Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign | Hacker News Reader

Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign

index.hu

653 pointspabo413 comments

To put this in context: for imagine the largest, and one of the last remaining independent news site in a country where most of the media is centrally controlled. Criticism of the government in that media is unknown. This site is read by close to half of the online population. The government is clearly irritated by this.

This site was Index, in Hungary. The editorial board resigning is a response of the takeover attempt from government sources.

Going forward, the largest, independent news outlet accessible to Hungarians will like be the Guardian and the New York Times.

If this was happening in an autocratic country, we’d just shrug. But this happening in an EU country, in a democracy.

The question begs itself: can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

Democracy? With guys like Victor Orban? Nope. You think you live in a democracy but it is something else entirely.

I'm not playing smart. I'm a Greek myself and our govt is mimicking Orban to a large degree. TBH I'm afraid that democracy is going down the drain for most of EU anyway. The way yellow-vests were treated in "democratic" France (hint: plastic bullets shot at demostrators' eyes) kind of convinced me on that one. As for Greece, well, yeah. You won't find anything but praise for the govt in the mass media. A few fringe ones daring the other side of events survive on readers subscriptions. All tied up in a tightly knitted nexus of political friends, family, friendly businessmen, huge debt (govt party has a massive debt on its own as most mass media also do), ever expanding police-state, religious leaders (Orthodox Christian Church) and God knows whom else.

So, anyway, all the best...

At least, in France, in my opinion, it's becoming difficult to find favourable coverage of the government in the press, even in state-owned media. I find it neutral at best.

At least you French have a decent and established culture of protesting, compared to us Germans...

Wrong. In France, this "culture of protest" means to go all-in, on strike, right from the beginning for any reason, be it serious or just a pettiness. And in France, taking it to the streets and making noise is more often than not some sort of a social happening, too often for economical reasons, like yellow wests initially did. Not for any "higher" reasons like democracy, justice, freedom etc. It's individual people and various interest groups competing (on a wider level) with each other in their subsidiary demands, united in their fear of loosing status and comparative influence of the social group they belong to. E.g. rail-road syndicates. In short: Citizens of a rich country worried about their pockets, demanding reforms, refusing change, regarding it be some a kind of a zero-sum game, thus preferring short-term egoistic strategies.

Compare it with Eastern Europe with seldom protests, maybe once in 20 years or so. And not against poverty but for justice (Slovakia), democracy (Ukraine, Serbia) or alike.

What's wrong with economic reasons?

What good is freedom and democracy if it doesn't give you enough to eat?

Economic trouble is was causes totalitarianism.

My first question would be whether the culture of protesting and having constantly negative coverage of the government makes any difference in a country full of old money.

I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but given that France is on its fifth republic in 200 years, it certainly seems to be capable of changing how its governed.

What do you mean? Living in Germany I see plenty of protests.

I mean, we (US) helped set the stage for these kind of governments in Greece a few decades ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_junta#American_influence...

1949 is not what most people would consider "a few decades ago".

Greece's junta government lasted until '74. That's still ~50 years ago but it's not like this stuff goes away immediately.

I'm from South America where the US experimented with setting up dictatorships after WWII as well, and the effects are still felt today.

Exactly. Spain's government and institutions are still riddled with Francoists despite passing away in 1975 and there's still very much a fascist element that rear their ugly heads from time to time.

> I'm from South America where the US experimented with setting up dictatorships after WWII

Source?

The EU handling of Greece hasn't helped either. And it happened only a decade ago rather than half a century ago.

You mean installing a dictatorship is comparable to attaching (perhaps excessively harsh) conditions to financial support?

AFAIK that Junta was removed almost 40+ years ago. It's effect is lesser than something that happened relatively recently.

Meanwhile, by refusing to help Greece with its debt, not only did EU increased the debt, but inadvertently legitimized the right option, by saying there will be no debt canceling (which was left position at the time).

The EU's "financial support" means that Greece's economy will be in slow growth or recession with high unemployment for decades. That will probably lead to unhealthy governments. They would be better off if they had gone through with grexit when they had the chance.

a few decades ago

~70 years ago.

Check out Bolivia, Honduras, and the failed attempt at Venezuela for some more recent examples within the last 15 years.

The "attempted coup" in Venezuela was a couple crazy dudes who got rounded up immediately. You think that represents an attempted coup by the American government?

Honduras? Obama was friendly to Zelaya and condemned the coup.

> The way yellow-vests were treated in "democratic" France (hint: plastic bullets shot at demonstrators' eyes)

France is in no way behind the USA in repressing popular demonstrations.

AFAIR in France nobody sent out paramilitary units to quell the protests - read: instigate violence and save his/her election. And that makes for a huge difference. But if you prefer to ignore the facts not supporting your interpretation, well then...

> AFAIR in France nobody sent out paramilitary units to quell the protests

Only Benalla, the president's personal praetorian.

This is the current normal in many countries.

Actually many of these have been empowered by some kind of internet troll movement. The emergence of such parties is eerily similar - an overwhelming majority who is peeved at some designated and vilified minority getting even minor privileges. Plus a lot of ranting against left liberalism and globalism. They conveniently forget the fact that such egalitarian viewpoints have more or less assured a stable 75 years in recent world history. Nearly a century of peace in large parts of the world - this has been a great achievement unprecedented in the last 500 years.

Unfortunately for us, I think since Internet 2.0, this trend has been exacerbated by the echo chambers which constitute most social media.

>Actually many of these have been empowered by some kind of internet troll movement.

It's not a "movement". It's information warfare enabled by the fact that most information sources online don't even give lip service to the idea of separating propaganda and manipulation from honest public discussion.

The Russians are (obviously) getting very good at this, and other countries like China aren't far behind. Until companies like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and others recognize that protecting public discussion from interference isn't optional, you can expect this to continue.

The Russians didn't start this brand of insanity in the US, it has been a cornerstone of Republican policy for the past ~12 years. (And has been present, on a lower-key note, for the prior 20. The toxic culture war isn't anything new - Reagan was fighting it against homosexuals[1] and welfare queens 40 years ago.)

It's a monster of our own making. When politicians start courting that fringe, you get a virtuous cycle, where the fringe starts impacting policy, which emboldens and encourages more and more radicalization.

[1] Look at the rhetoric surrounding the AIDS epidemic, and tell me if anything has changed.

It's not just such countries. All political parties all around the world are doing similar things, and have their own troll farms and twitter armies. Look up the profiles of the "followers" of major world leaders. Many of them are 'shallow' - not old enough as profiles, and not enough activity.

It's naïve to think that companies are unaware of this. I think they actively encourage this outrage-fest, because it increases eyeballs. We are paying a heavy social price for a flawed advertisement revenue model.

You can look up the documentary on Cambridge Analytica. The logo _most_ prominently displayed the CEO's office is that of major Indian political party. And that party is not even the top dog in this game.

Exactly.

WWIII has already started - but its "hearts and minds" but with Corporatocracy and with covid being the opening salvo to drive fear and socially engineered behavior into the global populous.

You cant control 7B people without first taking over their minds.... (emotions and behaviors)

> They conveniently forget the fact that such egalitarian viewpoints have more or less assured a stable 75 years in recent world history. Nearly a century of peace in large parts of the world - this has been a great achievement unprecedented in the last 500 years.

Isn't a large part of this from nuclear detente?

I'm from Hungary and I agree. I don't think this is a democracy. In fact it never was. We never recovered from communism we just changed the old mafia to a new one.

"recovered from communism"

Recover what? You say it as if what was before communism was better than communism.

Communism was probably the best system ever to exist in Hungary up until 1989, at least it was certainly the best to last.

It wasn't democratic by any means, but to me it's weird to say "recovered from communism", as if there was something before communism to recover.

To the person who downvoted I ask, which pre-1989 political system of Hungary was better than communism?

Hungary exists as an independent nation since 31 July 1921. Since then, these are the political systems that lasted any significant amount of time:

- Kingdom of Hungary: created anti-semitic laws before the nazis, waged wars of conquest against it's neighbors and collaborated with the Nazi regime, perpetrator of Holocaust

- 1944 until the end of world war: Nazi control of Hungary, perpetrator of Holocaust

- until 1989: a few years of Soviet military occupation, then Communism

- since 1989 current system

So which of the pre-communist political systems of Hungary is the one worth recovering in your opinion?

May I suggest you re-evaluate your history reference material?

Exactly like in Portugal, except for the religious leaders.

And India, but includes religious leaders.

A democracy doesn't give you the right to block traffic and public transportation every weekend because you think you have an important cause.

In a free democracy, it actually kind of does. As long as it is done peacefully and with willingness to engage in open dialogue. The ability to influence the powerful and rich requires being able to force their hand to have discussions. Without it, the democracy crumbles. And despite the irritation it may cause you or I, peacefully shutting down transit is one of the levers that doesn't require that power/money.

"As long as it is done peacefully and with willingness to engage in open dialogue. "

No, it absolutely does not.

You have absolutely not right to suppress other people with your ideology for anything other than a moment.

"Without it, the democracy crumbles"

This is completely false.

There is no such thing as 'peaceful' closure of public transit, it's only authoritarian, frankly.

There are exactly 0 examples of 'democracy crumbling' because protestors were not able to stop public transit and public roads.

In very certain terms - you don't have the right to close public spaces, to stop public activity with your political ideology.

It's completely illegal if 1 of you do it, it doesn't make it legal if 1000 of you do it, though you might get away with just a fine or whatever if you 'take it down' soon enough.

It's helpful to think of a cause that you don't support, or are perhaps against, even think of as 'immoral' and consider how you'd react if they shut your office down every few days.

It depends on where you live. Where I live, I certainly am legally able to block the road as an individual. I have to do so peacefully and if I'd like to do more, file the appropriate permit. But I certainly can.

I don't have to think about it. My office has been shutdown on multiple occasions by causes I don't agree with (we are located by federal land). In fact, it happens at least once a year. Not once have I wanted the protesters to be prevented or forced to disperse. Is it an inconvenience? Yes. But it is their right and a right that is critical to democracy.

