TradCatKnight: Viktor Orbán: “2017 Will Be the Year of Revolts”

A panel of journalists recently conducted an interview with the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Many thanks to CrossWare for translating this article from Hungarian news portal 888.hu.

Interview with Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary

Viktor Orbán: The Fidesz story is truly a self-made one. The Fidesz [the PM’s political party] story is about how ten to twenty young kids came from somewhere; they revolted because they had enough of the world around them, pulled up their collars and made their own story. We not only in a political sense, but also geographically, were nobodies who came from the middle of nowhere. As for me, I may have been the first person in the family who was told that if there is a chore in the farm and also have a lesson, the lesson comes first. In 1982 I went to college. We lived in a dorm in Budaörs, and I only dared to travel by bus #40, so much did security mean to me. Then of course I realized that everything can be learned. If the classmates were pompous, you have to read the ten, twenty or thirty books or see the movies — you were behind and catch up with them. These problems are not real, everything can be learned. Character is the one thing that can not be learned. And there are some strong characters who joined the Fidesz and added to the community. People who can only count on themselves and each other. That is why the Fidesz is still more modern than any existing rival party. When we start to freeze into our positions, we are able to shake ourselves up, to look around to see what is in the world, to read, to study, to show an interest in new things. This allows us to maintain a certain intellectual excitement, but it is more come from character than the level of education. And this is where we feel the kinship with the newly elected US President, Donald J. Trump. You can also feel the self-made man mentality about him.
GFG: This type of sympathy was picked up by Trump; is that why he called?
Viktor Orbán: He sensed it. (Laughs)
GFG: How should we imagine what was like to have a telephone conversation with Trump?
Viktor Orbán: I have spoken with a real American. Trump does not complicate things like a politician, who would even have a problem with how to start a conversation. There was a common sound. It is rare in politics, especially with the president of a great power. After all, there is not a man-made thing in the world that cannot be changed. You can change Hungary; it is possible to change Europe and the United States. To change a country can only done by a person who does not have adequacy constraints, who can talk straight and say what he thinks, and if he says something, it has a meaning. To change the United States is gigantic task even from the position of the president — most people would not even try it — but maybe now he will succeed.
I’ll press into my thirty years in the [political] industry; I have seen a wide range of political characters. Trump and his team did not look as if they wanted show up for the beginner classes. Self-made characters are coming, people who themselves are successful, who do not begin a sentence with “I heard about those things,” but say, “I’ve done that.” And they have largely done that. I think the lukewarm sheep-pen world of the socialist/liberals is finished, where you often hear the plural than the singular first-person phrase. Now you will more often hear first-person statements: ”I think”, “I learned,” “My experience”, “I’m doing this.” The time of character-based and cooler politics is coming.
Gábor Fűrész: It is interesting that Trump is receiving the same treatment, like the Hungarian government. The same accusations, the same criticism.
Viktor Orbán: There was the status quo, which started around the end of the eighties, and everybody thought that is impossible to change. It is believed to rest on such immovable pillars that democracy could be only liberal. Russia can only be an enemy; the international organizations are always right against nations; the market is always right against the state; and the politicians must listen to ideologies, and not the people. Now what is happening is these seemingly immovable pillars are cracking, barely holding up the structure. The elite who are standing on those pillars see Trump the same way that we do, but because USA is bigger than us, Trump us more dangerous for them. But viewed from where they are looking at the world, apart from the size of a lot of similarities.
Gábor Fűrész: America was an enemy?
Viktor Orbán: With the American people we are in generally good friends, and have had some good collaboration with the American economic actors, but some US politicians were really hostile. Not only towards us, but all of Central Europe. Rabidly hostile! And if we had taken it upon ourselves, we would have felt humiliated. They handed us a scrap of paper, and they expected us to accept every condition as it was written. Their starting point was that a Central European leader must be one of two types: one is corrupt, the other is Putin’s man, or more likely both, so they are supposed to sideline these leaders. So the behavioral norm for a sovereign diplomatic relations was put on the back burner, and they decided on direct interventions. They wanted to set up complete yes-man types; they were expecting as they came submit their conditions that here there would only be leaders who can say, “Yes, sir!”  Read more »