Hungary

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Eastern Europe Tests New Forms of Media Censorship

      by

      With new, less repressive tactics, countries like Serbia, Poland and Hungary are deploying highly effective tools to skew public opinion.BELGRADE, Serbia — When Covid-19 reached Eastern Europe in the spring of 2020, a Serbian journalist reported a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment. She was swiftly arrested, thrown in a windowless cell and charged with inciting panic.The journalist, Ana Lalic, was quickly released and even got a public apology from the government in what seemed like a small victory against old-style repression by Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic.But Ms. Lalic was then vilified for weeks as a traitor by much of the country’s news media, which has come increasingly under the control of Mr. Vucic and his allies as Serbia adopts tactics favored by Hungary and other states now in retreat from democracy across Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe.“For the whole nation, I became a public enemy,” she recalled.Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports.The muting of critical voices has greatly helped Mr. Vucic — and also the country’s most well-known athlete, the tennis star Novak Djokovic, whose visa travails in Australia have been portrayed as an intolerable affront to the Serb nation. The few remaining outlets of the independent news media mostly support him but take a more balanced approach.Ana Lalic, a Serbian journalist, last month in Belgrade. She was arrested in 2020 after reporting on a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment that could be used against the coronavirus.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesAcross the region, from Poland in the north to Serbia in the south, Eastern Europe has become a fertile ground for new forms of censorship that mostly eschew brute force but deploy gentler yet effective tools to constrict access to critical voices and tilt public opinion — and therefore elections — in favor of those in power.Television has become so biased in support of Mr. Vucic, according to Zoran Gavrilovic, the executive director of Birodi, an independent monitoring group, that Serbia has “become a big sociological experiment to see just how far media determines opinion and elections.”Serbia and Hungary — countries in the vanguard of what V-Dem Institute, a Swedish research group, described last year as a “global wave of autocratization” — both hold general elections in April, votes that will test whether media control works.A recent Birodi survey of news reports on Serbian television found that over a three-month period from September, Mr. Vucic was given more than 44 hours of coverage, 87 percent of it positive, compared with three hours for the main opposition party, 83 percent of which was negative.A billboard depicting President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia was displayed on a building in Nis in December, ahead of his visit to the city.Sasa Djordjevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNearly all of the negative coverage of Mr. Vucic appeared on N1, an independent news channel that broadcast Ms. Lalic’s Covid-19 reports. But a bitter war for market share is playing out between the cable provider that hosts N1 — Serbian Broadband, or SBB — and the state-controlled telecommunications company, Telekom Srbija.Telekom Srbija recently made a move that many saw as an unfair effort to make SBB less attractive to consumers when it snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more for them.Telekom Srbija’s offer, nearly $700 million for six seasons, is an astronomical amount for a country with only seven million people — and nearly four times what a media company in Russia, a far bigger market, has agreed to pay the Premier League each season for broadcast rights.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” SBB’s chief executive, Milija Zekovic, said in an interview. The offices of the N1 cable news channel in Belgrade. N1 and a smaller station, Nova S, are the only TV outlets in Serbia that give regular airtime to opposition politicians.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesTelekom Srbija declined to make its executives available for comment, but in public statements, the company has described its investments in English soccer and elsewhere as driven by commercial concerns, not politics.“Their goal is to kill SBB,” Dragan Solak, the chairman of SBB’s parent company, United Group, said in an interview in London. “In the Balkans,” he added, “you do not want to be a bleeding shark.”Eager to stay in the game, Mr. Solak announced this month that a private investment company he controls had bought Southampton FC, an English Premier League soccer team. Broadcast rights for the league will stay with his state-controlled rival, but part of the huge sum it agreed to pay for them will now pass to Mr. Solak.Government loyalists run Serbia’s five main free-to-air television channels, including the supposedly neutral public broadcaster, RTS. The only television outlets in Serbia that give airtime to the opposition and avoid hagiographic coverage of Mr. Vucic are Mr. Solak’s cable news channel N1, which is affiliated with CNN, and his TV Nova.Without them, Mr. Solak said, Serbia “will be heading into the dark ages like North Korea.”Telekom Srbija recently snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more than what SBB had previously paid.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesSpace for critical media has been shrinking across the region, with V-Dem Institute, the Swedish research group, now ranking Serbia, Poland and Hungary among its “top 10 autocratizing countries,” citing “assaults on the judiciary and restrictions on the media and civil society.” Freedom House now classifies Serbia as “partly free.”In each country, security forces — the primary tools for muzzling critical voices during the communist era — have been replaced in this role by state-controlled and state-dependent companies that exert often irresistible pressure on the news media.Poland’s governing party, Law and Justice, has turned the country’s public broadcaster, TVP, into a propaganda bullhorn, while a state-run oil company has taken over a string of regional newspapers, though some national print outlets still regularly assail the government.In December, Law and Justice pushed through legislation that would have squeezed out the only independent television news channel, the American-owned TVN24, but the Polish president, worried about alienating Washington, vetoed the bill.Hungary has gone further, gathering hundreds of news outlets into a holding company controlled by allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Only one television station with national reach is critical of Mr. Orban and financially independent from his government.Mr. Orban’s previously divided political rivals have formed a united front to fight elections in April but have been unsuccessful in shaking his stranglehold on the news media.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” said Milija Zekovic, the chief executive of SBB.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesIn Serbia, the media space for critical voices has shrunk so far, said Zoran Sekulic, the founder and editor of FoNet, an independent news agency, that “the level of control, direct and indirect, is like in the 1990s” under Mr. Milosevic, whom Mr. Vucic served as information minister.Journalists, Mr. Sekulic added, do not get killed anymore, but the system of control endures, only “upgraded and improved” to ensure fawning coverage without brute force.When United Group started a relatively opposition-friendly newspaper last year, it could not find a printer in Serbia willing to touch it. The newspaper is printed in neighboring Croatia and sent into Serbia.Dragan Djilas, the leader of Serbia’s main opposition party and formerly a media executive, complained that while Mr. Vucic could talk for hours without interruption on Serbia’s main television channels, opposition politicians appeared mostly only as targets for attack. “I am like an actor in a silent movie,” he said.N1, the only channel that sometimes lets him talk, is widely watched in Belgrade, the capital, but is blocked in many towns and cities where mayors are members of Mr. Vucic’s party. Even in Belgrade, the cable company that hosts the channel has faced trouble entering new housing projects built by property developers with close ties to the government. A huge new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade, for example, has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Viewers of pro-government channels “live in a parallel universe,” said Zeljko Bodrozic, the president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia. Channels like TV Pink, the most popular national station, which features sexually explicit reality shows and long statements by Mr. Vucic, he said, “don’t just indoctrinate, but make people stupid.”A new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesThe European Union and the United States have repeatedly rebuked Mr. Vucic over the lack of media pluralism, but, eager to keep Serbia from embracing Russia or stoking unrest in neighboring Bosnia, have not pushed hard.This has given Mr. Vucic a largely free hand to expand the media control that Rasa Nedeljkov, the program director in Belgrade for the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, described as “the skeleton of his whole system.” In some ways, he added, Serbia’s space for critical media is now smaller than it was under Mr. Milosevic, who “didn’t really care about having total control” and left various regional outlets untouched.“Vucic is now learning from this mistake by Milosevic,” Mr. Nedeljkov said. Mr. Vucic and his allies, Mr. Nedeljkov added, “are not tolerating anything that is different.”Belgrade this month.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesOnce powerful independent voices have gradually been co-opted. The radio station B92, which regularly criticized Mr. Milosevic during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, for example, is now owned by a supporter of Mr. Vucic and mostly parrots the government line.Journalists and others who upset Mr. Vucic face venomous attacks by tabloid newspapers loyal to the authorities. Mr. Solak, the United Group chairman, for example, has been denounced as “Serbia’s biggest scammer,” a crook gnawing at the country “like scabies” and a traitor working for Serbia’s foreign foes.Mr. Solak, who lives outside Serbia because of safety concerns, said he had become such a regular target for abuse that when he does not get attacked, “my friends call me and ask: What happened? Are you OK?” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      When the Green Deal Is a No Deal

      by

      Let’s start with a tricky question. Is the European Union’s Green New Deal a path toward the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050, as European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen sees it? Or do you agree with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s view of the deal as a “utopian fantasy”? Whatever interpretation you are leaning toward, the question itself reveals the current polarization across Europe.

