journalist and LGBTQ+ activist. 'The government has an idea of who is a proper Hungarian and who is not,' he said. 'And in the last 15 years, this picture has been narrowed down more and more. Right now, you are a proper Hungarian if you have two children, you are white and Christian and have a job, and are living in a happy marriage. And this is the only way to be a good Hungarian.' This year Orbán and his backers banned all public LGBTQ+ events. Looking back, Kanicsár said the community had long been too passive in asserting their rights. Although the government's ban led many in the community to speak up, they were now on the defensive, explaining why their hard-won rights needed to be protected, rather than pushing for advances such as same-sex marriage. 'They have the narrative now,' he said, referring to the government. 'We can't bring new topics to the table.' The government's most recent amendment also enshrined the recognition of only two sexes in Hungary's constitution, wiping out the identities of people such as Lilla Hübsch. 'Basically my existence right now is unconstitutional, which is kind of crazy,' said the trans activist as she joined Kanicsár at a bustling coffee shop in Pest, the part of the capital that flanks the eastern bank of the Danube. For Kanicsár, it was a reminder of how many in Hungary – and around the world – had long assumed progress was inevitable. 'It's a big mistake. We think that history is a narrow line upwards, that we are always getting better and better, more liberal, more democratic,' he said. 'But we can always lose it. And if you have it and you lose it, it can be really hurtful.' The banning of Budapest Pride, just as it was gearing up to celebrate its 30th anniversary, was a poignant example. 'If you have these rights, don't take them for granted. Cherish them, talk about them and protest for them, because there are always new people who have to hear your message.' When the Guardian visited Budapest last month, sitting down with people in offices, coffee shops, and dining rooms, a note of hope threaded through many interviews. With elections slated for spring 2026, Orbán is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz party's elite, Péter Magyar. Several recent polls suggest that, if the trend continues, Orbán could lose his grip on power. 'For the first time in 15 years, there is a serious contender,' said Péter Erdélyi, the founder of the Budapest-based Center for Sustainable Media. With hope, however, comes risk: now was, he said, a dangerous moment for anyone perceived to be standing in Orbán's way. This year the prime minister said he would 'eliminate the entire shadow army' of foreign-funded 'politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists', suggesting he could go further than previously used tactics such as smear campaigns, relentless audits and physical intimidation by Fidesz supporters. Orbán's party seemingly made good on the threat when it put forward legislation that would give authorities broad powers to, in the words of one rights organisation, 'strangle and starve' NGOs and independent media it sees as a threat to national sovereignty. The draft law, said Transparency International, marked a 'dark turning point' for Hungary. 'It is designed to crush dissent, silence civil society, and dismantle the pillars of democracy,' the organisation said. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee issued a similar warning. 'If this bill passes, it will not simply marginalise Hungary's independent voices – it will extinguish them,' said thhe co-chair Márta Pardavi. The situation in Hungary had been made more complicated by Trump's ascension to the White House, said Erdélyi. 'The US government, almost regardless of who occupied the White House, was a moderating force on authoritarians pretty much everywhere but certainly in central Europe,' he said. 'And the new White House, of course, is not only not interested in being that, but it is also turning away from the transatlantic relationship or multilateralism in general.' Magyar's swift rise has shaken Hungarian politics, according to Miklós Ligeti of Transparency International Hungary, who credited the politician and his movement, Tisza, for catapulting corruption to the top of Hungarians' concerns. Through his savvy use of social media and rallies that have drawn thousands, Magyar has repeatedly linked underperforming public services such as healthcare and schools to the country's soaring levels of corruption. 'Now people start to understand that the serious underfunding of these two services is somehow linked to the fact that the government is spending taxpayers' money on the enrichment of certain business entrepreneurs who have good ties with the government,' said Ligeti. While Orbán and his party had long been able to deflect criticism by pointing to the country's strong economy, this was no longer the case, sparking questions as to how they keep their grasp on power, said Márton Gulyás, a left-leaning political commentator who helms Partizán, the country's most-watched political YouTube channel. 'I think right now they are in a very dangerous phase, mostly because of the tremendous problems in the economy,' he said. 'They're losing money heavily on debt, inflation is still high, food prices are still high and wages have stagnated.' He said the unprecedented political challenge has been heightened by new models of journalism that had learned to evade Orbán's heavy hand, from Gulyás's YouTube channel, which employs 70 people, and independent outlets such as 444, Telex, and Among them was András Pethő, who left his newsroom a decade ago after it became evident the publisher was under growing pressure to toe the government line. When he cofounded the investigative media outlet Direkt36, he knew the model had to be different. 