ON FRIDAY—as concern spread internationally about Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, using the cover of the coronavirus to consolidate his personal power—Politico published an op-ed in which Judit Varga, Orbán’s justice minister, lashed out at the country’s critics. “False claims about a power grab in Hungary are spreading as quickly as the coronavirus,” Varga wrote; Orbán’s government, she argued, is being slandered by “Western European thinkers” who don’t like its “coherent, Christian-Conservative policy,” and by a “leftist-liberal media” that doesn’t like its treatment of migrants. (Hungary has erected razor-wire fences to keep migrants out; Orbán’s administration has accused George Soros, the philanthropist and conspiracy magnet, of plotting to destroy Hungary by flooding it with foreigners, and passed “Stop Soros” laws making it illegal to help undocumented migrants with asylum claims.) On Friday, Varga shared her Politico article on Twitter, with the caption, “Stop lecturing HU Gov by spreading #fakenews!”
The death of Hungary’s democracy is a worldwide press-freedom warning
