Enemies everywhere: the limits of the populist anti-elitist narrative during the Covid-19 pandemic. The case of Hungary

In September 2020, Hungary’s populist prime minister Viktor Orbán self-confidently said in a radio interview that “the success of the defense [against the pandemic] can be measured by the number of deaths and lives saved”, clearly determining the criteria of evaluating the performance of his government’s crisis management. In 2022, statistics show that Hungary had registered one of the highest death toll rates per 100,000 capita in global comparison during the Covid-19 pandemic, surpassing the number of casualties in less developed countries where the quality of the health care service is much lower by all metrics. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán’s leadership, presents a prime example of a populist, semi-authoritarian regime where democracy had eroded in the past 10 years. The Covid-19 outbreak presented a unique challenge to the populist government that had previously had not had to handle any major crises apart from the short-lived migration crisis in 2015, which Orbán had successfully used to advance his politics of democratic backsliding. During the migration crisis, Orbán utilized to the maximum the anti-elitist argument to undermine public trust in the European Union and secure public approval of his undemocratic policy measures. As expected, Orbán turned to the populist rhetorical toolkit again when the Covid-19 pandemic erupted. This paper will explore how Viktor Orbán utilized the “us vs them” populist narrative and the method of enemy creation to fasten the dismantling of democratic institutions and to disguise his government’s apparent failures in handling the pandemic, at the same time. Various communicative processes and discursive U-turns will be presented and critically examined to provide an insight into the practical application of a political style that many scholars define as intrinsic to populism. These will then be contextualized with the government’s pandemic policy measures to make a broader analysis possible into the process of democratic erosion in Hungary. Next, the paper will showcase opinion polls and vaccination statistics to argue that Orbán’s populist narrative had clearly failed to deliver the short-term political results that he had expected. Contrarily, his political messaging contributed to a great extent to the spread of vaccine-skepticism in particular and the anti-science mobilization in general within the public transforming a country that had previously been famous for its pro-science population into one where trust in science diminished and the traditionally high societal prestige of scientists was damaged. The critical examination in this paper intends to reveal the limits of the effectiveness of the “us vs. them” narrative when a populist-led government faces unforeseen crises. Furthermore, it will present a case that underlines the detrimental effects of the populist “us vs. them” dichotomy on the public trust in science, an important part of the process of democratic erosion.