'We set up this organisation in a way that would be more resilient against these kinds of pressures,' said Pethő as he drove to Szombathely, a small city in the west of Hungary where Direkt36 was screening a documentary on the lavish business dealings linked to Orbán's family since he took power. The event was an example of how journalists are forging direct, grassroots connections with audiences across Hungary. 'We don't have investors, we don't have a corporate owner, because we saw that that's how pressure is exerted,' Pethő said. In recent years there have been many warnings about the Hungarian government's erosion of democracy. In 2018, it was accused of trying to 'stop democracy' after it passed a law criminalising lawyers and activists who help asylum seekers. Four years later, members of the European parliament backed a report outlining why Hungary could no longer be considered a full democracy. Most recently, a delegation of EU lawmakers called on Hungary to return to 'real democracy' after a visit to the country. Although Hungary may serve as a model of sorts for the US, many in Budapest questioned whether the same impact was possible across the Atlantic. 'I think the intention is similar,' said Erdélyi of the Center for Sustainable Media. But Hungary's economy relies heavily on outside forces; it is not a global superpower. 'It's easy to centralise here because there's not that much stuff to centralise.' The sentiment was echoed by Zoltán Ádám, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences. 'Once you build a two-thirds majority in parliament, you are basically ruling the world in this country,' he said. 'So you can introduce a monarchy or make Viktor Orbán's uncle the champion of whatever sports competition – I'm joking, but it's just half a joke.' This majority allows Orbán and his backers to rewrite the country's laws at will to serve their own political purposes. 'This is a fully controlled country to a large extent,' said Ádám. 'This is not totalitarian in the 20th-century sense, this is not a Bolshevik or a fascist system, but all the major institutional actors in the country are actually controlled by the government.' In the US, in contrast, the federal nature provided a built-in system of checks and balances that should protect the country against this sort of threat, said Ádám. 'Trump doesn't control the governor of Massachusetts or the state house of California.' Others questioned how Hungary had come to be seen as a model for the US. 'It's funny because this is a narrative that was built up by Viktor Orbán's circles,' said a former Fidesz politician who left the party decades ago after becoming disillusioned with Orbán's leadership. 'It's a story that was sold to the Americans,' said the former politician, who asked not to be named, referring to reports that have alleged that the Hungarian government spent millions of euros on intermediaries tasked with selling the US a specific image of Orbán and Hungary. 'They sold it in a very smart way because they used American terms that don't have much sense in Hungary,' she said. 'So like 'gender war', 'woke' – there's no 'woke' issue in Hungary. Hungary is much more behind in terms of progressivism than the United States … Hungary's not even a multicultural country; it's very homogenous in every sense.' For 15 years she has watched Orbán tighten his grip on power. The longer it went on, the greater Orbán's motivation would be to cling to power at any cost, she warned. 'The system only works for them if they are in power, because they create their own rules. They know that all the rules will change if they lose power.' Her comments came days before it emerged that Hungarian officials had asked the European parliament, for the third time, to lift Magyar's immunity as an MEP. Magyar described it as an attempt by Orbán and his party to levy false charges against him and block him from running in next year's elections. The Hungarian government was approached for comment for this article, but a representative cited time constraints and declined to meet. The possibility of speaking with someone from a government-linked institute was then floated, before the Guardian was told that they would have no time to speak either in person or over the phone. Just how much Orbán and his party's views line up with those of his counterparts in the US remains a matter of debate. Orbán had long cultivated an image of himself as a stalwart of conservative values, using it as a cover to ease his access to the US administration, said the investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi. 'Orbán just uses this as a smokescreen,' he said. 'I think he just invented these pro-family, anti-migration policies; it's something that he can advertise as a common denominator among all of the conservative groups in the world.' 'But in reality, what makes Orbán really powerful and interesting … is everything that is going against the US Republican values and policies,' he added, pointing to Hungary's full state control of certain industries and Orbán's heavy reliance on Chinese industry and technology and Russian fossil fuels. In recent weeks, analysts have warned that Orbán's ties to Trump could begin to work against him if the US president's tariffs hurt the country's economy. If Orbán's hold on power were to be weakened by Trump, it would be a tremendous irony, said Panyi. 'It could be Orbán's tragedy. That by the time that all the stars align when it comes to foreign policy, by the time he reaches that level where he can legitimately claim that his comrades are on the rise and there's a far-right wave and he's been spearheading it, at least ideologically, that by that time his domestic support is crumbling.'