      Why Does the Radical Right Oppose European Integration?

      READ MORE

      As in many other situations when an urgent EU response is needed, like when human rights violations are happening right on the bloc’s borders and shores, the roots of this political polarization are an intended result of populist anti-EU rhetoric spearheaded by the likes of Orban and other illiberal leaders. Nevertheless, the supposed dividing line between “old” and “new” EU member states on the perception of the green transformation is a by-product of failing Europeanization, something Orban and his consorts cannot be blamed for exclusively.

      Fear of Falling Behind

      Card players know the expression “new deal” as the reshuffling of a deck of cards that squares the players’ chances of victory. The Green New Deal, introduced in December 2019 by the European Commission, however, will not reset economic and social inequalities either globally or within the European Union itself. In the case of Hungary, for instance, among its nearly 10 million inhabitants, “income inequality has increased over the past decade and inequalities in access to public services remain high,” according to the 2020 country report by the European Commission.

      Cohesion reports show that although previous policies have made significant contributions, economic and social disparities between member states persist. That’s why the European Commission installed the Just Transition Mechanism and the Just Transition Fund alongside other measures such as the Social Economy Action Plan to compensate possible losers of the transition with funding and social inclusion measures.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Experts point out the open questions regarding exactly how much public money will flow to the east. A big part of the transition is to be lifted by private investments. Heated debates on green taxation and investments are partly fueled by fears of “falling further behind the West.”

      Concerns like this engender a general mistrust toward EU policies in the eastern European region. While the current framing of the Green New Deal focuses on the promise of a growth strategy with winners only, recipients in the east traditionally have doubts. Looking back to the 20th century, Europe has had plenty of experience with transitional processes, but lessons learned from various approaches vary tremendously across the continent.

      Bad Memories

      The Czech Republic, for example, is often presented as a transition success story. Yet a more differentiated view shows that the country is still struggling with the destructive effects of an unfinished transition. More than three decades after the change of regime, the political elite is dominated by businesspersons who gained economic power in the 1990s and have established a clientelist system characterized by a cascade of corruption scandals. Still facing a “wage curtain” vis-à-vis the West, the voters’ frustration with such legacies spelled defeat for Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ party in this year’s parliamentary election.

      The new government in Prague is trying to distance itself from previous paths and promotes a transition toward a green economy, emphasizing sanctions against polluters. The rhetoric, however, shows that the government’s commitment to change has its limits when prosperity is at risk. “The Green Deal represents a huge opportunity for Europe to invest in sustainable development, renewable energy and the circular economy. We will support any such measures which will not economically affect the living standards of the population of the Czech Republic,” Petr Hladík, deputy-mayor of Brno, stated recently.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Hungary has undergone several economic transitions after World War II. During the 1960s, a centrally-planned economy became more open. Then the so-called “goulash communism” paved the way toward a market economy, which was realized after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.

      The economic transition has brought market integration and foreign investments, but also, 17 years after Hungary’s EU accession, welfare levels have not reached those of the original member countries. In the years after 1989, Hungarians experienced high unemployment, social insecurity and a general decline in productivity that has often been seen as the material shock of the transition process.

      In the country’s collective memory, the transition has strong connotations with the rise in social inequality or, as Herman Hoen put it, the reforms that encompassed “welfare gains for some at the expense of others.” Negative experiences from transition periods, therefore, fuel the mistrust and general pessimism toward narratives of change and progress.

      When it comes to environmental awareness that forms the basis for climate action, we must understand that both Marxist and capitalist ideologies have been strongly shaped by a worldview that sees nature as an obstacle to economic growth. Environmentalists in countries like Hungary, former Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria had successfully channeled a broad critique of the system by raising environmental concerns. But soon after the initial democratic transition, attention shifted toward economic priorities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some argue that the transitions of 1989-90 in Eastern Europe have ended with the accession to the EU in 2004 but, facing a democratic backlash, clientelism and attempts at state capture today, it seems more appropriate to describe it as an incomplete transition. Particularly, civil society and social movements offer insights into the non-linearity of democratic consolidation processes.

      Although post-communist countries have very different transition processes and experiences, some suffering more, others less, they still share common struggles with social injustice and corruption as well as bad memories of the era of transformation.

      Disillusionment

      As a result of this disillusionment, many post-communist countries experienced a massive exodus to the West. According to Ivan Krastev, “With social inequality rising and social mobility stagnating in many countries in the world, it is easier to cross national borders than class barriers.” Many of those who stayed have become supporters of Orban and other populists who claim to be treated as second-class members of the EU and call out alleged double standards. Blaming Brussels for high energy prices, for example, falls on fertile ground.

      In addition, growing disparities in fundamental values and migration practices fuel fears over further disintegration of the EU along an increasing east-west divide. If we look at the perception of climate action in Europe, this divide can be detected here too. In fact, although all member states agreed on the Green New Deal, it has many stumbling blocks in its path.

      A study by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that “Europeans are divided over a range of climate issues, including the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), the role of nuclear energy in Europe’s future energy mix, bridging technologies with which to facilitate the transition to net zero, and the socio-economic consequences of closing down carbon-intensive industries.” The study also reveals that alliances along this fault line do not align in two diametrically opposed camps. This enables varying alliance-building measures and avoids stagnation when it comes to major decisions ahead.

      Embed from Getty Images

      According to a Eurobarometer survey from 2019, the awareness for necessary actions against climate change is increasing in all member states. When it comes to the question of whether climate change is one of the most serious problems, countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania are at the other end of the scale. Socio-demographic data show a clear correlation between awareness and the financial stability of respondents. Those with fewer financial difficulties are most likely to consider climate change as the most serious problem.

      In the case of Hungary, there is a true clash of perceptions with the European Commission. But Viktor Orban is facing an election in early 2022 that might lead to a change in the power balance. In the end, the benefits from the financial resources of the Green New Deal might speak in its favor.

      Bedtime Stories of Growth

      “This transition will either be working for all and be just, or it will not work at all,” said Von der Leyen after the College of Commissioners had agreed on the European Green Deal. According to the Commission’s Just Transition Mechanism, the most vulnerable regions and sectors should receive compensation for disadvantages. When facing informed criticism of gender-blind environmental policies, studies on energy poverty in former communist countries, the concept of “black ecologies” as well as the colonial legacy and the continuing global injustice of the Anthropocene, we must admit that it is impossible for today’s policies — and politicians — to predict who will make up tomorrow’s vulnerable groups.

