In a televised discussion with his factotum Sean Hannity — okay, fine, “interview” — Donald Trump said something revealing about Hungarian reactionary Viktor Orbán. “They say he is a strongman,” mused Trump, “Sometimes you need a strongman.”
Trump’s affection for Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is well-established. But the rationale he selected is inconveniently frank.
American liberal intellectuals have long feared Orbán’s regime because it is a plausible way station on the road from democracy to autocracy. Orbán is not a dictator, exactly. What’s he’s done is to use state power to erect nearly insurmountable obstacles for his opposition. Orbán’s party has ruthlessly gerrymandered elections to give itself a huge advantage. He’s turned the state into an engine of control for his party, handing out favors to firms that support him and punishing critics. Using similar methods, Orbán has ensured the main media organs all reside in the hands of his allies, creating a massive and largely unopposed propaganda apparatus.
The American conservative line on Orbán’s government, chillingly enough, is that it’s not autocratic at all. Elections still occur, and if Orbán is playing a little rough with his enemies, well, is that any different than what American liberals have done here, with their control of media, culture, and schools? “Whatever his corruptions, Viktor Orbán might lose the next election, if the fractious opposition stays united,” argued Ross Douthat, “But where can you go to vote for a different ruling ideology in the interlocking American establishment, all its schools and professional guilds, its consolidated media and tech powers?”
Their justifications for Orbánism are the clearest sign they will accept or even cheer on Trump in a second term as he uses state power to intimidate opposition. He has many methods at his disposal from deploying troops against peaceful protesters, to pardoning violent paramilitary shock troops, to retaliating against the owners of independent media (something Trump actually did in his first term).
But the conservative rationalizations for Orbánism at least deny that Orbánism is authoritarian. Trump doesn’t even bother to go along with the pretense. The mainstream conservative line is that Orbán is good, but it’s a smear to call him a strongman. Trump says he’s good because he’s a strongman.
The reason Trump won’t go along is that he does not subscribe to, and cannot be made to understand, the premise that democracy is important.
Trump does not mentally categorize regimes as democratic or undemocratic. He categorizes them instead as having rulers who are strong or weak. He admires dictators because they are strong. To the extent he might criticize a dictator, it would be for displaying weakness in the face of dissent. (Trump in 1989: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”)
Trump has held to this belief for decades through various incarnations. He applies it to every government irrespective of its ideological character. American conservatives admire Orbán because they see him as a culture-war ally, but Trump is just as happy to praise murderous dictators who lead Marxist-Leninist regimes.
Republicans are mostly dedicated to ignoring the copious evidence of Trump’s authoritarian impulses and explaining away what they can’t ignore. Trump continues to make their job harder by blurting out his actual beliefs.
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