No it does not. In a democracy you are to free to voice your opinion, any way you prefer as long as it does not infringe on others' lives.

Blocking the road to work, hospital, etc. is infringing on others.

You seem to be conflating "democracy" with "libertarian" or some flavor of anarchist or some vague notion of "good" Democracy means "the people rule"

There are two kinds of protests. One where you go on the main square with a banner inviting people to join your fight for a noble cause. And the other is... well, not that many will join you in your fight for full pockets and you know it. So you go for the next round-about, straight on.

Yes, it does. It may be inconvenient, but that is part of the democratic game. The option is to live in an authoritarian regime.

If the people blocking roads were a majority of the population, they wouldn't need to engage in such protests.

Control of the majority by the minority is by definition not democratic.

Authoritarian regimes are the exact ones who control the majority with a small minority of the population.

Tyranny of the majority can happen and so allowing minority populations to protest is part of democracy.

No it doesn't. Democracy means you have the freedom (free press, independent judicial system, etc) to vote for the government you want. It doesn't mean you get the government you want. And it surely doesn't mean you get to block something because you don't get what you want. A democracy is not a kindergarten.

If people are in the street demonstrating, this is a sign that something is not right. Unless there is some mental disease going on, people will not let their fulfilling lives to be protesting against living conditions. This is a sign that something is broken and should be fixed, which is the whole of government, even if that government is not the one that I voted for. This is democracy 101.

Dying in an ambulance or shot to death because police could not get there because "democratic" protests block the road is not inconvenient.

Police are incredibly unlikely to save you from being shot, they mostly clean up after the fact.

And protesters tend to allow ambulances to get through, because most of them aren't monsters.

" but that is part of the democratic game. The option is to live in an authoritarian regime."

Both of those statements a very false.

I can't really speak for the media landscape of Hungary, but on a general basis a diverse media landscape that allows for different and even unpopular opinions, is very important for a functioning democracy, because, believe it or not, but Hungary is in fact a democracy. Unlike most other states in the EU, Orbán enjoys a clear parliamentary majority. That means that his policies enjoy wide support within the national assembly. Moreover, it means that whatever he proposes will be voted in much more easily.

On the other hand, the Hungarian opposition owning such a small minority, may even feel oppressed because of it. This is why I think it's unfortunate if this alternative media outlet is indeed being pressured into being more polite towards the sitting government. But speaking of poor resources among alternative and fringe media may also be misleading. In some respects it is no different than the alternative media in Left leaning countries, such as Sweden or Norway. Over here it is the alternative Right Wing media that are on the brink of extinction, and Left Wing supporters are constantly calling for their defunding and cancellation, even resorting to call out or boycott businesses who dare advertise with them.

This tactic certainly seems to have worked with the big tech companies. Moreover there seems to be little to no discussion in Left Wing media about the larger ongoing censorship happening in Western Europe and the USA. As such, some may even call this event welcome when compared to what is happening on giant platforms like Twitter, Google, Facebook or YouTube. However I'm unsure if fighting cancel culture with more cancel culture is a very bright idea.

Of course not. "Democracy" isn't just it being written in the constitution "this is a democracy". That's a terribly simplistic view. By that measure, NK is democratic...

In fact a true democracy only exists when a huge number of very complicated systems and institutions are working properly. You need a well-educated population with equal access to opportunities, a free, healthy, and diverse press, an independent judiciary, a healthy political landscape, etc.

> You need a well-educated population with equal access to opportunities, a free, healthy, and diverse press, an independent judiciary, a healthy political landscape, etc.

Then the US isn't a democracy?

> A report by the The Economist Intelligence Unit, released today, reveals a host of unsettling statistics about the scope of democracy around the globe.
One such fact — that for the first time ever, the United States is no longer considered a “full democracy,” but rather a “flawed democracy”...

The US designation as a “flawed democracy” is really more nominal than anything, simply meaning that the country’s Democracy Index — which is based off of five categories related to governance — has fallen below eight out of 10.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/fr/content/the-us-is-now-a-fla...

And that was 2017. It hasn't gotten better since.

What changed to make it drop? The voting system in the U.S. hasn't changed, the first amendment is still in effect, media is independent (no equivalent of DW or BBC). I'm trying to find out what aspects did change to cause a ranking drop.

Binary is/is-not is not correct way to think about that.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index there are 22 full democracies. The US is flawed democracy (rank 25)

http://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index

I would say 90% of my US-based Facebook friends fall into one of two groups at any one time: posting things about how "we're not a democracy, we're a republic", and posting things about how we should suspend things in the Bill of Rights because we've been needing to exercise "emergency powers" continuously for the last 20 years.

Let's ask ourselves: what do you think is the probability a year from now that the US presidential election later this year will be contested by a significant portion of the country, regardless of the outcome?

Why look to the future? The last election has been openly opposed by a large percentage of the population AND agencies of the public service.

Not like the Obama terms where much different. Just a different group of people saying "My team didn't win so I'm going to have a tantrum".

I predict the next election cycle will just be more of the same, no matter who wins.

When you have a situation where the winning candidate has fewer votes than the other candidate, that clearly leads to some saying it wasn't a fair representation of the feeling of the country.

I don't think many contested Bush in 2004, when he got a majority (not even just a plurarity) of votes. They might not have liked it, but it was a given.

Clearly in 2000 there were complaints, Gore got more votes, on top of that was the whole hanging chad fiasco.

In both 92 and 96, Clinton got the plurarity of votes, but didn't reach 50%. Most who voted, voted against him. Not as bad as not getting a majority of votes, but will lead to some resentment.

Now on top of that there's the whole "Hacking" the election, which is far more woolly, and isn't just because of Russia and Cambridge Analytica, it's also about how informed a population is, the ease of getting onto the voting register, the ease of casting a vote, etc.

Democracy is hard

Would the election being contested by the losing candidate be more of the same to you? Because there's a massive difference between voters being upset their candidate lost, and the candidate not accepting the results.

Especially if that candidate is the acting president and refuses to go through the peaceful transfer of power.

And the fact it's even being discussed as a serious possibility that the current acting president would do that should raise so many alarm bells about how democratic the US really is ... it's not even funny.

The practical test isn't the political system. Voting alone certainly isn't the definition of democracy.

It's the distribution of benefits that accumulate within the system, and also the ease with which costs/hindrances/outright abuse can be inflicted on selected elements in the population.

The more concentrated the benefits, and the easier and more violent the restrictions and abuse, the less democracy exists.

Yeah, I would argue it isn't. It's at least not a healthy democracy.

> Then the US isn't a democracy?

It is teetering on the brink.

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/ruth-ben-ghiat-on-trump-and...

The US is part first world, part third world: parts of it are a working federalized democracy, other parts not so much.

It's at the very least debatable. It always has been, viz the entire Internet smart people brigade trotting out the "It's not a democracy, it's a republic" trope.

But even if we set this aside, we can certainly question if an institution like the electoral college doesn't deliberately move power from the people to the ruling group.

We can question if the extreme form of gerrymandering we practice around here doesn't remove power from the people.

We can debate Citizens United.

We can debate the existence of blatantly partisan media, and the monoculture of media owners.

We can debate a regime that has clearly abandoned ethical delineations, and that values loyalty over competence.

All of these, individually, chip away at democracy. The question is if together they've chipped away enough that we aren't one any more. (My current assessment is that we still have a small window to turn this around, but it's closing. It's open wider than in Hungary, it's less wide open than in Germany or France)

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. It’s absolutely true that the US is losing its grip on a democracy due to these factors becoming issues.

Noam Chomsky's been saying the US isn't a democracy since the 70's? Post ww2? I'm early in my introduction to him so it's fuzzy. Statistically, the laws passed and the actions the government takes are primarily influenced by corporations, thus making it a plutocracy.

Some interesting scholarship on this has happened in the last 5-6 years: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...

TLDR: it's pretty debatable

It is a somewhat flawed democracy.

Not only somewhat, but critically: increasingly.

As is every democracy.

The U. S. has never been a true democracy. It was founded as a democratic republic.

Constitutionally speaking, all states must be a republican form of government. The federal government is also republican.

A republic is a kind of democracy. HN is not somewhere I would have expected to see people forgetting about the existence of subtypes.

Strictly speaking, the early us was more of an Aristocratic Republic rather than a democratic republic.

> The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

Article 1, Section 2.

In the Early US, only white male land owners could vote (the upper class, aka, the aristocracy). Inasmuch, it was not what most people would consider a democracy. The lower class had no representation whatsoever.

So, when you say that a "A republic is a kind of democracy" it's actually not true, at least not for what most people would consider democracy.

The United States is not a democracy. It’s a democratic republic. The founders explicitly did not want to create a democracy.

Please not this misguided pedantry. A country can be a republic and a democracy. Those terms are not mutually exclusive.

As I understand it, "democracy" can be used narrowly to mean a direct democracy, more broadly to mean a range of democratic political systems (e.g. constitutional republics, constitutional monarchies, etc.), or even more broadly to mean the overall philosophy and approach to government associated with liberal democracy.

It's sort of like how functional programming can just mean "programming with pure, mathematical style functions" or more broadly it can mean the techniques associated with functional programming like pattern matching, currying, etc.

In this case, it seems to me that the intention was to use the most broad sense of democracy.

A republic is a way to organise a state and its government (with elected head of state and a kind of legislative or governing assembly). In a representative democracy, the people doing the governing and the legislating are elected by the citizens who grant them legitimacy.

You can have democratic (e.g. Iceland) or oligarchic republics (e.g. Ukraine), all the way to dictatorships (e.g. Russia).

Being a democracy and being a republic are completely orthogonal.

Besides this being unhelpful "misguided pedantry", there's also the issue that what the founders wanted to create and what exists today are not necessarily the same.

Wasn't there a paper a while back that showed how the US is more than likely a plutocracy.

>a true democracy only exists when a huge number of very complicated systems and institutions are working properly

Falsehood. True democracy only exists when the voters' will is unimpeded by very complicated systems or institutions.