      There is no doubt that Europe needs inclusive and smart policies, but regulations alone will not be enough. All green transformation mechanisms must be accompanied by multi-dimensional democratic reform. This means, first of all, the establishment of transnational agoras for grassroots participation in environmental policymaking. There needs to be a strong and broad democratic foundation as policy can only succeed once the trust in institutions is restored. Political culture and path dependencies are powerful and often underestimated barriers of change that can hardly be addressed by policy alone and require strong local civil societies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Speaking of trust, the European Commission’s current narrative of a “new growth strategy” carries the risk of creating a false promise of a “transition without losers” while not being able to think ahead to identify all obstacles. Even if serious endeavors can alleviate most of the social costs of the transition, the measures will fail if structural reforms of the social welfare systems and education are being neglected.

      Coping with the climate emergency uncovers the EU’s biggest weakness, namely its various divisions. Cohesion policies need to be more inclusive to guarantee effectiveness. While many actors within the bloc and on its margins have already joined the new gold rush for renewables, the scramble for the enormous EU funds brings severe risks of corruption and exploitation of natural resources in countries with weak economies and democracies, like the Jadar project in Serbia clearly demonstrates.

      Universal Change of Perspective

      Nationalistic and ethnic biases have led to dysfunctions and hampered cooperation among civil society actors before and after 1989. Donatella Della Porta and Manuela Cainai’s demands for a “Europeanization from below” should not be caught up in the dynamics of a green transition. We have a historic chance for environmental concerns to be expressed on all levels of society, and the ears of EU institutions are wide open.

      With the liberal opposition in Hungary joining forces against illiberal politicians in power, civil society’s ability to compromise and cooperate will decide its success. If it takes its role as watchdog and mediator between society and state seriously, it will need to develop trustworthy narratives of transition.

      From a global perspective, the current story is built on risky grounds. The old growth strategy cannot be simply supplanted by a new one. If the Green New Deal means an agreement where, in the end, power and money stay concentrated in the global north while resources and advantages of the EU’s margins — such as the western Balkans — are exploited, the outcome of the transition will be a total disintegration of the EU accompanied by severe social upheavals. 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      For many people then, the Green New Deal will not be a deal at all. The main responsibility for decarbonization lies with the global north. In this sense, the EU’s framing of climate action must be aligned with an honest inconvenient truth that it is not a trade deal with winners only but a unilateral sacrifice of privileges and a total change of perspective for the sake of all humanity.

      As Mariana Mazzucato recently stated in Nature Sustainability, “What is needed now is to move beyond the static debate about growth or no growth and instead focus on fundamentally redirecting development towards achieving the goal of a more inclusive and sustainable planet. We need to pivot from a reactive market-failure-fixing approach towards a proactive market-shaping one.”

      It is crucial that the Green New Deal is not just seen as a top-down policy bundle or a golden pot of money from Brussels, but a chance to reduce inequalities and to create a “good jobs economy.” The EU’s climate policies are indeed paving the way for decarbonization, but divisions within the bloc will always remain and might even further increase once the motor of growth revs up. The fight against climate change and injustice will then once again be led by civil society and proactive citizens, who need to follow a shared vision and hold politicians and corporations accountable for their actions.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      La inflación pone en aprietos a los líderes populistas de derecha

