Tuesday

30th May 2023

Feature

Orban stokes up his voters with anti-Soros 'consultation'

Hungary's ruling party is gearing up for elections next year with a massive campaign against the US billionaire George Soros, featuring a so-called "national consultation" that officially ends this Friday (24 November).

This is the seventh 'national consultation' prime minister Viktor Orban's government has rolled out since coming to power in 2010.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Earlier this year another such consultation and an accompanying 'Stop Brussels' campaign prompted a detailed rebuttal from the EU Commission after the Budapest government made false claims about the EU's migration policy.

The consultations' choreography is the same: the Hungarian government sends out a questionnaire, stuffed with directed, false or half-true statements, to eight million voters and then uses the responses as political ammunition against critics.

In order to dominate the political agenda, a country-wide campaign accompanies the exercise with billboards, TV spots and news stories in the pro-government media that underline the statements in the questionnaires.

Earlier this year, out of eight million potential voters, some 1.25 million sent back answers, with 93.8 percent of these agreeing with assertions such as "money would be rather spent on Hungarian families, than migrants."

Those who take the trouble to answer, mostly agree with Orban's position.

The government has spent 7.2 billion forints (€23 million) on the anti-Brussels, anti-Soros campaigns from taxpayer money in the first half of the year, according to data gathered by Atlatszo, an investigative journalism site.

Soros targeted

The latest questionnaire asks people's opinions on a so-called 'Soros Plan' (a term coined by the government), that claims that the Hungarian-born US billionaire wants to transport one million migrants every year to Europe to dilute the continent's nations.

The Hungarian government says that the plan is executed by the European Commission, which it claims punishes any nation, such as Hungary and Poland, which is not welcoming migrants.

The Soros questionnaire is a prelude to elections in spring 2018, which Fidesz, Orban's party, is expected to win by a large margin.

"We are in election campaign. The most important goal is to mobilise Fidesz's core voters by identifying who is the opponent," Balint Ablonczy, columnist at the conservative weekly Heti Valasz told EUobserver.

Orban focuses on Fidesz's roughly 2 to 2.2 million voters that the party needs to mobilise to maintain an uncontested majority in parliament. It barely addresses the concerns of other voters.

It is a campaign that it is impossible to avoid when in Hungary.

Billboards with Soros's face, urging "Let's Not Keep Quiet About It" are plastered across the country. Pro-government and public media endlessly connect Soros, his Open Society Foundations, migration, and the EU, as one conspiracy in a series of false or twisted stories.

The government cites a couple of articles the US investor wrote at the height of the migration crisis, as proof of his efforts.

The questions on the most recent questionnaire are extreme, but without proof.

One states for instance that "the goal of the Soros Plan is to push the languages and cultures of Europe into the background, so that integration of illegal immigrants happens much more quickly."

Soros this week (Monday 20 November) dismissed the national consultation as "distortions and outright lies that deliberately mislead Hungarians about George Soros, migrants and refugees".

In a statement he said the campaign is stoking "anti-Muslim sentiment" and employs "anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of the 1930s".

Pro-government news website Origo on Tuesday (21 November) was quick to hit back with the headline, "Soros threatened Hungary, and is lying indiscriminately."

Yet, even Tibor Navracsics, the current EU education and culture commissioner, who was previously deputy prime minister to Orban - tasked with defending in Brussels a controversial reform of Hungary's constitution - in recent weeks pointed out that the EU executive does not have a Soros Plan and thinks the anti-Soros push is a "rhetorical element" of the upcoming electoral campaign.

Navracsics was then later rebuked by his fellow Fidesz politicians.

"Mr Soros's network is strong enough, we believe, to use the alternative ways of enforcing the vision, including many NGOs and so-called expert groups [...]," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told reporters in Brussels.

Sense of mission

Soros, whose foundation once supported Orban and other Fidesz leaders, embodies all that the Orban government dislikes: civil society, liberals, migrants.

"Soros represents everything that the right-wing does not like, he is a multi-billionaire and has a strong opinion, he supports NGOs that propagate democratic transition and defend migrants' rights," said Ablonczy.

Ablonczy added that he does not think the government deliberately intended an anti-semitic tone to the campaign focussing on Soros, but he acknowledges that "many hundreds of thousand of Hungarians feel disgusted" by the way it has rhetorical echoes with the 1930s.

The columnist however said that when the government elides those nuances, it can no longer control the hatred it has inspired.

That is palpable on the streets of Budapest among Fidesz-supporters, who seem happy to take part in the 'national consultation'.

"You are an evil-doer," one man lingering around a booth that publicised the consultation, told this reporter when simply asked why he supports the campaign. He refused to share more about his reasons.

"You must be waiting for the migrant masses, because you want to find a husband," a woman (who did not want to reveal her name) retorted when asked if she believed in the "Soros Plan".

The country is deeply divided between those who echo the government's arguments and those who think they are far-fetched.

The opposition, that includes an ideologically wide range of parties from liberals, greens, socialists to the once far-right Jobbik, is fragmented and weak, and has so far been unable to unite against Fidesz.

A recent study by the IDEA Institute showed that only 11 percent of Fidesz voters think that things are going in the wrong direction. That compares with 57 percent of all citizens (and over 60 percent among supporters in every opposition party) thaht think things are going badly.

While the EU is discussing how to combat fake news in general, it is less well-equipped with countering propaganda in a member state. Especially with leaders such as Orban.

"Orban has a clear sense of mission, in [a] historic proportion. He wants to save eastern Europe from what has happened to western Europe, namely multiculturalism. He thinks integration is not possible," Ablonczy concluded.

US billionaire Soros warns EU of 'existential danger'

The billionaire philanthropist, George Soros, said the European Union should use Brexit as a catalyst for change if it wants to survive, and called his native country Hungary a 'mafia state'.

Anti-Soros university bill sparks protest in Budapest

Thousands gathered around the Central European University on Tuesday to protest against a legislative bill that targets it, while the US embassy and the German president expressed their support for the institution.

Soros-linked NGOs defy Orban purge

Hungarian NGOs funded by philanthropist George Soros have vowed to defy prime minister Viktor Orban’s plan to “sweep them out” of the country.

Latest News

  1. EU clashes over protection of workers exposed to asbestos
  2. EU to blacklist nine Russians over jailing of dissident
  3. Russia-Ukraine relations the Year After the war
  4. Why creating a new legal class of 'climate refugees' is a bad idea
  5. Equatorial Guinea: a 'tough nut' for the EU
  6. New EU ethics body and Moldova conference This WEEK
  7. How the EU's money for waste went to waste in Lebanon
  8. EU criminal complicity in Libya needs recognition, says expert

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us