What you are describing is known as "managed democracy"[1] - i.e., political system that's notionally purely democratic, but where will of the voters is surreptitiously influenced, and their voice channeled through and shaped by gatekeepers, and their consent is manufactured by unelected institutions. North Korea and USSR are examples of such.

The free, effective, and prosperous countries like USA are democratic republics rather than true democracies - for a reason.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy

>>a true democracy only exists when a huge number of very complicated systems and institutions are working properly

>Falsehood. True democracy only exists when the voters' will is unimpeded by very complicated systems or institutions.

Those things are not mutually exclusive. The phrase "working properly" in this context clearly implies that the "voters' will" is being honored.

> ... can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

Expanding this question: can a country where the government lies to its citizens, and withholds information from the press, and actively seeks to discredit news sources critical of it be considered a democracy?

If citizens cannot be informed they cannot make rational, democratic decisions.

I think those all pale in comparison to the freedoms lost from the Patriot Act. Complete and total government surveillance. Gag orders that make it illegal for you to disclose that your business is being forced to comply with surveillance. Government bullying when you try to build systems that are surveillance proof (Apple said to reverse course on end to end encrypted iCloud earlier this year due to government pressure). Not to mention extrajudicial killings of American citizens.

I agree that the Patriot Act was a sad day for America.

Whether it meant to or not the Bush Administration kicked off a lot of terrible stuff for America and for the world. I remember obsessively watching the news after 9/11 and just having a terrible sinking feeling about the road we were preparing for ourselves.

To be a bit fair to them, it's easy to imagine many other administrations, of both parties, behaving similarly, though not in such an extreme way, after 9/11.

I'd like to think that Al Gore specifically, if he was President then, would not have invaded Iraq, and, would not have passed something like the Patriot Act, but the truth is we don't know.

Plus Gore might have paid more attention the the CIA warnings about Al Qaeda.

But again - who knows. And America itself has a lot to work on, on both sides of the political aisle.

> can a country where the government lies to its citizens, and withholds information from the press, and actively seeks to discredit news sources critical of it be considered a democracy?

Doesn't this describe every country?

Such a country can be considered a democracy, as long as the government isn't too successful in suppressing information and the press. Especially if, in the end, the citizens vote that government out of power.

What about a country in which the press, as a bloc, systematically lies to the populace even without government coercion?

While the parent is getting down-voted because his comment is presumed to be supportive of the "enemy". I think he brings up an important talking point regarding the press/media. While I don't think lies are the right way to describe it I do think there is a truth problem in much of the media today left/right and both political and non-political news. Sensationalizing and Click-Bait is a form of dishonestly and leads to people having skewed understandings of events and their relative importance. I think this is not primarily driven by politics but the economics of the "attention economy." And the question of what is the effect of this on wider society is import to consider.

That is an oligarchy. Ultimately, it does not matter much if coercion is based on political or economic power, or the media.

That being said, in these cases media and politicians tend to align over time, either because media help compatible politicians, or because politicians created the media landscape themselves. Oligarchies tend to be symbiotic. For those close to power, anyway; for the rest of the country it’s more like parasitism.

At the risk of breaking the rule on talking about votes, this comment would probably be more welcome if it dealt with a specific situation. Right now, it seems like a coy lead into a "gotcha."

The press needs to behave too. They need to report, not sensationalize. They need to be objective, not politically active. And when given the opportunity to sit before a president addressing a global crisis, and then granted the opportunity to ask questions they should not inject their bias and call him a racist. When subsequently shut down "you're a terrible reporter" the rest of the press should not claim they are being attacked.

It all boils down to defining the roles (on all sides) and then doing that job. It's when government, press, companies, or individuals make light of their responsibility that things fall appart.

Calling someone a terrible reporter didn’t shut anything down, and it is an attack (on a person not even an action).

Don’t answer the question, or call it out as a poor question.

There are many sources of news and media.

Name calling and attacks are not coming from just one side, but this doesn’t seem like an honest appraisal of how roles are being filled so much as just tribal finger pointing.

Where is the alternative or proposed solution? The person who possesses one of the biggest platforms and with the most reach in the world cannot articulate anything more substantive than complaining of persecution?

"The press needs to behave too. They need to report, not sensationalize. They need to be objective, not politically active."

This is not accurate.

The free press has the freedom to report however they want. That is the whole point of the free press.

> ... when given the opportunity to sit before a president addressing a global crisis, and then granted the opportunity to ask questions they should not inject their bias and call him a racist.

Look - I know it's hard to say this and remove the judgement from the statement, and I certainly do have my own judgement in play here, but, empirically speaking, President Donald Trump is racist. Or at the very least someone who consistently makes racist statements over time. And at that point what's the difference?

So w/regards to that I think reporters should have been saying that more, tbh. Let's review the facts:

1. Trump's comments about The Central Park 5, back in the day. 2. Trump's pivotal role in racist birther conspiracy theories about former President Obama. 3. Trump's racist language about Mexicans / Latinos, U.S. judges who happen to be Latino, his coded racist dog-whistle language about cities like Baltimore, Chicago, etc. 4. "Very fine people." 5. Every single thing he's done since the murder of George Floyd.

And I'm sure there's more.

> Going forward, the largest, independent news outlet accessible to Hungarians will like be the Guardian and the New York Times.

Not true, they will likely start an other site and ask for donations, so it's up to the people to support them.

In Hungary like elsewhere people don't like to pay for news sites and in Hungary the government works hard, so that every freely available media pushes the government propaganda.

People have to realize they must pay if they want independent news sites to exist. Relying only on ad revenue is not a solid foundation.

>People have to realize

This is how I see it as well. We, collectively, are confronted with the reality that clean information is required for a healthy civic function.

Maybe like the Broad Street Pump cholera outbreak rectified unsanitary civic water management?

>We, collectively, are confronted with the reality that clean information is required for a healthy civic function.

I feel the opposite. We must learn to filter that news for ourselves, because you never know when the news is lying to you.

Index asked for support, they got support: https://tamogatas.index.hu/

Didn't matter.

They got support, but the editors didn't own the site, so the main editor could be dismissed by some representative of the owner.

It's a different situation if the editors are owners of the site and the donations go directly to them, instead of to some rich guy who bought the site from some other rich guy.

Hold on: Hungary is not an autocratic country?

Hasn't Fidesz controlled the country for over ten years now? Haven't they amended the constitution? Packed the courts?

This is not a topic that is at the top of my mind, so I am not an expert. But Hungary being a democratic society is news to me.

You make it sound like being a democracy is a binary decision, when in reality it's a multidimensional spectrum with lots of grey areas at the edges. Just look at the current state of affairs in the US, there are plenty of warning signs. Is it still a democracy? In my mind it is. The other commonality is that both countries chose their autocrat by fair elections.

Your response doesn't address the points of concern I raised about the quality of Hungary's democratic institutions.

I agree that it is debatable as to whether those concerns make it an autocracy. As you say, it is not a clear cut matter. Countries walk a path towards authoritarianism, they don't flip a switch. But this news item didn't come from out of the blue. The state of Hungary is walking further down a road it set out on some years ago.

> The other commonality is that both countries chose their autocrat by fair elections.

There's almost zero evidence to support the notion that Trump is an autocrat.

He's a badly performing political outsider that is about to go down in flames with one of the least successful, least effective Presidencies in US history. He's going to lose by normal democratic means, being voted out of office. His Presidency ultimately isn't going to matter much at all. In the first months Biden will unleash a wave of executive orders, mostly wiping out anything Trump did that the Democrats disliked. He's about to be thrown out of office by a candidate that can barely make it through four minute interviews, a candidate whose prep team has to keep him hidden away and tightly controlled because of obvious severe problems.

There is hardly anybody in the establishment in Washington that supports Trump at this point. There is almost nobody in the media / press that supports Trump. The press is never afraid to attack him, they do it 24/7 openly.

What autocracy? Trump is closer to a bumbling clown with no business being in politics, than an autocrat.

What did Trump do? He built a wall? No he didn't, he didn't build anything. He banned all the Muslims? No he didn't, other previous presidents similarly blocked many of those same nations for security reasons. He shut down all the illegal immigration, and deported a zillion people? No he didn't, Obama deported more people. He radically remade our immigration system? No he didn't. He abolished the ACA? No he didn't. He took control of the military industrial complex levers and launched a bunch of wars? No he didn't. So what did he do?

Trump's entire Presidency has only a few signatures to it. He cuts taxes, he was wildly divisive (he raged a lot, tweeted a lot), he conflicted with China a lot, he didn't launch any new wars, he failed over and over again to accomplish much of significance, he fought with the press a lot, and he installed a bunch of federal judges (which is going to be limited by his single term anyway). And then he was gone after a mere four years (his polls are so bad, the Democrats would all have to drop dead of Covid for Trump to win again).

So the world is upside down, everything is bad, the US is over, it's an autocratic nightmare, because of this clown that was thrown out in just four years. I call bullshit.

Thank you for the local context. Can you clarify more about the takeover attempt? The article portrays it as a conflict between the site's editor, and the Board President. Can you clarify the government's role in this? Are there any governmental barriers preventing these journalists from forming a new independent news site?

> To put this in context: for imagine the largest, and one of the last remaining independent news site in a country where most of the media is centrally controlled. Criticism of the government in that media is unknown. This site is read by close to half of the online population. The government is clearly irritated by this.

Thanks for providing this context to foreigners; I wouldn't have known any of this or been able to succinctly summarize it with some research the way you just did.

> can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

Looking at you Japan.

"The taming of Japan’s media watchdogs has attracted growing attention from overseas. On April 19, David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, wrapped up a weeklong fact-finding mission to Japan by expressing “deep and genuine concern” about declining media independence in Asia’s richest democracy. The following day, the Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders lowered Japan’s place in its annual ranking of world press freedom to 72nd out of 180 nations, between Tanzania and Lesotho"

And no, this is not whataboutism. This is just a context so to understand that the above turn of events that the OP refers to is not unprecedented in other strong democracies either. Or is Japan an autocracy too?

