Moral politics in/for illiberalism

In recent years, Hungary has become infamous for leading the wave of democratic backsliding in the EU, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán successfully exploiting successfully every crises to legitimize his illiberal rule – a total transformation of the post-communist regime. I argue recent crises – be that economic, migration, or health emergencies - provide solid ground for Orbán’s new moral politics that challenges the liberal capitalist world order to establish the supremacy of illiberalism. Orbán fears the collapse of traditional values and Christian morality in the face of multicultural diversity and secular liberalism. Traditional Christian values are portrayed as the essence of Hungarian identity and morality that grants Hungary a strong moral identity and legitimacy to stand against the neoliberal market and the EU and its liberal foundations. Even the pandemic is portrayed as part of a moral struggle, where both Brussels and domestic critics are accused of endangering people’s life for their ideological preferences. Using systematic content analysis of the official speeches of the Prime Minister from 2010 to 2022, I examine the creation of this new political discourse of values and morality that is not only populist in being anti-establishment but also increasingly ethnocentric being anti-EU or anti-migrant and uses religious references to (re)create a 19c conservative morality that mobilizes against the collapse of traditional values. Morals of public discourse construct meaning and legitimize specific practices for both the community and others. In Orbán’s illiberal democracy, identity of the self rests on the discursive processes of ‘othering’ that stands for a contestation of liberal equality and diversity for the sake of saving the nation: migrants and refugees stand for culturally deviant people and liberal rationalism of institutions or progressive gender and sexuality rights are threatening nativist conceptions of society. It is this illiberal refusal of equality and diversity that bring morality into the center of this transformative change of Hungarian society. “Heroes” and “villains” are established as crises are framed to bash critics of Orbán’s regime: the restoration of traditional culture and morality is accompanied by the idea of an essential righteous battle to be waged against “others” who are culturally or religiously different (migrants) or reject traditionalism (liberals, Brussels bureaucrats). In turn, the “right people” are seen in absolute terms as morally “pure,” “noble” and “virtuous”, signaling the moral grandstanding of the discourse to animate followers in defense of illiberalism.