Version imprimableIn view of the results, triumphalist declarations are predictable: “We have liberated Hungary,” proclaimed Peter Magyar late in the evening, during jubilant demonstrations in Budapest, greeted by the cheers of tens of thousands of people, some of whom set off fireworks. “Together, we overthrew the Orbán regime. We have liberated Hungary, we have reconquered our homeland,” he added while waving the Hungarian flag.
According to the official results, covering more than 98% of the polling stations, Magyar’s party, Tisza, won 138 seats out of 199 with 53.56% of the vote, against 55 seats and 37.86% of the vote for Fidesz, Orban’s party. This was thanks in particular to a record turnout of 79.50%. Orban took note of the “painful but unequivocal” results and "congratulated the winning party”.
Beyond the intrinsic value of the result, two elements should be highlighted.
On the one hand, the simple observation that in Hungary, any option, even if timidly left-wing, moderate or radical, which offers a perspective other than the predatory capitalism that has been in place in this country (and obviously not only in this country) for several decades, appeared to be totally out of the question. Today, all progressive and democratic Hungarians (and us too with them) are forced to rejoice in the victory of an ultra-conservative because he defeated a para-fascist.
It is a bit as if, from a hypothetical perspective, we should rejoice at a possible victory in Italy for the party of Marina Berlusconi and Antonio Tajani if they decide to oppose Giorgia Meloni... This is really a sign of the times and of the disaster of the left.
And the other element is that Orbán’s defeat is also a crushing defeat for Trump, Netanyahu, Meloni, Salvini, Le Pen, the German AfD, the Argentine Milei, and their entire neo-fascist clique. It is no coincidence that, at least at the time of writing, the entire global far right, which had openly and unanimously declared itself in favour of their Hungarian friend, is silent and acts as if nothing had happened.
And let’s not forget (I don’t think our “radical left” wants to realize this) that this defeat is also, and in some respects especially, that of Putin and his ambitions.
Behind the defeat of Orbán and his friends scattered throughout the global far right are the Ukrainian resistance, the revolt of young Serbs, the failure of Meloni’s referendum and the American “No Kings” movement.
On closer inspection, not so much of the results and the statements of Magyar but those of the young people of Budapest and other cities in the country, this defeat represented a real wave of national dignity against Putin; its scale prevented the coup that Vance, Putin and Orbán himself had envisaged, modelled on Capitol Hill in 2021.
Of course, Orbán’s oligarchic system, a brazen form of authoritarian and neoliberal capitalism, will not disappear on its own, nor is it in the program of Magyar, who wants to preserve the system while trying to reconcile it with the interests and working methods of the EU’s technocracy. Peter Magyar, in fact, as we have pointed out on several occasions, is and remains a national-conservative who has chosen to remain a nationalist even if the logic of national conservatism has led him to distance himself from Orbán’s brazen Putinism.
The future of Hungary is in the hands of the thousands of young people who, since Sunday night, have invaded the streets of Budapest, in the civil society that is mobilizing and organizing, in the possibility that they will not stop there and not be satisfied with Magyar’s victory. This may only be the beginning.
What happened last night [12 April] in Budapest should encourage us all, because it shows us that there is no supposed invincibility of fascism 2.0, of the neo-reactionary current that Orban, Meloni, Trump, Putin and Co. represent.
But it also shows us the depth of the crisis of the left, of a truly radical, internationalist left, intransigent on democracy, which does not exist in Hungary and, alas, not even in our country of Italy, further west.
13 April 2026
Translated by International Viewpoint from ESSF. Original: Refrattarrio e contro-corrente.