      by

      Los líderes de Turquía, Hungría y Brasil enfrentan problemas generados por el aumento global de precios antes de los comicios nacionales.Para todos aquellos que serían un desafío para Jair Bolsonaro en la próxima elección presidencial, incluida la prensa, el Supremo Tribunal Federal y los liberales, el aguerrido líder de derecha tiene una respuesta: “Solo Dios me saca de aquí”.Pero Bolsonaro podría perder el poder debido a una dificultad inesperada y para la cual su manual político no tiene una respuesta fácil: la inflación.En Brasil, un país con antecedentes relativamente recientes de episodios inflacionarios desastrosos, los precios suben a los niveles más altos de las últimas dos décadas. La moneda ha ido perdiendo su valor constantemente, al depreciarse alrededor del 10 por ciento contra el dólar solo en los últimos seis meses. Y su economía, la mayor de América Latina, volvió a entrar en recesión en el tercer trimestre del año.Eso ha inquietado a personas como Lucia Regina da Silva, una asistente de enfermería retirada de 65 años de edad que solía apoyar a Bolsonaro. Ha visto cómo en el último año los precios al alza han erosionado el poder de compra de su humilde pensión mensual.“Yo creía que este gobierno mejoraría nuestra vida”, dijo Da Silva en una mañana reciente, mientras empujaba un carrito de supermercado casi vacío —algunas verduras y artículos de uso personal era todo lo que le alcanzaba— por los pasillos de Campeão, una cadena de supermercados económicos de Río de Janeiro. “Pero esto fue un error”.Bolsonaro forma parte de una generación de populistas de derecha que, en la última década y media han ascendido al poder en democracias como Turquía, Brasil y Hungría y cuyos mandatos han coincidido, al menos en principio, con periodos de sólido desempeño económico en sus países. Han permanecido en el poder azuzando las pasiones nacionalistas y causando profundas divisiones en el electorado con temas culturales candentes. En el camino se han apropiado de los medios y amedrentan a sus oponentes.Ahora estos líderes autoritarios —entre ellos Bolsonaro, el primer ministro de Hungría Viktor Orban y el presidente de Turquía Recep Tayyip Erdogan— batallan con el alza de los precios y enfrentan elecciones nacionales en los próximos dos años. La inflación, un peligro nuevo e inesperado, amenaza con organizar y animar a la oposición política en los países de estos tres líderes de un modo que pocos habrían predicho hace unos meses.En Hungría, donde los precios al consumidor aumentan a la mayor velocidad desde 2007, los sondeos sugieren que Orban enfrentará su elección más dura el próximo año, cuando el costo de vida y los bajos salarios serán las principales preocupaciones para los votantes.En Hungría, las encuestas sugieren que el primer ministro Viktor Orban se enfrentará a las elecciones más difíciles de su historia el próximo año, pues el costo de la vida y los bajos salarios se convierten en las principales preocupaciones.Foto de consorcio por John ThysLos votantes en la cercana República Checa —que ha enfrentado una inflación creciente y elevados costos de energía—acaban de sacar del poder por un estrecho margen a Andrej Babis, el primer ministro multimillonario populista y de derecha del país.La situación de Bolsonaro, cuyo gobierno ha sido muy afectado por la gestión de la crisis de covid, se ha tambaleado y las encuestas lo muestran muy por detrás de quien probablemente sea su contendiente en 2022, el expresidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.En preparación, Bolsonaro ha empezado a poner los cimientos para disputar los resultados de la votación del año entrante, que los sondeos sugieren que perdería si se realizara hoy. “Quiero decirles a aquellos que quieren lograr que en Brasil no me elijan, que solo Dios me quitará”, le dijo a una multitud entusiasta en Sao Paulo en septiembre.Pero Da Silva ya ha incorporado la crisis económica a su incipiente campaña. “El gobierno de Bolsonaro es responsable de la inflación”, dijo en una entrevista. “La inflación está fuera de control”.La situación es más seria en Turquía, donde las políticas económicas poco ortodoxas del presidente Erdogan han desatado una crisis monetaria total. El valor de la lira se colapsó aproximadamente 45 por ciento este año. Y los precios aumentan a una tasa oficial de más de 20 por ciento anual, una cantidad que los cálculos extraoficiales ubican en un porcentaje mayor.Los países con líderes derechistas no son los únicos que se tambalean por la inflación. En Estados Unidos los precios aumentan a la mayor velocidad registrada desde 1982. Y los populistas de izquierda, como los que gobiernan en Argentina, también compiten contra feroces corrientes inflacionarias, que los tienen a la defensiva.El repunte representa una ruptura repentina con la tendencia de crecimiento lento e inflación moderada que dominó la economía mundial durante aproximadamente una docena de años antes del impacto de la pandemia. Ese telón de fondo de bajo crecimiento permitió a los poderosos bancos centrales de Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y el Reino Unido mantener bajas las tasas de interés. Y esas decisiones tuvieron grandes implicaciones para los países más pobres de todo el mundo.Eso se debe a que las políticas de bajo interés formuladas por los bancos centrales, entre ellos la Reserva Federal, reducen los retornos que los inversionistas en los países ricos pueden conseguir al comprar bonos del gobierno en sus países de origen, lo que los impulsa a emprender inversiones más arriesgadas en mercados emergentes que prometen mayores retornos.Los economistas dicen que el flujo de dinero hacia los países en desarrollo podría haber sido un elemento poco apreciado del éxito del que han gozado los líderes populistas de derecha en años recientes, pues les brindó un viento económico favorable que coincidió con sus mandatos.Turquía, que en 2009 sufrió una aguda recesión, pudo recuperarse de una manera relativamente rápida gracias a un auge de préstamos de inversionistas extranjeros que le dieron un gran impulso al crecimiento. La elección de Bolsonaro en 2018 coincidió con un renovado impulso para disminuir las tasas de interés de la Reserva Federal, lo que llevó a los inversionistas estadounidenses a comprar más deuda de mercados emergentes y ayudar a levantar el real.“Desde la recesión financiera global, el ambiente macroeconómico global fue una bendición para los autoritarios”, dijo Daron Acemoglu, profesor de economía en el Instituto Massachusetts de Tecnología que ha estudiado el deterioro de las democracias. “Básicamente, con tasas de interés muy bajas, hizo que muchos países que ya tenían o democracias débiles o semi autoritarismos, o francos autoritarismos, siguieran siendo atractivos para el capital extranjero”.Pero cuando la economía global empezó a recuperarse de la pandemia este año, una combinación de perturbaciones en la cadena de suministro, la impresión de moneda de los bancos centrales y el gasto público dirigido a aprovechar la recuperación dieron lugar a un alto incremento en los precios de todo el mundo. Esto hizo que los líderes de muchos países en desarrollo ajustaran sus políticas y que los inversionistas globales repensaran sus inversiones en esos mercados.Claudia Calich, líder de deuda en mercados emergentes en M&G Investments en Londres, ha invertido en bonos gubernamentales turcos, con denominación en liras, durante años. Pero, según Calich, el aumento en la presión pública que Erdogan ejerció este año en el banco central para recortar las tasas de interés ocasionó que el fondo se deshiciera de toda su inversión.En Turquía, liderada por el presidente Recep Tayyip Erdogan, el valor de la lira ha perdido alrededor del 45 por ciento este año y los precios aumentan a una tasa oficial de más del 20 por ciento anual.Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press“Tan pronto como empezamos a ver este año que los cambios iban en la dirección equivocada, es decir hacia una mayor reducción de tasas, entonces nos empezó a preocupar la moneda”, dijo Calich. “Esta ha sido, hasta ahora, la respuesta equivocada en materia de políticas. Y sí, hemos estado muy contentos de salirnos de esa posición”.Hay pocas opciones políticamente aceptables para los países de mercados emergentes que se enfrentan a un repunte inflacionario y al debilitamiento de las monedas. Pero por varias razones, el aumento inflacionario es un terreno político especialmente complicado para populistas como los señores Orban, Erdogan y Bolsonaro, quienes se enfrentan a elecciones en 2022 o 2023.Su enfoque personalista de la política —y el hecho de que todos llevan años en el poder— dificulta que intenten evadir la culpa por las condiciones económicas. Al mismo tiempo, su tipo de populismo, que enfatiza las rivalidades nacionalistas y en el pasado ha dado resultados, puede parecer fuera de la realidad para los ciudadanos cuyo nivel de vida se desploma rápidamente.El remedio tradicional para la inflación requeriría una combinación de tasas de interés más elevadas por parte del banco central y menor gasto público. Pero ambas medidas podrían afectar el crecimiento económico y el empleo, al menos el corto plazo, lo que podría empeorar las perspectivas de reelección.En Turquía, Erdogan —que ha adoptado un estilo de liderazgo cada vez más autoritario desde que sobrevivió a un intento de golpe en 2016— ha descartado una respuesta convencional. En semanas recientes, el Banco Central de la República de Turquía, que Erdogan básicamente controla personalmente, ha recortado las tasas de interés repetidamente.La mayoría de los observadores consideran que Erdogan ha empeorado una situación de por sí difícil, pues la perspectiva de más recortes a las tasas de interés y el declive monetario ha hecho que los inversionistas extranjeros retiren su dinero de Turquía.Al mismo tiempo, los vientos políticos también parecen soplar en contra de Erdogan. La situación económica que cada vez está peor ha motivado algunas protestas callejeras dispersas. Los políticos de oposición piden unas elecciones anticipadas para lidiar con la crisis mientras insisten en criticar a Erdogan por lo que dicen que ha sido una gestión económica desastrosa.Orban y Bolsonaro, quienes alguna vez se perfilaron como conservadores al formular los presupuestos, han abandonado sus posiciones anteriores. En cambio, están impulsando un aumento a corto plazo del gasto gubernamental para proporcionar una entrada de efectivo a los votantes antes de las elecciones del próximo año. Sin embargo, no está claro que este enfoque ayude, ya que es probable que empeore las presiones inflacionarias.Una tarde reciente, sentado en una banca de un mercado local de productores en Budapest, Marton Varjai, de 68 años, se reía del cheque por aproximadamente 250 dólares que Orban le había enviado hace poco como parte de un pago que el gobierno autorizó para todos los pensionados, que representan un 20 por ciento de la población.Varjai cobra una pensión mensual de aproximadamente 358 dólares, de los cuales destina el 85 por ciento al pago de medicinas y servicios. “El resto es lo que tengo para vivir”, dijo y añadió que le preocupaba que le alcanzara para llegar a fin de mes.Estos sentimientos se están convirtiendo en un foco cada vez más importante para los votantes húngaros. Un estudio reciente de Policy Solutions, un grupo progresista de expertos en Budapest, encontró que los húngaros están más preocupados por el costo de la vida y los bajos salarios.“Si estos temas dominan las campañas, no será bueno para Fidesz”, dijo Andras Biro-Nagy, director de Policy Solutions, en referencia al partido oficialista de Orban.Matt Phillips cubre mercados financieros. Antes de integrarse a The New York Times en 2018, fue editor jefe de Vice Money e integrante fundador del personal en Quartz, el sitio de negocios y economía. Pasó siete años en The Wall Street, donde cubría mercados bursátiles y de bonos. @MatthewPhillipsCarlotta Gall es la jefa del buró de Istanbul y cubre Turquía. Previamente ha reportado sobre los efectos de la Primavera Árabe desde Túnez, de los Balcanes durante la guerra en Kosovo y Serbia y ha cubierto Afganistán y Pakistán. @carlottagall • Facebook More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Inflationary Wave Changes Political Terrain for Right-Wing Populists