> Or is Japan an autocracy too

In this specific case, I'm not certain there is a trivial answer. Having worked for a Japanese company, the unshakable hierarchy is unknown to Western culture.

> is Japan an autocracy too?

Ehh... it is a "flawed democracy" in that same index, as you would expect from a country where the same party has ruled almost uninterrupted for 65 years.

Well... they can just start another index. As long as that isn't prohibited

There are no prohibition of independent journalism in Hungary, it is the opposite, it is broadcasted as essential. The way the governing party is obstructing independent and critical voices is by manipulating financial background and adjacent concepts (taxes on advertisement coupled with gigantic marketing spending on friendly organizations avoiding critical medium, stigmatize and regulate foreign financial sources classifying as undue political influence and limiting by regulations, taking over and influencing the market players supporting friendly media only, etc.) ruining the livelihood of opponents. They can theoretically start new Index but basically they must work for free or on charity of readers (who have very limited financial means). The current story was started by changes in the ownership structure of the Index, escalating only (and precisely) after EU budget negotiations got closed - where news of endangered independent press could have put the prime minister into disadvantageous position.

Still blows my mind how people believe giving government more power is the answer to any problem. Sorry to hear that democracy is being attacked in this way. Best of luck to you.

The EU is based on democratic principles.

Too bad some bad actors ruin or for the rest of us ( I'm not saying the EU is perfect though, just young).

I spoke to someone from Hungary and they literally said people voted for Orban because of 1 thing: keep immigrants out.

They very likely were exposed to the same kind of anti-immigrants propaganda most governments use against their citizens. It happens pretty much everywhere.

Immigrants can't vote, so they're extremely easy to use as scapegoats because they can't fight back politically. Once a government plants in their citizens that immigrants are the root of all evil, they've pretty much won: anything wrong in the country will be attributed to illegal immigrants so that the attention will be taken away from the government. It's the same old trick of blaming a weak minority that cannot defend itself using any legal means, and frankly I find appalling that people still falls for it.

Another way to put this..how much does the news media influence people?

In the U.S. 90% of the news media is held by 5 conglomerates.

You get creepy stuff like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=emb_logo

Makes you wonder how reliable the news media is in the U.S.

I can't even imagine how bad it is in countries where oligarchs control things.

The thing you're linking to is a phenomenon specific to the Sinclair Broadcast Group[0], a partisan media organization that is actively attempting to undermine local journalism in the US and replace it with neo-conservative propaganda.

To compare any of the major US news conglomerates to this would be a false equivalence.

Also, any comment on the centralization of media in the US that doesn't mention Facebook is outdated at this point.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

Controlling media and influencing it social or otherwise is a concern when media is a oligarchy , social media is also an oligarchy , there are few players who dominate most of the readership .

The big American conglomerates are just as partisan as Sinclair , there is still some professionalism that they have not devolved to Sinclair level.

However trends in recent past point towards only downward movement simply because of economics , you make more money telling people what they want to hear.

>But this happening in an EU country, in a democracy.

Not anymore. Freedom House classifies Hungary as a "Transitional or Hybrid Regime".

Frankly speaking, each country gets what it deserves. I'm sure there are some Hungarians who are opposed to the current government but majority seem to be just fine with ' It's all Soros' fault' or 'Screw the EU'. Back at home,a few years ago, people decided that it's a good idea to give majority to the party that mainly consists of millionaire farmers, who barely pay minimum wages. And people were stupid enough to say things like: ' they'll increase income for everyone and etc.'. It's like we are walking into some high end spaceship and some guys are concerned where they've left their pitchforks... People also seem to be happy buying some 3rd class newspapers writing crap instead of trying to read at least a bit of investigative journalism. Maybe this is the time where it all goes down to shit for 20-30 years and then it will get better again. Europe especially can't seem to have normal life for too long.

Hungarian here. It stopped to be a democracy the moment they attained more than 66% of the votes (with gerrymandering of course).

They also control the other branches of power. They also control the attorney general who can stop any prosecution against any member of the Fidesz before it starts.

They control the media now. The whole system makes me sick. And I'm one of those people who would vote for a paty like Fidesz if it was a regular country (I'm not left wing at all).

Can they be voted out in the next election?

I honestly don't know. We thought we can the last time there was a vote and they won with a strong majority. The real problem here is that there is no good alternative. The left wing parties are a joke at best. I'm kinda torn between all the major parties since I don't believe that any of them would work. That's why I voted for the new kid on the block (Momentum).

> And I'm one of those people who would vote for a paty like Fidesz if it was a regular country (I'm not left wing at all).

And you should be ashamed because it's parties like Fidesz that fuck up countries like Hungary is fucked up now. It is your (and your kind's) fault.

You misunderstood my sentence. I'm right wing. I wouldn't vote for any of the left wing parties in normal circumstances. If by "my kind" you mean right wing paties then you are clearly delusional. Note that I am not voting for Fidesz. Please pay attention to what people write before going personal.

I don’t have a dog in the race, but there’s no dearth of brutal left wing dictators.

"Going forward, the largest, independent news outlet accessible to Hungarians will like be the Guardian and the New York Times."

Don't forget 444.hu. They are nowhere near as large as Index, but just as outspoken and critical of the government.

>The question begs itself: can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

Yes but likely only for a short time. Every government has people outside of journalism that makes democracy happen.

Russia has that right now?

Even an independent press doesn't fare well against state assassins.

Maybe it’s because I’m tired, but for a moment I thought we were talking about Hong Kong.

If I can’t keep straight in my head which country is having its press shut down, we live in sad times.

In America, we don’t have press shut down, as much as it becomes “sponsored.” Someone decides to run it at a loss, or close to one.

Quality goes down, advertising goes up, and ideology seeps in.

Lots of “small town papers” are just brands managed by conglomerates.

In what sense, news organizations that you've mentioned are "independent"? (if you live outside the bubble, the bias is clear)

You know what Orbán has in common with, say, Kádár? They were both "democratically" elected.

Hungary is not considered a liberal democracy, it’s considered an “illiberal democracy”. Orbán has pioneered ways to degrade a liberal democracy to an illiberal one, and is the template many right wing leaders of other countries are in the process of emulating: Bolsonaro, Trump, and Poland, though I believe their strategy has been more concerned with compromising their judicial branch.

> But this happening in an EU country, in a democracy.

Democracy was a 20th century construct.

More precise would be: ”idea that democracy is best-for-anyone solution is sooo 20th century”. It is probably best for many, maybe most, but the others need to find their own local best. People can be equal, but history, culture, neighbourhoods etc are not

How is independence defined? In France, every big newspaper is funded partially by the state. The total amount is close to 2 billions euros, with big news paper getting from 5 to 7 millions a year. Without this they will close. Sure, on the surface they criticize some government action, but the real control is more about the questions they don’t ask, the topics they don’t cover and the not-so-subtle political orientation of every article published. Control by big entreprise is the second factor that make they not really independent. Again, this make the newspaper not challenging anything when is comes to corporate interests. In a way it’s better in the Hungarian case because things are really obvious so it may trigger people to take action for a change.

Funding != control. Newspapers are floundering all over the world. It's great that the state ensures the continued existence of a healthy and diverse press through independent grants. The potential for abuse is low if the rules for awarding those grants are transparent and the comitee that oversees it is plural.

Because the choice isn't "government money" or "no money", it's state (democratic) money or corporate (undemocratic) money! Looking at things like the murdoch empire we can see which we prefer.

There's usually a relationship between being funded by and being critical of something. That may not be true in all cases, but it's true often enough that we ask everyone to disclose it when they speak on something/someone they get money from.

This doesn't even have to be an explicit thing. You don't need to threaten people to cut their funding, they will like the system the way it is set up, because they profit from it being set up that way. You can't be independent from something if you depend on it to pay your bills.

I agree that funding != Control. More specifically the more diverse is the source of funding the less it is subject to control by that source.

But then the rest of your message seems to contradict that statement.

If "healthy and diverse press" is only guaranteed by single source of funding (state) then I don't see how this is diverse or healthy or independent.

Funding doesn't have to mean editorial control.

Around the world there are numerous instances of Government-funded news publishers and broadcasters that have superior editorial independence than their commercial competitors. The BBC in the UK and the ABC in Australia come to mind.

Funding CAN mean editorial control if the funder deems it so, but that's equally true of commercial media as it does public broadcasters. Unless you happen to like the political bias of Rupert Murdoch, it would be hard to argue that he doesn't exert more influence over his publications than the British and Australian governments do theirs.

What’s more ominous in France is the decline of journalists-owned newspapers.

> In a way it’s better in the Hungarian case because things are really obvious so it may trigger people to take action for a change.

That sounds dangerously naïve. I know gloom and self-hate is de rigueur in a broad part of the French population, but going from “also, France is bad” to “actually, maybe Hungary’s better” on a piece about the death of a democracy is a bit much.

> The question begs itself: can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

The press doesn't have to be a centralized, edited company. Citizens can report news independent and locally.

Indeed, this type of journalism is resistant to the oppression of government, and the bias of media conglomerates.

David Simon (creator of The Wire) has what I think is a good take[1] on why an organized, professional media is important:

> "But democratized and independent though they may be, you do not — in my city — run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall, or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars and union halls where police officers gather. You do not see them consistently nurturing and then pressing sources. You do not see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis...I'm offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American monoliths as insulated, self-preserving, and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures, and chief executives can be held to gather facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training, or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they're lying to or who they're withholding information from."

There are, of course, very smart and well-qualified bloggers and indie journalists, but they're relatively few and far between. The institutions of journalism matter more than most people realize, if for no other reason than people have to be paid to put in the time to do the job.

1. https://votesmart.org/public-statement/422651/hearing-of-the...

Citizens are doing this with what spare time and what spare income? And with no backing of a larger entity if they get lawsuits?

There’s a need for well funded journalistic organizations everywhere. Well funded (and independent) being the key because people have to eat.

> The press doesn't have to be a centralized, edited company. Citizens can report news independent and locally.

