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Comment by nomercy400 | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised Hungary agreed. And Poland.

The governments in those nations are not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population, and often disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out. Also Poland being directly next to Belarus will affect their relations.

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Poland-Belarus relations are icy at best, since Belarus is a sock-puppet of Russia, while Poland is strongly aligned with the US.

Poland has been strongly anti-Lukashenka for a long time, and since 2007 broadcasts a Belarusian-language satellite TV channel (Belsat). It's probably the only non-regime-controlled Belarusian speaking TV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsat_TV

Disagreeing with the EU != equivalent to an authoritarian regime.

Politics is more complicated than Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.

Hungary is objectively an authoritarian regime because it

removed separation of powers,

stacked court with political appointees,

closed down virtually all independent press,

made state TV into a propaganda piece for Fidesz,

etc.

Not because it "disagrees with the EU".

You can be an authoritative regime and still hate Russia and its puppets with passion for what atrocities they did in last century (1956 for Hungary, less but still bloody 1968 for Czechoslovakia).

How great to have a choice of authoritarian regimes!

I don't see how that's related to the conversation at hand. How did Russia get in the conversation?

Stacking the court with appointees? Something the US will never do.

Hungary (and Poland) have been quite clever in how they undermine freedom: almost every individual thing they've done can be justified in isolation by saying, "Look, countries X, Y and Z do the same thing!", but when you look at all those things together and look at how they interact you realise that the situation is really quite bad there - even compared to the USA! Or that's my understanding of the situation; I'm not really an expert in the constitutional law of central European countries.

> removed separation of powers,

This has become de facto meaningless in most of the EU countries as European law is over-writing local laws, in effect making the local (i.e. national) separation of powers meaningless. The German Constitutional Court is trying to fight this [1] but I think it's a losing battle, it's either accept the inevitable (meaning European law supersedes local law) or go the Brexit way.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-germany-eu-ana...

I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

E.g. the head of the German constitutional court has been a recent member of parliament for 12 years. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth

How is that not a political appointment?

And I have not yet seen any state TV which is not sympathetic to the government bureaucracy. If you are being paid by the state, you are not going to be too critical of the state. You don't see much critical of the German government in the supposedly independent German state TV, except maybe statements that restrictions of basic rights are not drastic enough...

So either Germany is also an authoritarian regime, or what is happening in Hungary is not that out of the ordinary.

Are you seriously using whataboutism on Germany about Hungary's current situation?

Go get more informed, please, here are some resources:

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/01/hungarys-authoritarian-t...

[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0409/From-democr...

[3] https://djilp.org/hungarys-road-to-authoritarianism-through-...

[4] https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/ten-years-viktor-or...

>I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

That's a pretty colossal scale of failure, IMHO.

Inability to conform to platonic ideals of democracy and transparency != blatant autocracy.

So you think the head of the constitutional court being an active politician with 12 years in parliament is a minor deviation from a platonic ideal? That is exactly the same as what the OP mentioned.

The German constitutional court is stacked with political appointees.

Sure, the situation in Hungary might be even worse. But western countries in the last decade have completely lost the moral high ground.

You can not imprison journalists like Julian Assange in solitary confinement in conditions that amount to torture, and then complain about lack of press freedom in other countries.

You can not pick your party colleague to lead the constitutional court and then complain about political court appointees in other countries.

This kind of selective outrage is just ridiculous.

That's one guy in a constitutional court of 16 members, and he wasn't a political appointment but was elected by the German parliament (something like a parliament, I'm no expert on the german system).

Assange was put in prison for being a bail jumper wanted on rape allegations. He's now in a perfectly ordinary British prison, going through the usual extradition process under politically independent judicial authority. There's no guarantee he will even be extradited.

Viktor Orban is now functionally a dictator ruling by emergency decree, and has effectively neutralised the constitutional court. They even retroactively invalidated all decisions made by the court before 2012 for goodness sake! There is no way shape or form in which this can be meaningfully equated to anything else in the history of the EU.

In Germany we have the biggest restrictions of fundamental rights since the existence of the federal republic of Germany.

We are all on indefinite house arrest. Millions of people are not allowed to work.

And the constitutional court does not even want to hear cases objecting to this. They will make a decision in 1 or 2 years when it has become irrelevant.

So it seems we don't have any fundamental rights at all. So spare me the outrage about Hungary.

Ok, I'll explain the difference. The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population. If this was not the case, you would expect to see the politicians and parties that instigated the lockdowns severely punished for it in upcoming elections, but that won't happen. It's not a significant issue in the elections. Once the pandemic passes, the restrictions will be lifted. No permanent changes to the fundamental constitutions of Germany have been enacted using emergency laws justified under the pandemic, and if there were they'd still be subject to judicial review and accountability to the electorate. None of that has changed.

I will freely admit Orban does have a lot of support in Hungary, but he has used that to erase the country's judicial constitutional history, not just influence one judicial appointment nut utterly stack the entire judicial system, institute permanent constitutional changes under emergency powers, ruthlessly suppress independent journalism and undermine the entire electoral process in Hungary. He's not even coy about it, he just flat out says that's what he's doing.

There is no level of equivalence, which I'm sure you are completely aware of and fully understand, but this weaselly whataboutism is very tiring. If you actually support what he's doing, just be honest about it and say so, and tell us why.

> The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population.

Fundamental rights are not supposed to be subject to majority approval. I might be in the minority, but I would still like to leave my house after 22:00 without risking arrest.

But this discussion is pointless.