      by

      The leaders of Turkey, Hungary and Brazil are all grappling with problems posed by the global rise in prices ahead of national elections.To all those who would pose a challenge to Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s coming presidential election, including the press, the Supreme Court and liberals, the embattled right-wing leader has an answer: “Only God removes me.”But Mr. Bolsonaro might be unseated by an unexpected problem that his political playbook has no easy answer for: inflation.Prices are climbing faster than they have in almost two decades in Brazil, a country with a relatively recent history of disastrous inflationary episodes. The currency has steadily declined in value, losing roughly 10 percent against the dollar in the last six months alone. And the economy, Latin America’s largest, slipped back into recession in the third quarter.That has upset people like Lucia Regina da Silva. A 65-year-old retired nursing assistant and former Bolsonaro supporter, she has watched over the last year as surging prices have eroded the purchasing power of her modest monthly pension.“I believed this government would improve our lives,” said Ms. da Silva on a recent morning as she pushed a mostly empty shopping cart — a few vegetables and some personal products were all she could afford — through the aisles of Campeão, a cheap supermarket chain in Rio de Janeiro. “But that was flawed.”Mr. Bolsonaro is among a generation of right-wing populists who, in the past decade and a half, have risen to power in democracies like Turkey, Brazil and Hungary, and whose reigns have coincided, at least at first, with periods of solid economic performance in those countries. They have remained in power by stoking nationalist passions and driving deep wedges into the electorate with hot-button cultural issues. Along the way, they have co-opted the news media and cowed opponents.Now these strongmen — including Mr. Bolsonaro, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — are grappling with rising prices, even as they face national elections within the next two years. A new and unexpected peril, inflation is threatening to organize and animate political opposition in the countries of these three leaders in a way few would have predicted just a few months ago.In Hungary, where consumer prices are rising at their fastest pace since 2007, polls suggest that Mr. Orban will face his toughest election ever next year, as the cost of living and low wages become top concerns for voters.In Hungary, polls suggest that Prime Minister Viktor Orban will face his toughest election ever next year as the cost of living and low wages become top concerns.Pool photo by John ThysVoters in the nearby Czech Republic — which has faced rising inflation and soaring energy costs — just ousted Andrej Babis, the country’s billionaire right-wing populist prime minister, by a narrow margin.Mr. Bolsonaro’s standing, already damaged by his administration’s management of the Covid crisis, has tumbled, with polls showing him badly trailing his likely 2022 opponent, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.In anticipation, Mr. Bolsonaro has begun laying the groundwork to dispute the results of next year’s vote, which the polls suggest he would lose badly if it were held today. “I want to tell those who want to make me unelectable in Brazil, only God removes me,” he told a cheering crowd in São Paulo in September.But Mr. da Silva has already incorporated the economic crisis into his recent campaign. “The Bolsonaro government is responsible for inflation,” he said in an interview. “Inflation is out of control.”The situation is most dire in Turkey, where the unorthodox economic policies of President Erdogan have set off a full-on currency crisis. The value of the lira has collapsed roughly 45 percent this year. And prices are now rising at an official rate of more than 20 percent annually, with some unofficial estimates even higher.Countries with right-wing populist leaders aren’t the only ones reeling from inflation. In the United States, prices are rising at their fastest rate since 1982. And left-leaning populists, such as those in power in Argentina, are also contending with fierce inflationary currents, which have put them on the defensive.The upsurge represents a sudden break from the trend of sluggish growth and tepid inflation that dominated the global economy for roughly a dozen years before the pandemic hit. That low-growth backdrop allowed powerful central banks in the United States, the European Union and Britain to keep interest rates low. And those decisions had large implications for poorer countries around the world.That’s because the low-rate policies made by central banks such as the Federal Reserve reduce the returns investors in wealthy nations can make by buying safe government bonds in their home countries, pushing them into riskier investments in emerging markets that promise higher returns.Economists say that flow of money toward developing nations might have been an underappreciated element of the success right-wing populist leaders have enjoyed in recent years, as it provided a steadily favorable economic tailwind that coincided with their time in power.Turkey, which suffered a sharp recession in 2009, was able to rebound relatively quickly thanks to a surge of borrowing from foreign investors that supercharged growth. Mr. Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 coincided with a fresh push to lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve, which prompted U.S. investors to buy more emerging market debt and helped prop up the real.“Since the global financial recession, the global macroeconomic environment was a godsend to authoritarians,” said Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the deterioration of democracies. “Essentially, with very low interest rates, it made many countries that had either weak democracies or semi-authoritarianism, or sometimes fully fledged authoritarianism, still attractive to foreign capital.”But as the global economy began to heal from the pandemic this year, a combination of supply chain disruptions, central bank money-printing and government spending aimed at juicing the recovery ignited a sharp rise in prices around the world. That prompted leaders in many developing countries to tweak their policies — and global investors to rethink their investments in those markets.Claudia Calich, the head of emerging market debt at M&G Investments in London, has invested in Turkish government bonds, denominated in lira, for years. But, Ms. Calich said, the increasing public pressure that Mr. Erdogan was putting on the country’s central bank to cut interest rates this year led the fund to sell its entire position.In Turkey, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the value of the lira has lost about 45 percent this year, and prices are rising at an official rate of more than 20 percent annually.Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press“As soon as we started seeing the changes this year going in the wrong direction, namely for further rate reductions, then we started getting worried about the currency,” Ms. Calich said. “That has been, so far, the wrong policy response. And yeah, we’ve been very happy to have exited that position.”There are few politically palatable options for emerging market countries dealing with an inflationary upsurge and weakening currencies. But for a number of reasons, the inflationary rise is especially tricky political terrain for populists like Messrs. Orban, Erdogan and Bolsonaro, who all face elections in 2022 or 2023.Their personalized approach to politics — and the fact that they have all been in office for years — makes it difficult for them to sidestep blame for the condition of the economy. At the same time, their brand of populism, which emphasizes nationalist rivalries and has been effective in the past, can seem out of touch to citizens whose standards of living are swiftly plummeting.The traditional remedy for inflation would call for some combination of higher interest rates from the central bank and skimpier government spending. But both moves would probably hurt economic growth and employment, at least in the short term, potentially worsening prospects of re-election.In Turkey, Mr. Erdogan — who has adopted an increasingly authoritarian leadership style since surviving a coup attempt in 2016 — has ruled out such a conventional response. In recent weeks, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, essentially under Mr. Erdogan’s personal control, has repeatedly cut interest rates.Most observers think Mr. Erdogan has made a difficult situation much worse, with the prospect of more interest rate cuts and currency declines driving foreign investors to pull their money from Turkey.At the same time, the political winds also seem to be blowing against Mr. Erdogan. The worsening economic situation has prompted scattered street protests. Opposition politicians are calling for snap elections to deal with the crisis, while hammering Mr. Erdogan for what they call his disastrous management of the economy.Mr. Orban and Mr. Bolsonaro, both of whom once fashioned themselves as conservative budgeteers, have abandoned their previous positions. Instead, they are pushing a short-term surge of spending to provide an influx of cash to voters ahead of next year’s elections. It’s unclear that such an approach will help, however, as it is likely to make inflationary pressures worse.Sitting on a bench at a local farmers market in Budapest on a recent afternoon, Marton Varjai, 68, laughed at the $250 check Mr. Orban recently sent him, part of a payout his government authorized to all pensioners, who amount to roughly 20 percent of the population.Mr. Varjai earns a monthly pension of about $358, of which 85 percent goes to covering medicine and utilities. “The rest is what I have to live off,” he said, adding that he was concerned about his ability to make ends meet.Such sentiments are becoming an increasing focus for Hungarian voters. A recent study by Policy Solutions, a progressive think tank in Budapest, found that Hungarians are most concerned with the cost of living and low wages.“If these issues dominate the campaign, it’s not good for Fidesz,” said Andras Biro-Nagy, director of Policy Solutions, referring to Mr. Orban’s ruling party. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Czechs Defeat a Populist, Offering a Road Map for Toppling Strongmen