Citizens can, but the quality and length would for the most part be short and incidental (outbreaks, viral videos, etc.)

But in-depth investigations, into corruption, into nation-wide, critical issues, will usually require dedicated staff with budgets. Can't place that on a citizen's shoulders

In all fields, there is work that is necessary but not fun. Money/incentives are needed to bridge that gap.

> Indeed, this type of journalism is resistant to the oppression of government, and the bias of media conglomerates.

And to being self-sustaining, because no one pays the reporters to actually do their job and to verify their sources or be verified.

Yes, but do you know of any good examples?

In open-source this seems to work (i.e many free contributions make up a good whole), but in journalism I'm not sure.

The barrier of entry to journalism is much higher. We don't need to spend days hounding a politician, perusing archives, handling sources, cross-checking information and doing all the (sometimes dangerous) legwork an investigative journalist needs to do.

When I write open source, my primary information sources are right at my monitor.

One problem with relying on this is that it throws the door open to state-funded trolls posing as independent citizen journalists.

So basically Twitter?

Yes. Democracies aren't about public funding of poorly viable corporations.

Independent press does not exist:

  - if the money comes from the state they're incentivized to speak good of the state
  - if the money comes from ads they're bound to report what does not make to many waves
  - if the money comes from readers, they're going to write articles for better retention / more new subscribers

Democracy does not need the press. It needs an informed population which has learned to think critically.

> Democracy does not need the press.

I don't agree at all. There's numerous instances happening very, very frequently of the press shaping public events sometimes only by their revelation of an ongoing investigation. An informed, critical thinking population won't/can't do investigative work.

> It needs an informed population which has learned to think critically.

How does the population get informed about the government without the press?

I think a lot of these comments are trivializing the situation in Hungary. The point is that if the government has shut down the last newspaper independent of it (even though maybe not of ads) then they will shut down any public speech independent of it and then you cannot have a population informed about how it is being governed (whatever about being informed about consumer choice which is a bit more trivial)

Independent press would mean that there are many different news organizations under independent control.

We used to have that in the US because we used to have and enforce laws against media consolidation.

As the case of Cambridge Analytica shows most people overestimate their ability to think critically. We do need reputable sources of information, otherwise we're just a manipulable flock.

Why do people read the Guardian and the New York Times? Or are these just illustrative?

By the way:

> The question begs itself

Rather: This invites the question.

Begging the question is assuming the conclusion in a circular argument. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Ah, always nice to be downvoted. But if you say "this begs the question" it may be a common thing to say, but it is also incorrect.

Index has been a very rare example of an actually profitable online news site; it's been the oldest and most popular online media. It is worthy for the ruling party to simply destroy this value (similarly to what has happened to other big players) because they have enough public money for them anyway.

A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian media, and then donated (for free) them to a single 'non-profit' organization. Now the local newspapers looked like this before the last general election:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

(Title: 'Vote for Fidesz')

Looks a whole lot like Sinclair's script for stations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI

I'm not convinced US media is all that different.

On a local level, the FCC paved the way for chain-based ownership of local stations in 2003, despite research suggesting it was a bad idea[1]. That being said, the US media is different on a national level- NYT, WashPo and WSJ (investigative journalism dept, not editorial board) have shown in the past their ability to leak private government documents, take anti-government stances, and generally resist authority. While yes, WashPo is owned by Bezos, I view this differently than other cases of "an oligarch buying a newspaper". While I think we'll always need to be wary and cognizant of his ownership, it seems for now that he's bought the Post for the same reason that other billionaires get their names on schools and museum wings. I recently read Bad Blood (story of Theranos), and I was struck by how brazen the WSJ's investigative journalism department was at pursuing the story through legal threats, government stonewalling (eventually seeking out leakers), and the consequence of making their own editorial board look like fools. I think the US's journalistic integrity and freedom still stands yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

> A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian media

Let's not pretend this didn't already happen in the US, UK and all of Western Europe decades ago. Using derogatory terms like "oligarchs" doesn't change the story.

You're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities. That might still cause significant conflicts of interest but it's not directly on the government's leash.

Meanwhile if you look at, say, the Echo of Moscow, a popular Russian radio, the main shareholder is Gazprom, the natural gaz company that's state-owned and has extremely close ties with the political power.

That's always the problem with this "whataboutism", it's true that there are many problems with western democracy and freedom of information but it's dishonest to say that it's the same thing. It's really not. I've been learning Russian for a few years and I read (slowly) quite a lot of Russian news and it's really unlike anything I've seen in France or the USA for instance.

> You're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities.

Oligarchs don't answer to anyone, they just have their own interests - which in Hungary they express by aligning with the government, while elsewhere it's fine to align with one side like the media in the US do. It's not like the quality of papers like the oligarch-owned WaPo is any better, they just had to settle a major defamation lawsuit due to their "progressive" propaganda.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-washington-post-to-pa...

Your quotation is missing the most important half of the sentence.

Let's not pretend it did. Media in US, UK and Western Europe aren't controlled by single entity. What is happening in Hungaria right now is basically getting back to socialist one-party regime, even if this time it's right-wing one (like it matters).

For EU to take action against Hungary you need all other members to agree. Unfortunately Poland and Hungary are backing each other up and veto any action against the other.

There is still the open question of rule of law conditionality in EU budget payouts.

This was obviously a huge bone of contention during the recent talks. A compromise was reached and, interestingly, both sides declared victory. The actual agreement contains wording which is vague on this issue.

We'll see how it plays out. I believe this can be implemented and that Poland and Hungary alone cannot block this. Which I think is good - I don't want EU to finance an autocratic government in my country (Poland).

More on this: https://www.politico.eu/article/what-eu-leaders-really-decid...

Financial interest of Germany (tax rebates and subsidies of German manufacturers, ongoing huge military purchases) decrease their incentives and complicate their situation too.

How is it in the spirit of democracy or national independence to lobby a supra-national organization to meddle in the affairs of Hungary?

Is that not authoritarian?

Why is it for Europeans outside of Hungary, or even international citizens living in the US to define how Hungary should operate? Is it not for the people and leaders of Hungary to do so?

Is it not more in line with self determination to not get all bent out of shape when a nation does not conduct its affairs in line with your foreign sensibilities?

This is a fair question and it is a complicated situation. Personally, I do not think democracies & theocracies (for example, not saying Hungary is a theocracy by any means) are morally equal and the only differences being cultural relative: I think democracy is a better form of government and theocracy is worse. I could certainly be wrong, but that's my view.

It certainly would not be democratic to have a supranational body override the will of the Hungarian people but I think there's a couple of points missing here: 1. does Index being disrupted by its owners in such a way that the editorial board and 70 staff members resign in protest really reflect 'the will of the people'? 2. EU does not have the right to dictate to Hungary what to do but it does have the right to take its ball and go home. If Hungary's values are not in line with the values of the EU, the latter has every right (and duty) to invite them to leave the union and forgo the benefits of membership that Hungary currently enjoys.

So I agree you're right about "let's force Hungary not to do this" to be something of an authoritarian knee-jerk reaction, but EU membership is a two-way street: you get and you give, so not all requests to "give" or "conform to EU values" are authoritarianism, that's just a part of belonging to a collective.

The EU needs to get either more federal or break up.

I would say both.

A subset of the EU needs to go federal, with the remainder staying in a toned down version of the EU.

The EU will end up being a soviet style bureaucracy working actively against sovereign countries. The EU will break up eventually. Such organizations have never survived long in the history of mankind.

Can you elaborate on this? State federations are nothing new. US and Germany come to mind as particular successes of this.

It has worked for the US and China so far ...

I hope not for this future, we don't need a bigger leviathan which is disconnected from local population.

I'm afraid EU is a necessary evil. Local population delegated some powers to nation states, otherwise the would cease to exist. How are you gonna stand up to China, India or US in the future?

I think you misunderstood OP's comment

The definition of federal: "Of or constituting a form of government in which power is distributed between a central authority and a number of constituent territorial units"

OP is suggesting a more decentralized EU, not a "bigger leviathan"

You mean like the US government?

Do you think the national governments are more connected to the local population? I'm sure the Polish and Hungarian population think that

"Boo EU bad" has become a meme already. Yawn

The European Parliament, because of its pure-proportional electoral system, is arguably more connected with the population than most national governments.

The UK is the extreme example of this: for a decade, their EP contingent has had a massive number of euroskeptic politicians who never managed to win more than a single seat in the British Parliament. Brexit proved that Strasbourg was actually more representative than Westminster.

Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria. Disgrace of the EU. Wonder how long this can go on. Probably forever because the whole leadership of the EU is incredibly weak and divided.

With the UK leaving, Poland and Hungary and others sliding into very uncomfortable territory from a democracy perspective, and far right sentiments growing even in the western countries, the EU is heading towards a pretty dramatic identity crisis.

A big issue is the lack of tools to take meaningful measures in this, or similar cases.

There is the suspension clause [1], but using it is difficult, and could eventually lead to multiple additional departures. See this (older) article for some background [2].

The most viable (medium-term) way forward for me is to transform the current EU back into a a looser, mostly economy focused association. With a subgroup of states pursuing stronger, value-based integration.

I think that multiple world-powers are pretty happy about this development. Russia obviously wants to gain back influence and would love to destabalize the EU. They are funneling money to EU sceptical parties all over Europe, including supporting Brexit. They also have "web brigades" for online propaganda campaigns. [3]

But I also think the US grew unhappy about the economic (and partially political) strength of the EU in the mid 2000s, where we saw not only the Iraq fallout, but also the Euro established as a important currency. In the Obama years relations cooled off considerably. I don't think the US would be unhappy about a EU that is not broken, but weaker and more susceptible to influence. (the failure of TTIP is an interesting data point here)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...

[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-can-still-block-hungarys-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades

This is a pessimistic view that does not understand the dynamics of the Union.

The European Union is, fundamentally, a very young superstate. It's not even 30-years-old, in practice. This is not its final form.

