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Hungary is also an interesting sign of how this new "postliberal right" have abandoned the plot on traditional conservatism. One of the main selling points for Fidesz left you'll see from voters is the price controls and price caps that Orban has been putting in. This new breed of "conservatism" is deeply socialist in how they think. So of course Trump, the guy who has been raging against price gouging, threatening companies to not raise prices in response to tariffs and nationalized quite a few corporations thinks Orban is real swell. In the same way it's not a surprise just how well they get along with the Sanders and Mamdani faction of the Dems. They all think the same, evil corporations conspiring against the people. Sanders types might think it's to "oppress the poor" and Trump/Orban types might think it's to "make him look bad" or whatever, but the deeper logic is the same.
I don't know if their economic policy became retarded because they were chasing the poor idiot voters or if poor idiot voters started propping them up because they're stupid, but either way it's quite meaningful that future electoral results aren't looking good for the postliberal right. It's not enough to just screech about prices and try to brute force it, you have to deliver results. And that means embracing the reality that markets work..
Traditional conservatism ideologically has little interesting to say about the economy. It is true that most conservative parties discovered that supply side economics works in the seventies and eighties, but this was a marriage of convenience- driven largely by the left being socialist(which does not work) at the time.
My understanding based on my very vague knowledge of the relevant history is that in the US, conservatism became entwined with free-market capitalism ideology only around the 1940s, in large part as a reaction to the New Deal and communism. So it is not too surprising that eventually conservatism is becoming partly un-entwined from it.
But I am sure that the real history is much more complex than that.
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See, the thing is that actual traditional conservatism doesn’t necessarily have any strong ideological reason to join itself with pro-business, anti-regulation free market economics. The latter is approximately what Americans call libertarianism, and what Europeans call (classical) liberalism. It’s really a historical contingency that in America, this political strain happened to join forces with the religious right/moral majority/tradcon types from approximately the Reagan era to the Trump era; even then, it was far from a solid Republican voting base (cf. Clinton peeling some of them away with the Third Way, “the end of welfare as we know it”, NAFTA, etc.)
There’s no reason to think this should be a general law of conservative politics; indeed, globally speaking, it tends to be the exception rather than the rule, especially in systems that favor the formation of smaller, focused parties instead of two big amorphous tents. Hell, even within the FPTP Anglosphere, it’s not uncommon to find conservatives, leftists, and classical liberals form 3 entirely separate parties (cf., respectively, Tories, Labour, and LibDems in the UK; Tories, NDP, and Liberals in Canada)
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Orbán's 1998-2002 premiership was perhaps closer to that neoliberal market-oriented thinking, but he realized through his 2002 defeat that this style is not workable in Hungary. His Socialist opponent in 2002 promised large handouts and pay raises in the public sphere, and actually delivered on the promise, which was a disaster to the state budget. But it was popular enough that the Socialists won another term in 2006, which was the first time a party could remain in power in an election since 1990. Orbán learned the lesson that he needs to win over the large rural populations from the Socialists, and started using the same tactics the Socialists used but even stronger. Hungary was never the kind of conscious civic state that some parts of Western European countries had been for long. Hungary had remained agrarian much longer than more western countries, and the feudal thinking is still strong. You have a local lord above you and he has a chain of loyalty to the king, and as long as you remain loyal to the local lord, you can hope the king's mercy will reach you. Politicians are evaluated on "what they gave us", in the most literal sense. Supporters see Orbán as personally sending money and personally raising pensions, reducing the energy bills, he has promised to introduce the 14th month pension (the Socialists had already introduced the 13th month pension years ago but had to cut it back during the 2008 recession, Orbán reintroduced the 13th month and now is introducing 14th month). People need a father figure like János Kádár the leader of the "goulash communism" or "fridge communism" of the 70s and 80s.
The right wing here was never really the same kind of conservatism as in the US. Hungary is also historically very different, it's been 500 years that Hungary was actually a significant and strong player, since then we've been thrown around by the big powers. Multinational corporations are therefore easy to pattern match to external foreign forces that try to colonize and control us. In the US it's very different because America is top dog and its corporations exert power around the world. So the whole relation is flipped.
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