      by

      A wide range of parties in the Czech Republic banded together despite their differences to oppose Andrej Babis, the country’s populist prime minister. Opposition parties in Hungary are hoping to duplicate the feat.ROZDROJOVICE, Czech Republic — Marie Malenova, a Czech pensioner in a tidy, prosperous village in South Moravia, had not voted since 1989, the year her country held its first free elections after more than four decades of communist rule.Last Friday, however, she decided to cast a vote again, an event so unusual that her disbelieving family recorded her change of heart, taking photographs of her slipping her ballot into a big white box at the village hall.She said she did not much like the people she voted for, a coalition of previously divided center-right parties, describing them as “a smaller evil among all our many thieves.” But they at least had a simple and clear message: We can beat Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic’s populist, billionaire prime minister.“I wanted a change,” Ms. Malenova said, “and I wanted something that could beat Babis.”For the past decade, populists like Mr. Babis have often seemed politically invincible, rising to power across Central and Eastern Europe as part of a global trend of strongman leaders disdainful of democratic norms. But on Saturday, the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Babis was defeated because opposition parties put ideological differences aside and joined together to drive out a leader they fear has eroded the country’s democracy.Petr Fiala, center, a former political scientist and university rector who led one of two opposition coalitions, at a news conference on Saturday in Prague.EPA, via ShutterstockTheir success could have major repercussions in the region and beyond. In Hungary and in Poland, where nationalist leaders have damaged democratic institutions and sought to undermine the European Union, opposition leaders are mobilizing, trying to forge unified fronts and oust populist leaders in upcoming elections.“Populism is beatable,” said Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the South Moravian capital. “The first step in beating a populist leader is to suppress individual egos and to compromise in the interest of bringing a change.”The biggest showdown could come in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promoted himself as Europe’s standard-bearer for “illiberal democracy,” while his Fidesz party has steadily stripped away democratic checks, squeezing independent media and the judiciary. Mr. Orban has staked out right-wing political positions — including hostility to immigration, the European Union and L.G.B.T.Q. rights (if also proving adept at adopting left-wing welfare policies) — that have been emulated by his allies in Poland, the governing Law and Justice party.In recent years, champions of liberal democracy have been confounded in their efforts to battle their way back into power against nationalist leaders skilled at stoking fear and presenting themselves as saviors. Faced with well-oiled and well-financed political machines, like Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party or Mr. Babis’s party, Ano, opposition forces have been notoriously divided — until now.Prime Minister Andrej Babis after the election results were announced on Saturday in Prague.Petr David Josek/Associated PressThis weekend, six Hungarian parties will complete a weekslong opposition primary race, the first of its kind, to whittle down the list of potential contenders in every electoral district to oppose Mr. Orban’s party. The coalition includes groups ranging from nationalist conservatives to leftists, who disagree on most things but share a fervent desire to dispatch Mr. Orban.In Poland, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, returned to Poland this summer to rally the main opposition party and people who often do not vote, and lure support from a plethora of other opposition groups.The appeals for opposition unity have also been evident in Russia, where parliamentary elections held last month were neither free nor fair. Allies of the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had been trying to persuade voters to rally behind a single opposition candidate in each constituency, whether they liked the candidate or not, in the name of trying to win a single seat and breaking President Vladimir V. Putin’s complete stranglehold on power.It did not work — partly because most real opposition candidates were kept off the ballot, but also because Mr. Putin’s government pressured companies to remove a “smart voting” app that the opposition was using to coordinate its campaign.Mr. Babis, right, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary last month in Prague.David W. Cerny/ReutersLike Mr. Putin, Europe’s populist leaders claim to be defending traditional Christian values against decadent liberals, but unlike Mr. Putin, they have to hold real elections. Until recently, they were helped by the fact that opposition parties splintered the vote, meaning that few of those parties had much chance of beating highly organized governing parties.Those governing parties have also gained significant control over media in their countries. In the Czech Republic, Mr. Babis owns a media holding company with newspapers, internet portals and other news outlets. In Hungary, Mr. Orban has placed state television and much of private media under the control of loyal allies or business cronies.Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research group in Budapest, described Hungary as “the most captured state with the most centralized media environment” in Europe. Yet he said the new mobilization by Hungary’s opposition parties could change the political dynamic there.“They have a good message: If you fight against populists, things can be different,” Mr. Kreko said.In the Czech elections, that was largely the theme. While Mr. Babis is seen as less extreme than Mr. Orban, he has alienated many people in the Czech Republic. They see him as a bully whose wealth and corporate ties have given him an inordinate amount of power.The Russian opposition politicians Aleksei A. Navalny, right, Lyubov Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov in February 2020 at a rally in Moscow.Shamil Zhumatov/ReutersMarie Jilkova, a successful anti-Babis candidate in South Moravia from one of the two coalitions of parties that came together to oppose the prime minister, said that banding together to confront Mr. Babis and his party machine “was, for us, the only way to survive — there was no alternative.”Her own party, the Christian Democrats, differs on issues like abortion and gay marriage from the more centrist parties in her coalition, so, she said, “we agreed that we would not talk about these things during the campaign.”Faced with a united bloc of center-right opponents, Mr. Babis and his Ano party veered to the right, railing against immigration and the European Union. He invited Mr. Orban to campaign with him.Since he first entered politics nearly a decade ago, Mr. Babis has been inundated with questions about his financial affairs and those of his conglomerate, Agrofert. A week before the election, documents surfaced as part of the Pandora Papers project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showing how he shuffled more than $20 million through offshore shell companies in 2009 to buy property in France.Experts disagree on whether the disclosure had a significant effect on the race, but the revelations clearly rattled Mr. Babis.“He was desperate to find issues that would scare people and convince them that only he could save them,” Ms. Jilkova said in an interview in Brno. “Fortunately, it didn’t work.”Nationally, the opposition coalitions won 108 of 200 seats in the Parliament, a clear majority.In Rozdrojovice, where Ms. Malenova cast her first vote since 1989, Ms. Jilkova’s coalition benefited from a high turnout and won 37.3 percent of the vote, a big jump on what its component parties got when they ran separately four years ago.Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, on Sunday in Warsaw. He has been trying to rally opposition support.Slawomir Kaminski/Agencja Gazeta Via ReutersPetr Jerousek, who runs a wine business and owns a pub in Rozdrojovice, said his customers did not usually talk much about politics, but, faced with a choice between Mr. Babis and his foes, “they sometimes got very excited in their discussion.”Mr. Jerousek was ecstatic about the final results late Saturday. “People finally opened their eyes,” he said. “They have had enough.”Petr Stransky, a former police officer who now drives a municipal bus, was despondent. “I don’t like disorder and like things to be clear in society,” he said, bemoaning Mr. Babis’s defeat at the hands of what he said was unfair ganging up by opposition parties.“When we were fighting as kids in the schoolyard it was always one against one. Five kids fighting against one was cowardly. It was clear who would win,” he said. “This election was the same. It was not fair.”The mayor of the village, Daniel Strasky, said that while he wanted to see Mr. Babis go, he did not vote because he objected to an alliance between his own party, which represents mayors and other local dignitaries, and the Pirates, a rambunctious group popular with young voters.But, he added, the loveless electoral marriage was probably worthwhile because it helped defeat Mr. Babis, whose handouts to pensioners, young rail travelers and other budget-busting measures offended the mayor’s belief in financial discipline.Mr. Strasky was also distressed by the prime minister’s anti-immigration tirades, especially because a family from Vietnam runs the village’s only food store.“I and everyone else in the village are so glad they are here,” the mayor said. “Nobody else would ever run that shop.”A demonstration on Sunday in Warsaw in support of the European Union. Poland’s governing party has long been at odds with the bloc over rule-of-law issues.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBenjamin Novak More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism

      by

      Politics booksTrump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism It is liberal fantasy to imagine that poor handing of the pandemic has lessened the allure of Modi and Bolsonaro. They are learning fast how to subvert votingJan-Werner MüllerMon 20 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTWhen the pandemic struck, newspaper opinion pages were full of pieces predicting the end of authoritarian populism. Surely Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro couldn’t survive their mishandling of Covid-19? Finally, people were waking up to the reality of what these leaders represented.Trump may not have lasted, but the expectation that the pandemic might see off populism is mistaken. Liberal observers have long assumed that populists are by definition incompetent demagogues. But populism is not all about promising simplistic solutions in a complex world and, contrary to a complacent liberal narrative, populist leaders are not incapable of correcting failed policies. The threat of authoritarian populism is compounded by the fact that these leaders are learning from each other – though what they are copying are not more effective strategies to combat the pandemic, but techniques for disabling democracy.When despairing about the rise of populism, liberals have been eager to identify underlying causes. And indeed, there are striking similarities in the way far-right populist leaders govern in different parts of the globe: Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jarosław Kaczyński, Viktor Orbán, Modi, and, as a hopefully historical example, Trump. But similar outcomes do not prove similar causes. Rather, the reason for the emergence of what we might as well call a far-right populist art of governance is that leaders can copy each other’s best (or worst) practices. They are busy perfecting the art of faking democracy: ballot boxes are not stuffed on election day, but between them we see voting rules manipulated, media outlets taken over by business leaders friendly to the government, and civil society systematically intimidated and therefore election outcomes are rarely in doubt. Liberals, meanwhile, are drastically underestimating their adversaries.Populist leaders are not all nearly as incompetent and irresponsible as Trump and Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid would suggest. Their core characteristic is not that they criticise elites or are angry with the establishment. Rather, what distinguishes them is the claim that they, and only they, represent what they often refer to as the “real people” or also the “silent majority”.At first sight, this might not sound particularly nefarious. And yet this claim has two consequences deeply damaging for democracy: rather obviously, populists assert that all other contenders for office are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a matter of disputes about policy, or even about values. Rather, populists allege that their rivals are simply corrupt, or “crooked” characters. More insidiously, the suggestion that there exists a “real people” implies that there are some who are not quite real – figures who just pretend to belong, who might undermine the polity in some form, or who are at best second-rate citizens.Obvious examples are minorities and, in particular, recent immigrants, who are suspected of not being truly loyal to the polity. Think of Modi’s policy of creating a register of genuine citizens. Ostensibly, this is about identifying illegal immigrants; but especially in combination with new refugee policies that effectively discriminate against Muslims, its actual message is all too clear to Hindu nationalists. Or think of Trumpists who would never really engage in argument with critics, but simply denounce the latter as “un-American”.Populists reduce political issues to questions of belonging, and then attack those who are said not to belong. That is not a matter of mere rhetoric. Sooner or later, the appeal to the real people – and the exclusion of supposedly fake people – will have effects on streets and squares: Trump rallies have been associated with a local increase in assaults. The concept of “trickle-down aggression” – coined by the feminist philosopher Kate Manne – captures this dynamic.Populist leaders present themselves as the great champions of empowering the people, and yet always exclude particular people. The shameless attempts by US Republicans to suppress the vote (and subvert election outcomes) are playing on the sense that the “real America” is white and Christian – and that black and brown people should not really be participating in politics in the first place. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is gearing up to repeat Trump-style claims about a stolen election, should he lose the vote next year; he will have learned that, beyond casting doubt on the legitimacy of those not casting a ballot for you, bringing at least parts of the military to your side might be decisive.In Hungary, Orbán has long provided a model from which others can learn how to stretch laws to the limit in order to create pliable courts and media organisations. They can also study subtle tactics of how to mislead the EU and the Council of Europe long enough to entrench partisan advantages.When Poland’s Law and Justice Party returned to power in 2015, it could reach for Orbán’s manual of how to build an autocracy under the eyes of the EU. Like the Hungarian leader, it learned the lesson that, during its first time in office, it had wasted political capital on culture wars, instead of capturing independent institutions. To keep oneself in power, one must control the judiciary, the election system and TV in particular – once that has happened, one can wage culture wars and incite hatred against minorities to one’s heart’s content.None of this is to say that the new authoritarian systems are invincible, but we need to better understand their innovative techniques. Some are so dangerous because they are getting technologically more sophisticated: Pegasus spyware, the use of private companies to spread misinformation, or the extensive use of social media by leaders such as Modi (the world’s most tech-savvy populist) are only the most obvious instances. Still more dangerous than digital autocracy, though, is the ability of authoritarians to disable democracy, while at the same time advancing democratic-sounding justifications for their actions.What is happening in the US and the UK is a prime example. The push by the Johnson government to make the presentation of voter ID mandatory can look reasonable on paper: nobody is against the prevention of voter fraud. Northern Ireland already has such measures in place, as do countries on the continent. But, as we should have appreciated by now, legal measures can be deployed to, in effect, shrink the demos, the political body, for partisan purposes: minorities, the unemployed and especially the poor – lacking drivers’ licences and passports for travel abroad – are most likely not to have the time and resources to secure the required forms of ID. We have also learned the hard way that the staffing of election commissions is not some bureaucratic trifle (as Tom Stoppard observed long ago, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting”), but can make the difference between keeping and losing democracy.‘We the people’: the battle to define populismRead moreWhy do populists so often get away with these kinds of measures? We have not grasped the extent to which they have succeeded in imposing their distorted understanding of basic democratic practices. The vast majority of those identifying as Republicans regard voting as a “privilege” tied to responsibilities, while Democrats respect it as an unconditional right.It is not true that masses of people are longing for strongmen and are turning away from democracy. But it has become easier to fake democracy. That is partly because defenders of democracy have not argued for its basic principles well, and partly because they keep underestimating their adversaries.TopicsPolitics booksUS politicsViktor OrbánCoronavirusPolandHungaryBrazilfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Populist Leaders in Eastern Europe Run Into a Little Problem: Unpopularity