The EU is like Asimov's Foundation: it makes progress by facing (or provoking) crisis after crisis, and finding new equilibria and new policy tools. It's a bit like the US in early-XIX century or pre-WWII, when structures were fluid and conventions were still being established.

Remember the US had to go through a civil war to establish the unquestioned primacy of federal policy; China and Russia solidified through bloody revolutions. If we can get there with only a bit of bitching and debating, we will have done better than anyone ever managed.

That being said no individual state has veto power in the US. I don’t know anything about the EU but I suspect Germany and France or some other members will have to say at some point that this veto nonsense has to go. I doubt it can happen in our lifetimes as long as individual members are sovereign.

WRT to the "veto nonsense" you refer to: as far as I understand, the EU nowadays does have some sort of majority voting system for most areas, since the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect [1]. This also means that sovereignity of member states is already somewhat impaired (since any state alone cannot veto all EU decisions).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon

Veto is being slowly removed from most decision-making procedures. It's already not there for a lot of (most?) "simple" areas. In theory even the budget should be approved with qualified majority at some point in the next 10 years or so, if the European Council follows the roadmap that the previous Commission recommended.

I don't know your lifespan, but in the next 40 years I expect the veto to be limited to mostly symbolic areas, like defense.

Is the EU more or less cohesive than 5 years ago? 10 years ago? What's the trend?

It's complicated (TM). There was an arguably surprisingly large amount of cohesion over Brexit (possibly aided accidentally by Brexit figures who telegraphed their intention to exploit European division to screw up the process), but not so much over covid, say.

For all the constant imminent doom of Europe predicted, though, public support for EU membership is actually quite high relative to historical values right now.

The trend is to be more cohesive. This also means that some contradictions and contrasts cannot be ignored anymore and will have to be resolved. One of those was the British hostility to federalism, another was the need for shared debt to correct an unbalanced setup in the common currency - both have been resolved, albeit painfully. The next is probably the slow unpicking of Visegrad.

There is no alternative to a stronger and more cohesive Europe. The rise of Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump, and FAANG, is focusing a lot of minds - the only hope to not get trampled by these giants, is to stick together as Europeans.

> slow unpicking of Visegrad

What do you mean by that?

As proved by this very news item, some of the positions emerging from the Visegrad block of countries (technically Chzechia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, but others band with them on some issues) are fundamentally illiberal and contrary to the spirit of democratic solidarity in the Union.

For a long time, these countries have reaped the benefits of Union policies without making a real contribution; they enjoyed economic solidarity (by being the largest recipients of European funds) and then refused it on social and humanitarian policies (like sharing refugees). This is unsustainable in the long run.

There are a lot of factors at play. There are issues with anti-democratic governments in Poland and Hungary, COVID-19 has hit Southern states hard and obviously the UK has left. On the other hand, they did just agree to issuing collective debt for the first time, which is a major milestone in terms of a central budget. Notably, much of that money is to be given (not loaded) to member states hit hardest by COVID-19.

The EU is trying to have its cake and eat it too. An economic union with independent economies. A political union with independent politics. A human rights union with ghettos of language.

It's ridiculous that anyone thought a union between Ireland (where corporate tax is optional), Spain (where personal tax is optional), Germany (a straight-laced financial behemoth), the UK (the remnants of an empire) and Greece (a perpetual basketcase) would ever be successful.

> An economic union with independent economies

Fair point.

> A political union with independent politics.

Yep, pretty sticky.

> A human rights union with ghettos of language.

Wait, what? What does language have to do with whether or not a nation- and culture-spanning political entity has a unifying notion of human rights?

Lots of states and superstates have problems with human rights standards being inconsistently applied among their constituencies. But I don't see what that has to do with language.

Language is a barrier to cultural union. It can be a blindfold to the rest of the world who are not invited into many parts of contemporary Hungarian culture. It can be a blindfold for its citizens, limiting exposure to external culture. Without shared language, it's harder for the Hungarian people to be influenced by the culture and politics of its neighbours.

Even on a more basic level, the fall of Index.hu is made a greater problem because there's no Hungarian-language media in neighbouring Austria or Slovakia.

And yet it has been, really, quite successful.

There are definitely serious issues, and I would expect it to in the long term either trend towards greater cohesion generally or a two-tier solution, but it works... better than it would necessarily be expected to.

These sorts of massive divisions aren't that unusual in other cohesive state-like things, of course; compare the economies of New York and Mississippi, say. And the EU has tended to reduce the differences somewhat over time.

> And yet it has been, really, quite successful.

Has it though? Because Hungary begs to differ.

I'll agree that for a large subset (France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, in particular) the EU has indeed been a successful experiment. It was also successful for the UK until they deluded themselves into leaving.

And if the EU decided to either (a) not expand as widely as possible or (b) not try to morph into a Federal Government of Europe, it would probably remain successful indefinitely. For now the EU has been established for a blink of an eye, relatively. Only time will tell how successful they can be in the long term.

Hungary's only been in Schengen since 2007, and in the EU since 2004. In that time their GDP has tripled, and there's a huge jump over the accession period (which, oddly, flattens out when Orban takes power). Public debt hit a peak in 2010-2011, and is now 20% below that point. It's hard to see the economic effects as negative, looked at in isolation.

Hungary has its own problems that the EU isn't positioned to solve. That's not evidence that the EU itself is a failure, or bad for states that join it.

The union has been extremely successful for Spain, Italy and Portugal too, on many aspects. It forced local administrators to shape up in ways that were unthinkable before, and instilled into people that they should expect the same standard of life in Rome as in Stockholm. The long-term effects of this change of attitude are immense - systemic corruption in Italy has gone way down, environmental conditions have improved dramatically, connections and mobility have boomed. The Euro is not perfect but it wiped the periodic waves of heavy inflation that used to hit the working classes, and its worst excesses are slowly being addressed.

I don't think you can claim works without a stabilized positive economic trend, not an ever increasing and growing debt trend.

Which major countries or geopolitical unions are on a shrinking debt trend? Serious question, I couldn't come up with an answer after a bit of research.

> With the UK leaving

What do you mean "leaving"? The UK ceased to be part of the EU six months ago.

The UK's departure 6 months ago is a milestone that's more political than actual. During the transitional period of the withdrawal agreement, the UK is effectively a non-voting member this year as it has no option to opt of EU regulations or budget contributions until the end of this period. Other parts of their departure, like the Northern Ireland backstop have their own conditions before the UK can adjust them.

Describing the departure as in progress rather than done is very much accurate.

Technically correct is of course the best sort of correct.

The UK transitioned from being part of the EU into a sort of weird temporary EU dependency, in practice; it no longer gets to vote, but hasn't meaningfully left the EU until next year.

and in effect nothing has changed yet until the transition period is over and agreements have been made.

Legally we've left. Culturally and practically we've got a way to go.

Countries of the EU falling to far right populism is the result of some unpopular policies being imposed by the EU themselves—Your comment reeks of "beatings will continue until morality improves".

Far right populism in Europe far precedes the existence of the EU; it seems fairly perverse to just blanket blame the EU for it.

It's resurgence does not though.

It's had multiple resurgences since WW2, and the current one may have already peaked in some places. Duda didn't exactly improve his numbers, say, and in most Western European countries the far right isn't actually looking all that healthy in polls.

I've had the flu a lot, but that doesn't mean that I'm chronically infected with it. Every time I got sick, I caught it from a different person. Europe caught it from this intermediate condition where the core of the EU can consistently take advantage of the peripheral states, generating large trade surpluses, but have to be begged to help through begrudging one-off fixes (rather than federal institutions that work to and have the means to constantly rebalance things) whenever they crash one of them by loaning them too much money to buy things from the core.

If federalism is just exploitation, the obvious last resort is nationalism.

Hah, that is indeed the narrative but is it really true? Poland is one of the major recipients of EU aid, it also benefits immensely from the single market. Yet politicians always use it as a scapegoat blaming it for its problems!

The Polish political/media approach seems very, very similar to the British; anything good, Poland did, anything bad is the EU's fault. I think most member states do this to an extent, but a few really lean into it, causing a lot of public confusion.

So you have to take the bad with the good? Can't you say "money is good, but being forced to be leeched on by refugees of NATO wars is unsavoury and doesn't help anybody"

> be leeched on by refugees

Had to re-read that one. Really, people desperately fleeing from wars, who've had their lives destroyed, are leeches?

It's fine if you don't think it's your responsibility to help them, but at least try to be respectful of their difficulties.

Nope, I witnessed the rise of populism in Hungary, its a very interesting story. Mostly because its a small country, so its easier to see behind the curtains and because its in the border of the west-east influence zone.

Hungary had far right activist since it was freed from the soviet union (MIEP [1] and early Jobbik [2] ), but these were very different from the ones today. They hated the Soviet union and Russia with a passion, since they occupied Hungary for 40 years. Another prominent feature of them was hating on jews. Also they never had any significant popularity, most ppl saw them just as wackos.

Then around 2010 something happened. The far right (mostly Jobbik at this time) reversed its stance on Russia and started hating the EU and US within like half a year (also they stopped their anti-jew rhetoric). Also small, dubious news sites and started popping up which praised Putin so much I thought it was a joke. Same thing happened in conspiracy sites - a few years earlier they content was about UFOs, lizard men, angels etc. and suddenly political articles praising Putin started appearing in them e.g. [3].

After these changes moving away from straight nazi stuff Jobbik started to become more and more popular, so much that Fidesz felt threatened. (around 2010 Fidesz was center-right). So they started saying the same things as Jobbik (and discrediting them, e.g. spreading fake news that the party's head was muslim), just louder, and with more $$$ backing them up wich leads to today.

So IMO it was a carefully planned operation from Russia (support extremist voices to start infighting in the EU) that turned out very well. They are of course not 100% responsible (the other part is the PC culture taken too far), just gave a kick in the right direction.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Justice_and_Life_Par... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik 3: https://www.facebook.com/Hihetetlen.Magazin/posts/9441749489... Here they say that Putin is fighing against the Satan which is US and the EU.

The question is how does one thwart and reverse such an attack?