If you seriously believe that e.g. what is being done to Julian Assange has anything to do with an independent judicial system, there is nothing to discuss.

This discussion is pointless because you keep talking at people and not to people, and talking over the argumentation to soapbox your own thoughts instead of engaging with the arguments. Then it isn't a discussion, it's you trying to find a good soapbox to do an exposé of your opinions, it's fucking tiring.

Ah, you are one of those fundamentalists... Yeah, there is also a pandemic going on, look at us here in Sweden how well it works to leave to personal responsibility and self risk assessment to follow health guidelines.

Of course, but both of them can be true at the same time. I wouldn't call either of those countries an authoritarian regime, but they've both moved several steps in that direction.

Your parent said: "disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out". And that definitely happened, the EU has been saying "we're concerned about that" for a while now, and the only response has been "nah, it's fine".

Good thing the parent did not said that. What he said was that these countries are "not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population" and that they dont like when someone in EU points that out.

Yes, Poland is such an unfree country that the journalist that Belarus arrested had willingly applied for (and received) asylum status in Poland.

I don't get how people still put Poland (and Hungary) on the same level with Belarus or China. Both are democratic nations with just a right wing leadership and political system. And european right wing is more left wing than the Democrats in the US in many social policies.

Poland isn't Northkorea or China, despite how the media likes to portray them so. They are way more democratic than the last Trump administration, even if that doesn't mean much to be honest.

Poland, and Hungary even worse, are trending authoritarian/undemocratic. There is still a very long way to go before they even begin to approach totalitarian dictatorships like Belarus or China (or even Russia).

But to me Poland and Hungary are more immediately worrying because they are EU countries and they only very recently took a turn for less independent courts, less free media and so on. There is still time to change course there, while in Belarus there isn't.

Alliance of Democracies Foundation's yearly Democracy Perception Index from 2021[0] had 77% Chinese people seeing their country as having "just the right amount of democracy"[1], which is the exact same percentage as they found in Denmark so it really isn't as simple as that. It also isn't about Right Vs. Left because on a simple left-right axis the US is located further to the right than Saudi Arabia and Hitler[2] and however you see US politics it isn't comparable to Nazism. You need to include more than just left right to get a reasonably useable result.

I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with your point of view here just saying that when "just the right amount of democracy" can differ so much that #7 on Most democratic countries in the world[3] and #157 on the list agree they have the right amount of democracy then it isn't a surprise that countries that might differ a lot are seen as comparable by some and not others.

0: https://www.allianceofdemocracies.org/initiatives/the-copenh...

1: Alliance of Democracies Foundation is chaired by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. This isn't just some cranks rating China based on scared citizens not daring to say otherwise.

2: Obama is pretty close to Hitler on a left-right-only axis but Trump, Bush, etc. are far to the right of Hitler. It is a broken comparison outside of local politics.

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Poland has been supporting the Belarusian opposition. Some rudimentary information has made it on Wikipedia, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus%E2%80%93Poland_relatio...

Dont forget that most of the protesters were actually hired by Polish government /s

Orban just privatized all universities and preparing to privatize all available houses (robbed 10s of billions of dollars from the public), and people are really pissed even though they are still afraid to go on the streets. Orban went too far, and now he started to play a bit nicer.

It appears you have subscribed to overly-simplistic tribal political rhetoric regarding Poland and Hungary, which is far from constructive.

Poland is directly affected, as the FR4978 with Pratasievič on board was a SP-RSM belonging to Ryanair Sun and registered in Poland.

Yes, and Pratasievič was granted political asylum in Poland.

Actually, this information is wrong, sorry. His status is unclear to me and various sources report different things on this.

Just because a country has an authoritarian government, doesn't mean it supports other authoritarian governments.

Isn't blaming a government for being authoritarian whilst being authoritarian alike shooting yourself in the foot?

Kind of. But if you own state media you can portray yourself as a "glorious leader", while others as "dangerous dictators".

> I am surprised Hungary agreed.

To quote the Economist,

> If Mr Orban ever does hit an obstacle, he surrenders some gains, while keeping the bulk of them. (The Hungarian leader even has a name for this legal waltz: the peacock dance.)

Orbán have vetoed a number of EU resolutions recently, most importantly one condemning China over Hong Kong. He probably coordinated with Mr Putin and they agreed Lukashenko can be fed to the dogs for all they care and so Orbán now loses Lukashenko but keeps Russia and China.

Putin plays the game well too: he quite probably approved of Lukashenko doing this, expecting a backlash against Belarus for it but not against Russia, so truly what does he care really? Belarus is an ally for now but meh. If he would've vetoed Lukashenko's batshit crazy idea it would've strained the relationship so why would he? It's not like EU sanctions will immediately topple Lukashenko.

On the contrary Putin probably cheered him on knowing that some outcome like this was likely.

Apparently Lukashenko has been playing a bit of chicken with Putin at times saying "Maybe I should be friendly with the EU instead?", now they both know that Luk is in Putins hands without even needing to say a single word.

It was Polish plane that was kidnapped (still Ryanair but registered in Poland) which also doesn't help ;)

Hungary, yes. Poland I think is less surprising. It's been mostly Hungary that has had the reservations recently about other countries' inner affairs recently.

PiS right now needs some wins. They have consistently screwed up and their avid fans are even sick of it.

Poland is nationalistic and Catholic, but also very anti-Russian. They are not friends with Lukashenko and Putin.

Hungary is kind of Putin's friend, yeah.

Fear of Russia is the few things Hungary and Poland and rest of most of EU have in common.

Ever heard of Paks 2?

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