Of course, if you don't speak English, you are pretty much at the mercy of whatever your government throws at you. It's not the government's fault.
See, it's pretty natural for any government to desire to enslave, brainwash, and rob it's people. It is the nature of the government itself, the nature of power. Most governments in democratic countries can't get too far in this direction not because they are nice, but because the structure of their population is such that it prevents them from it, in one way or the other. The more intrinsic freedom of choice people have, the less the government can do.
And yes, big reason of what's happening in Hungary now is that their language is so unlike (almost) any other: it puts a natural barrier to learning foreign languages - whatever language they start learning, it sounds like incomprehensible bullshit just like Hungarian does to anyone else. Which binds them to their government a lot more than it does Poles or Slovaks, let's say. They are simply out of luck here.
My theory of why Hungary was so different 70 years ago when they openly revolted against Commies when everyone else was scared into obedience was that back then, all older people still spoke fluent German because of Habsburg empire: everyone over 50 studied in Austro-Hungarian school and had to learn German as a language of their colonial masters (/s, i know Hungary wasn't a colony). So they knew what was going on being able to listen to Austrian radio, and knew that once they kill Commie guards and escape there, they won't be left helpless, so they took a risk (and won - everyone who wanted, ran away to Austria in 1956). Today, they are in a very different position.