Make a better argument.

sydd above said "small, dubious news sites and started popping up which praised Putin so much I thought it was a joke. Same thing happened in conspiracy sites - a few years earlier they content was about UFOs, lizard men, angels etc. and suddenly political articles praising Putin started appearing in them"

I don't think making a better argument had anything to do with the rise of this and it will have very little with pushing it back down.

Disgrace of what ? Mafia owned Italy ? Industry owned Germany ? Tax heaven Ireland ? The only difference is that in poorer countries corruption is less sophisticated - but EU is plenty corrupt all over.

In comparison with what? Every international corruptuon survey pegs most EU natuons as some of the least corrupt in the world.

Corruption Perceptions Index: https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/2019_CPI_Report_EN...

Did you read it? More than half of the least corrupt countries are in EU. Most corrupt country in Eu appears to be Bulgaria, and it does not make it into the more currpt half of the list.

The countries that are properly corrupt are Russia, etc.

Disgraces as failed liberal democracies.

Italy, Germany and Ireland have much better working democracies.

>t EU is plenty corrupt all over

This is very unintelligent answer. Because there is something bad in everyone everyone is bad and no comparison can be made.

Why Poland though? There was no hostile takeovers of press here. The only beef we have with EU is about judicial reforms which are much needed, but really hard to get it right.

After the unification Germany was able to do a clean cut judicial reform of East Germany. Poland did not.

The polish government does influence media; recent major event:

>"Polish hit song on grieving 'censored', sparking protests"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52721152

That state funded radio station has 4,7% of the market share. Thanks to that censor action the song became very popular in other stations and YT.

And how is an example of government influence? Giving and order to censor would hurt them. This was most likely a PR stunt, stab at the ruling party or incompetent management.

> Giving and order to censor would hurt them.

That’s not certain. I don’t think anyone would have predicted the events that followed.

> This was most likely a PR stunt

The context and behavior of people close to the matter suggest that this wasn’t a PR stunt. There were leavings, layoffs and statements from multiple sides. As far as I’m aware even the government didn’t imply that this was a PR stunt.

Actually, the latest budget agreement at EU level contains added clauses to fight precisely this problem. They will have to be enforced, of course (which in EU terms is "only" large fines), but it should be fairly downhill from there.

Actually in Poland more media are "liberal" anti-government than pro-government.

As a matter of fact traditional media like TV, newspaper, vertical news portals are becoming less and less influential. In Poland this manifested clearly in 2015, when "liberals" were still in power (they had their president and majority in both parliament chambers), they were also supported by something like 80% of media, including the most influential, but they lost both presidential and parliament election anyway.

The problem (tragedy?) of both Polish and Hungarian opposition is that they don't have any compelling story to tell. Voters are not gonna chose them only because they are progressive, nice and EU bureaucrats like them (bureaucrats, which does not mean all those who are really in charge - I bet that any EU action against Hungary will be killed swiftly and not by Poland, but by Volkswagen, which can do business in Hungary on a very comfortable conditions that current government granted them).

Please don't over generalize to the people in those countries.

Nobody is doing that. Only small majority of Hungarians are ignorant or far right.

It's a consolation that Kaczyński was not able to gather supermajority in the parliament to change the constitution. It's unlikely to happen anyway, as he divided the Polish society in half. His party will probably rule for some time, but not gain much more support than today. He antagonized simply too many worker groups and professions out there. Another thing pointed out is that Hungary has somewhat more unequal development than Poland - and in both countries the ruling parties catered to the poor regions. Last but not least, for better or worse, there's dissent against authority in Polish blood.

Tl;DR it will suck, but Poland won't have second Hungary.

> Probably forever because the whole leadership of the EU is incredibly weak and divided.

I don't think, that is a fair description. Many critical decisions by design require unanimous consent (in the European Commission). So you need their vote on things, unless you suspend their voting rights. That in turn requires unanimous consent (excluding the accused) But it is clear, that other members of the Visegrád Group will block that.

Also, not sure how a strong leadership in the EU could (or should) change the effects in a state.

Personally, I think, they should have made the Brexit much smoother, so that other countries cannot make the EU the scapegoat.

> Personally, I think, they should have made the Brexit much smoother

_How_, though? It's hard to see how much more accommodating the EU could have been without fundamentally compromising itself.

Adding a bit to that, the EU made clear what its terms, dictated by internal rules and treaties (for instance, the Good Friday Agreement forbidding border controls within Ireland) would be and those terms haven't changed.

The UK has multiple times tried to ask for terms that violated previous agreements and that was refused.

The pain for the UK is entirely self-inflicted. It was clear from the start it was a foolish idea. It's clear now it was a foolish idea and it'll continue to be abundantly clear it was a mindboggingly foolish idea from the start.

This is a very pro EU biased view. To assert the EU governing body is not playing politics in brexit is absurdly applying a historical vacuum, ignoring the history of how tensions have grown and based on a modern narrative posthumously.

The EU decided to force the currency issue with their largest economic contributor, and imo chose to die on that hill. The EU has threatened to hold Britain 'accountant able' by being intentionally obtuse and treating to impose artificial barriers for new agreements.

The britts do the same thing, it's politics.

EU was not accomodating at all, they looked to punish the British to discourage othersfrom doing the same.

What specific accommodations would you expect, which would not break the EU?

The difference between Hungary and Germany is that corruption in Germany is institutionalized. If you take money from the EU in Hungary guess where you are _____encouraged_____ to spend it? Why do we have Siemens/Alstom/Volvo vehicles instead of our own (Ikarus/Raba)? Beacuse we were not allowed to buy our on shit, that's why.

The reason behind is that Ikarus/Raba are relics of the past? Look at the Raba Aquadux 4000 fire truck for example, that was developed in the last decade, and here are a couple of reports on how great it is: https://www.langlovagok.hu/7639/az-uj-magyar-narancs/ https://totalcar.hu/magazin/kozelet/2019/09/28/milyen_tuzolt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0mydDaPx8 (this is not a driver fault, there are no wave breaks in the truck, other firetrucks can do slaloms at way higher speeds) https://index.hu/belfold/2019/09/19/tipushibak_miatt_borulha... https://24.hu/belfold/2017/11/07/sulyos-problemak-vannak-a-k...

Firefighters avoid it like the plague...

And this is also a great example on why independent press is important, as none of the origo reports on this truck mention the issues with the firetruck: https://www.origo.hu/auto/20150224-ujra-gyartanak-tuzoltoaut... https://www.origo.hu/auto/20170921-uj-tuzoltoautokat-kaptak-... https://www.origo.hu/auto/20170926-tuzoltok-a-tanpalyan.html

I don't understand why you'd want to keep these dead companies on life support from taxpayer money. Would you be willing to buy a Lada for the same price as a Skoda or Kia?

Don't get me wrong, I believe that there are many many good Hungarian companies like Prezi, LogMein, Zwack, Pick, Cafe Frei, Balabit, Commsignia, etc, that have great products, it's just that Raba and Ikarus does not belong to this list. At all.

What exactly should the EU do about democratically elected governments?

Just something that they voted down recently: tie EU funding to democracy. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-summit-poland-netherla...

Likely after this EU decision the the killing of index.hu was green lit by Fidesz

It is also a good solution for the US. The blue states are much more richer and should block money transfers to the red states. Punish financially until the red states will vote for the correct party and establish more progressive laws.

This is the kind of ethical and competent journalism that we are fighting for? The article is not spell checked, parts of it are gibberish, and Orban's quote is politically editorialized to fit the narrative of good guys fighting bad guys for democracy!(as if you need to editorialize Orban to make him look bad..)

The Polish Prime Minister's quote is completely butchered to the point of being gibberish:

"Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hailed the “whole architecture of supervision” as a success." - this sounds like he's happy with the idea of supervision, which the article promptly contradicts a few paragraphs later. Here's a better writeup of what he said, from a polish news site(https://www.pap.pl/en/news/news%2C686607%2Ceur-160-bln-polan...):

"In his view, the conclusions of the summit are a great success from the financial point of view and the whole architecture of supervision over budget funds."

"The Polish PM pointed out that in the deal adopted on Tuesday there is no direct linking between the rule of law and the allocation of EU funds as earlier proposed."

OK, now it's obvious what he means - he's happy that the conclusions of the summit went his way and the architecture of supervision was scaled down or eliminated.

Here's Orban's highly editorialized quote:

"But Orban told reporters he had “thwarted and repelled” efforts to tie disbursement of funds to democratic values."

Only two of those words are actually attributed to him! The rest of the description("tie disbursement of funds to democratic values") is not Orban's interpretation of events, but Reuters'!

Here's a hungarian article(https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-govt-eur-3-bn-funding-brussels...):

"Hungary and Poland thwarted the attempt to have others decide on the funds they are entitled to, the prime minister said in a regular interview to public broadcaster Kossuth Radio"

That's a bit too neutral for Reuters, it doesn't make it sound like this a fight between "good" and "bad" guys. Of course, they could have just used any of Orban's other unhinged quotes:

"The outcome of the recent European Union summit on the bloc’s 2021-2027 budget and its pandemic recovery package in Brussels can be interpreted as the Hungarian and Polish forces having “repelled the international attack of the liberal brigades”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday."

(note how, while the quote is editorialized, the editorial is a passive, neutral, factual description of the events).

It's not like you can't make Orban sound like a lunatic by just quoting him straight up. From the same article:

"These are typically countries that are pro-immigration and hate us because we don’t allow them to enforce their migration policy and because Hungary stops migrants”, he said, adding that they were backed by US financier George Soros."

I agree that good journalism is sorely needed, but it's not obvious that we're getting much of it in our "real" democracies either.

> This is the kind of ethical and competent journalism that we are fighting for?

No, I just wanted to add a source about the rule-of-law conditions for funds discussion. As I know no one is fighting for Reuters not to shut down.

EU should be able to enforce the agreements those countries made or kick them out.

Functioning democracy is not just elections. It's also free press, academic freedom and freedom of speech etc.

The problem is that most of the enforcement mechanisms need unanimity. Now that there are two of them, it's a difficult problem.

