Opening the Door to the Radical Right – Is there a Way Back?

The ultra-nationalist Jobbik party in Hungary is the second most popular political force, seemingly able to capitalize on the popularity loss of the governmental party Fidesz, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Some might even think that Orban’s national, illiberal, and radical shift in recent years might have been an electoral strategy to win the hearts of Jobbik voters, yet this paper will argue this simple explanation does not suffice to explain the success of the radical right. First, Orban has himself radicalized his electorate with his anti-communist, anti-Western, anti-Europe, and anti-liberal discourse and second, more importantly, he needs Jobbik to justify his new illiberal system. This is why instead of attacking its rival on the right of the political spectrum, Fidesz managed to incorporate Jobbik’s policy proposals into governmental action. I argue comparing the original Jobbik proposal to Fidesz’s implementation that quite a few of the Jobbik proposals made it into policy – from diminishing Hungary’s role in WWII to fighting multinationals, nationalizing important sectors of the economy, or opposing the EU and fighting migration. While Jobbik has also toned down considerably its radical rhetoric in the last couple of years, it was the co-optation by Fidesz that helped ‘mainstreaming’ the party that could claim it was in fact ruling the country. Orban will not change his political strategy to consolidate the illiberal system that opened the door to Jobbik although Fidesz’s political calculation backfired when the party lost in by-elections to Jobbik in 2015, having already lost super-majority in an earlier by-election. It is not the opposition on the left but Jobbik that is best positioned to mount a serious challenge to Fidesz exactly because the two parties look like two sides of the same coin, yet Jobbik is unspoiled by the corruption scandals of the Orban government.