It’s got to be bad if Cato are dissing them.
Orban is supported directly by Trump, Thiel, and company. These are literally the most elite rich folks on the globe. They are all against democracy and are pro-authoritarian. As TFA points out, the experiment has been run, and it leads to ruin. That's just facts.
https://www.obama.org/stories/president-obama-explores-ways-...
>Barack Obama Targets Hungary, Poland in His ‘Fight for Democracy’
https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/barac...
Indeed the linked article is its own jumble of leftist billionaire word-salad. Classic stuff like “defending democracy” while simultaneously overturning elections (see Romania) that they don’t like and subverting the will of the electorate by flooding the country with refugees (see EU penalties).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%932025_Romanian_ele...
Even neolibs are better than authoritarians. The Overton Window has moved so far to the right, that self described nazis are invited to the White House, and this is an actual conversation that we are having.
That is has become a uniparty, undemocratic authoritarianism itself, and when applied as foreign influence, it's just another mask of global neoliberalism and client state relations.
Also... neoliberalism is basically what you think of when you think "right-wing billionaire word salad" from like 6 years ago. Neoliberalism is the the idea of elevating "the market" to the absolute primacy of... everything. Neoliberalism is coined relative to the traditional "liberalism", specifically the part of traditional liberalism that supported free trade and marketization.
The Cato Institute was literally founded by one of the Koch brothers, and has been staunchly neoliberal/libertarian. It stands in opposition to many of the policies of the current far-right/ex-right movement, because those policies call for a fusion of market and government that actually is fundamentally incompatible with neoliberalism. Furthermore, we should be aware that the populist surge that is at least partly powering this surge is itself a reaction to the conditions that neoliberalism (and institutional capture) has created.
As for Soros, you mean the finacial speculator and policy influence middleman? Yeah, such a paragon for democracy and openess.
Yes, Orban is supported directly by Trump, Thiel, and company. The elites at large however, before, during, and after Trump do not support him that much. As for Thiel, I'm not sure whether he likes or dislikes Orban, but that's irrelevant, as he has his grabby hands in Europe already anyway.
Orban might be a bs populist, but the basic idea, of putting national sovereignity first, and dismantling all the crap influence of the neoliberal AND liberal global establishment is solid. Trump got elected for something like that, before pissing all over it with his neocon/neoliberal hawk friends. Even Bernie got high on a similar ticket, before the Dems gutted him and he put his tail between his legs.
>As TFA points out, the experiment has been run, and it leads to ruin. That's just facts.
Well, if an article says it, I guess there's no denying it. Articles, after all, are facts, and can't have their own agendas. Especially from a think tank as neutral and with such a great track record as Cato.
Orban is bad (for all the wrong reasons), but you know who Cato loves (for all the wrong reasons again)? Neoliberal useful idiot Millei:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/javier-milei-legitimacy-libe...
Cato used to be the something like the ultimate devil in my mind, they still are to some extent based on their origins, but things have gotten so much worse that they actually posted a rational argument.
Do their origins mean that I have to be so tribalist that I cannot agree with one of their posts? I live near Hungary, and see the effects of Orbanists daily.
Did you actually read TFA? It's a downright flogging of the ideas behind Project 2025/Heritage Foundation/MAGA philosophy.
Could you please, for a moment, take the win?