I'm not from EU. Does the EU encourage or enforce any kind of education system/standards? Along with the things you mentioned, I would think that, long term, a healthy educational baseline would be critical for a functional government. And independent journalism is, by extension, critical for that, too.

The largest Hungarian news outlet is crushed to ground amid political pressure.

See background and previous events https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932073

--The government can send their version IRS every other day to find something wrong in applying loosely defined laws. Crippling fines.

--No government advertising, your competitors can make millions from them.

--Frozen out of any government contracts for businesses owned by the media owner.

--Pressure for companies not to advertise on your media. Might not even need a wink and a nod, "smart" companies know it.

So next time a smart-ass says but "USA too" they need to look at these examples. Of course they are worse cases, you can get jailed or killed by a state-sanctioned mobster.

> The government can send their version IRS every other day to find something wrong in applying loosely defined laws. Crippling fines.

You mean like the Obama administration? [1]

All these things you describe, describe governments in general. Some group achieves political power and wields the government in benefit of their friends and in detriment of their enemies.

1: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-...

>It later emerged that liberal groups had been targeted, too, although in smaller numbers.

> It later emerged that liberal groups had been targeted, too, although in smaller numbers.

Yes, because if you look at the targeting criteria they've obviously been targeted less. Just going off wikipedia[0]:

  - referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive,"   "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file;
  - outlined issues in the application that included government spending, government debt, or taxes;
  - involved advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live";
  - had statements in the case file that criticized how the country is being run;
  - advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights;
  - were focused on challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—known by many as Obamacare;
  - questioned the integrity of federal elections.

Whether the keyword "progressive" was really being used in the same manner has been called into question too. Again quoting off wikipedia:

  On June 27, 2013, responding to letters from Rep. Sander Levin, the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee, Inspector General J. Russell George's office released a letter to Levin about the scrutiny of groups with "progressive" in their names. Contradicting earlier claims of George's office, the letter acknowledged that he knew that the word "progressive" had appeared in IRS screening documents. However, he said that the "Progressives" criteria was on a part of the "Be On the Look Out" (BOLO) spreadsheet labeled "Historical", and, unlike other BOLO entries, did not say how to refer flagged cases. While he had many sources confirming the use of "Tea Party" and related criteria described in the report, including employee interviews and e-mails, he found no indication in any of those other materials that "Progressives" was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention. The letter further stated that out of the 20 groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names contained "progress" or "progressive", 6 had been chosen for more scrutiny as compared to all of the 292 groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names contained "tea party", "patriot", or "9/12".

And on top of that applications were on hold for 2 years (!) for some organizations with conservative keywords. While liberal organizations were being processed in weeks. No liberal organization, even those subject to extra screening, was put on hold like this.

Also it doesn't seem like there have been any major lawsuits over this by liberal groups. Conservative groups (total of 469 in 2 lawsuits) have sued and settled, with IRS acknowledging misconduct.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

We'll never see real change in the US because each party has insulated themselves from any information that might be damaging to their own party.

They're seriously about to vote for a guy that voted for the Iraq war and the Wall St. Bailouts. I don't expect stuff like this to even register with most. I don't think they can internalize the information.

even if what you said is true, in USA you have courts that adjudicate impartially. But the real comparison would have been Obama doing what I said to FoxNews and NewsCorp.

> courts that adjudicate impartially

How do you know this to be true? I find it to be patently false.

> Obama doing what I said to FoxNews and NewsCorp.

The government prefers to pick on the defenseless. Easier to keep Fox happy than prevent another smaller organization from gaining hold.

60 Minutes had a great episode on the state of politics and populism in Hungary last week.

"We do not want to be diverse": Why Hungary is paying its citizens to start families

https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/M777NaE_R1H9_e4sn...

Do you know what's the worst of all of this? It's that less than 40% of the populace is supporthing this government and most of those people are either paid down or outright intimidated by them.

Yet somehow through the use of gerrymandering, extortion, and other shady maneuvers they managed to maintain a 66%+ majority which is enough for them to control everything.

This is an autocracy, there is no question about it. The problem is that whenever the sanctions come it will punish the general populace, not the mafia which is what you call the Hungarian government.

Tangentially related: in Poland, the so called "good change" (conservative party) fired or made resign dozens of journalists in public TV and radio over last 4 years, with the culmination two months ago, where hit-parade results were "censored" after an anti-gov song won the charts [1].

So many people were fired or left that basically a whole new crowdfounded internet radio has started broadcasting this month, featuring many of them.

The gov is thinking out loud about 'repolonization' of all private media, citing they are all pro-German, but they have a problem as the main one they dislike (TVN) is US-owned in fact, and Trump-led US is the only country that is not our political enemy yet.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52721152

The difference with Hungary though is that this month's political elections showed a huge divide in Poland (51:49), and this 49% of people are really sick of the ruling party.

The divide 51:49 is nothing special if there are two candidates, in Poland the difference was typically 2-8 percentage points, in fact in 1995 election the difference was almost the same as in 2020 so I wouldn't say anything special happened.

You seem to be forgetting these ones which are owned by German capital:

RMF - biggest radio station, second biggest is owned by French capital

onet & interia - (biggest?) online portals

Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

Newsweek - biggest weekly newspaper

> Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

A bit of context: Fakt is a tabloid owned by the same company that also owns Bild Zeitung -- the biggest daily newspaper (air quotes) in Germany, and producing the same kind of journalism (air quotes).

Today's front pages: https://imgur.com/a/BZ1DOBx

Bild Zeitung and its owner are staunchly conservative and recently very critical of Angela Merkel (when they aren't talking about sports or tits or celebrity gossip); ie. they are positioned at or beyond the very right edge of the German conservative party -- like the government of Poland, so I'd expect them to get along just fine for the most part.

These publications combined can't match market penetration of those that are controlled by the government or owned by PiS sympathizers (e.g. Karnowscy brothers). So yeah, there are a few but that doesn't magically balance the undue influence PiS has on the messaging.

Plus: nationality of the owner is completely orthogonal to the bias publications may have. At the end of the day it's a large business and you can stay in it only if you have access to those you write about, i.e. people in power.

The moment you start leaning heavily against those in power you lose access and, as a result, relevancy. This problem exists in almost every country and isn't unique to Poland or Hungary.

I don't negate that. My point was just that due to some of them being US-based, PiS is unlikely to go on with their plans.

Also interesting, Duda got even more votes (in absolute numbers) than 5 years ago :o

> So many people were fired or left that basically a whole new crowdfounded internet radio has started broadcasting this month, featuring many of them.

Which one?

https://nowyswiat.online/

Dzieki.

Germany is silent as Hungary recently saved the German military industry by placing the largest order it ever received from outside. (Since WWII)

Russia is a friend of Orbán as the country pledged to spend 10% of its GDP for the next 25 years on Russian built nuclear power plants.

China likes Orbán as Hungarian taxpayers are paying for part of the new China-EU rail that goes through the country.

This scandal will fade away, but "illiberal" (quasi dictatorship) countries are more and more common. The new normal. As world leaders like to do business with them, they will stay.

Wondering, how viable would be a new portal hiring all the resigned staff.

Somewhat naive question: can they/will they move to a different country that respects press freedom better? Perhaps working in Hungary is essential for them to carry out their job properly.

Foreign media has very limited legal rights compared to local media.

Employees of a website operating from abroad would not be able to access the Parliament building, buildings of state or local government bodies. Moreover, heads of national institutions, government officials, executives of state-owned and government-owned companies, and persons performing official and public duties are allowed to ignore requests for information, data or comments from the foreign press, but not from the Hungarian press.

If the government could interfere with the operation of press based in Hungary, they'll have a much easier time messing with the operation of nominally-foreign press.

Principled - bravo!

I haven't seen any comments defending Hungary or Orban and such unanimous opinions make me wonder, especially when someone's enjoying popular support in their home country.

Doesn't Orban have any redeeming qualities? I seem to remember that he was one of the young hopes after Hungary turned its back to communism. How did he become an autocrat, as claimed here by some?

There's an interesting book called "Populism and the culture wars" by Frank Furedi. I have only managed to read a couple of chapters, but it paints quite a different picture of a fight between cosmopolitan elites and traditionalist Hungary. So far it has not addressed whether Orban is corrupt, but it does argue that it's legitimate to reject anti-national, anti-traditionalist values coming from Brussels.

Another short book that tries to explain the difference between Western and Eastern Europe is "After Europe" by Krastev. He's clearly writing from a liberal perspective, but identifies globalization, migration, economic insecurity and faceless Brussels politics as the main reasons behind the Eastern rejection of European values.

Meanwhile: after the EU budget talk all representatives of the dictatorship boasted that they could avoid the provision which ties the budget to rule of law.

Basically they were proud that they won't have to be lawful.

And the EU just let them.

There is another interpretation floating around: the deal language is reported to be very vague, and apparently, the only thing agreed is that the EU will soon decide on the case against Poland (which would act as "prior" for the Hungarian case, in general.)

Clearly, Poland and Hungary have bought some time during the negotiations. But once the budget and recovery plan are formally approved, I would not be surprised if there were... suprises on this front.

Still. The EU has no armed forced or obvious legal levy to condemn a democratically elected government of a sovereign state to... respect democracy.

I suspect it's not going to last forever, but that's the sad state at the moment.

"democratically elected"??? It is not true. They oppress opposition and lie to people. They did not need to cheat in the day of election, as they cheated before. Gerrymandering, fining parties to death, buying people in other parties, making mainstream media unreachable for opposition, changing laws to make sure no one can outvote them, and this could be continued through pages. They have stolen a huge part of the previous EU budget, in plainly criminal ways. Why did the EU gave them more money with a licence to steal?

I was refering to their initial elections:

I don't remember that Duda's first election at the time caused any trouble (it was a defeat of the the incumbent) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/duda-wins-polands-pre...

Also Orban's initial election was a surprise, but not undemocratic for what I know (I remember there was a number of scandal about oponents before.)

What happenned after the elections, of course, is a different thing...

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