      by

      The leaders of Slovenia, Hungary and Poland, who rode to power on waves of anti-elitism anger, face rising opposition over their pandemic responses and heavy-handed policies.LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — A right-wing populist wave in Eastern Europe, lifted by Donald J. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, has not crashed as a result of his defeat last November. But it has collided with a serious obstacle: Its leaders are not very popular.After winning elections by railing against widely disliked elites, right-wing populists on Europe’s formerly communist eastern flank, it turns out, are themselves not much liked. That is due in large part to unpopular coronavirus lockdowns, and, like other leaders no matter their political complexion, their stumbling responses to the health crisis. But they are also under pressure from growing fatigue with their divisive tactics.In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is being countered by an uncharacteristically united opposition. In Poland, the deeply conservative government has made an abrupt shift to the left in economic policy to win back support. And in Slovenia, the hard-right governing party of the Trump-loving prime minister is slumping disastrously in the polls.Slovenia’s leader, Janez Jansa, who made international headlines by congratulating Mr. Trump on his “victory” in November and is a self-declared scourge of liberal, or what he calls communist, elites, is perhaps the most at risk of the region’s unpopular populists.Propelled by nationalist promises to bar asylum seekers from the Middle East and “ensure the survival of the Slovenian nation,” Mr. Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party won the most votes in a 2018 election. Last year, a new coalition government led by the party had an approval rating of 65 percent.Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia, left, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary in Kidricevo, Slovenia, last year.Jure Makovec/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis has since plunged to 26 percent and Mr. Jansa is so unpopular that allies are jumping ship. Street protests against him have attracted as many as tens of thousands of people, huge turnouts in a normally placid Alpine nation with a population of just two million.Mr. Jansa has staggered on, narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote in Parliament and a recent impeachment attempt by opposition legislators and defectors from his coalition.But he has been so weakened “he does not have the power to do anything” other than curse foes on Twitter, said Ziga Turk, a university professor and cabinet minister in an earlier government headed by Mr. Jansa, who quit the governing party in 2019.An admirer of Hungary’s Mr. Orban, Mr. Jansa has sought to bring the news media to heel, as nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have largely succeeded in doing, at least with television.But the only television station that consistently supports him, a bombastic and partly Hungarian-funded outfit called Nova24TV, has so few viewers — less than one percent of the television audience on most days — that it does not even figure in ratings charts.Slavoj Zizek, a celebrity philosopher and self-declared “moderately conservative Marxist” — one of the few Slovenians well-known outside the country, along with Melania Trump — said it was too early to write off leaders like Mr. Jansa, Mr. Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, whose three countries he described as a “new axis of evil.”Nationalist populists, he said, have rarely won popularity contests. Their most important asset, he said, has been the disarray of their opponents, many of whom the philosopher sees as too focused on “excessive moralism” and issues that do not interest most voters instead of addressing economic concerns.“The impotence of the left is terrifying,” Mr. Zizek said.Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher, says it is too early to write off the leaders of Slovenia, Hungary and Poland.Manca Juvan for The New York TimesThat nationalist populism remains a force is demonstrated by Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader. Her party fared poorly in regional elections over the weekend but opinion polls indicate she could still be a strong contender in France’s presidential election next year. She has done this by softening her image as a populist firebrand, ditching overt race-baiting and her previous and very unpopular opposition to the European Union and its common currency, the euro.Having never held high office, Ms. Le Pen has also avoided the pitfalls encountered by populists in East and Central Europe who have been running governments during the pandemic.Hungary, Europe’s self-proclaimed standard-bearer of “illiberal democracy” under Mr. Orban, has had the world’s highest per capita death rate from Covid-19 after Peru.Poland and Slovenia have fared better but their right-wing governing parties, Law and Justice and Mr. Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, have both faced public anger over their handling of the pandemic.The biggest danger to leaders like Mr. Jansa and Mr. Orban, however, are signs that their quarrelsome opponents are finally getting their act together. In Hungary, a diverse and previously feuding array of opposition parties has united to compete against Mr. Orban’s ruling Fidesz party in elections next year. If they stick together, according to opinion polls, they could well win.In Slovenia, Mr. Jansa has rallied a loyal base of around 25 percent of the electorate but has been “even more successful at mobilizing his many opponents,” said Luka Lisjak Gabrijelcic, a Slovenian historian and a disenchanted former supporter. “His base supports him but lots of people really hate him.”This includes the speaker of Parliament, Igor Zorcic, who recently bailed from Mr. Jansa’s coalition. “I do not want my country to follow the model from Hungary,” he said.Mr. Gabrijelcic said he quit Mr. Jansa’s party because it “turned too nasty,” moving away from what he had viewed as a healthy response to stale center-left orthodoxy to become a haven for paranoiacs and nationalist hatemongers.Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader whose party fared poorly in regional elections last weekend, in May. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAcross the region, he added, “The whole wave has lost its momentum.”Mr. Trump’s defeat has added to its malaise, along with the recent toppling of Israel’s longtime leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose pugnacious tactics have long been admired by nationalist leaders in Europe, despite the anti-Semitism that infects parts of their base.Mr. Trump’s presidency was never the trigger for Europe’s populist surge, whose leaders had been around and winning votes for years before the New York real estate developer announced his candidacy.But Mr. Trump did give cover and confidence to like-minded politicians in Europe, justifying their verbal excesses and placing their struggles in small, inward-looking countries into what seemed an irresistible global movement.The danger now that Mr. Trump has gone, said Ivan Krastev, an expert on East and Central Europe at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, is that the once “confident populism” of leaders like Mr. Jansa and Mr. Orban morphs into a more dangerous “apocalyptic populism” of the kind that has gripped segments of the right in the United States.But America’s political convulsions, he added, are less relevant to Eastern Europe than the fall of Mr. Netanyahu in Israel, a country that he described as the “true dream of European nationalists” — an “ethnic democracy” with a strong economy, capable military and an ability to resist outside pressure. The “negative coalition against Netanyahu,” he said, deeply shocked Europe’s right-wing populist leaders “because Israel was their model.”Mr. Turk, the former Slovenian minister, said liberals had exaggerated the menace posed by Europe’s nationalist tilt but that the polarization is very real. “The hatred is even more extreme than in the United States,” he lamented.Eager to present an image of calm respectability for Europe’s cantankerous illiberal movement, Mr. Orban in April hosted a meeting in Budapest of like-minded leaders committed to creating a “European renaissance based on Christian values.”Only two people showed up: Matteo Salvini, a fading far-right star in Italy who crashed out of government in 2019, and Poland’s beleaguered prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.Intended to signal the strength of Europe’s right-wing populist insurgency, the Budapest conclave “was more a desperate step to hide that they are in decline,” said Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a Budapest research group.Faced with the prospect of losing next year’s election, Mr. Orban has focused on revving up his base with issues like L.G.B.T.Q. rights and migration, just as the Law and Justice party did in Poland last year during its successful presidential election campaign.A gay pride parade in Warsaw in June. Poland’s government has taken aim at L.G.B.T.Q. rights in the past, and Hungary’s leader seems to be following suit.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Poland, the Law and Justice party has since taken another tack, apparently deciding that it needs more than divisive cultural and historical issues to win future elections.In May it embraced measures traditionally associated with the left like higher taxes on the rich and lower levies on the less well-off, and support for home buyers. That came after its popularity ratings fell from around 55 percent last summer to just over 30 percent in May, due in part to the pandemic but also because of anger, particularly in large towns, over the tightening of already strict laws against abortion.When it comes to alienating voters, however, nobody rivals Mr. Jansa of Slovenia, who has made scant efforts to reach beyond his most loyal supporters, casting critics as communists and stirring up enmities that date back to World War II.Damir Crncec, the former head of Slovenia’s intelligence agency and once a vocal supporter, said he was mystified by Mr. Jansa’s penchant for unpopularity. “Everyone here is looking for a rationale: How can you win in politics if you are constantly fighting with everyone?” he asked. More