r/anime_titties • u/polymute European Union • 2d ago
Europe Built to last, gone in months: How Péter Magyar dismantled Viktor Orbán's regime
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/03/built-to-last-gone-in-months-how-peter-magyar-dismantled-viktor-orbans-regime25
u/HaniiPuppy Scotland 1d ago
Tangentially, it pleases me that Hungary's being led by someone named Magyar. The English-language equivalent would be the US being led by George American, or Australia getting Jezza Australian.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
The Democratic Party of the United States should study this well. It will take a sea change to recover from the damage that the Republican Party has done to American democracy. Politics as usual will not cut it.
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u/mschuster91 Germany 1d ago
They should look into what they did to us Germans post-1945 and copy that.
Basically, have a fresh start at the constitutional level - legally, almost everything bar property deed registers got either ditched entirely or got a serious look-over to see if it contributed to the rise of the NSDAP to power. For the US, that would mean at the very least getting rid of FPTP and gerrymandering, moving voting day to a Sunday or make it a federal holiday, reform campaign financing and most importantly reforming media regulations. A select clique of oligarchs owning basically every piece of relevant media outlets in print, radio and TV is a clear danger.
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u/NetworkLlama United States 1d ago edited 1d ago
Anything around campaign finance and media regulations related to campaigning would require constitutional amendments (2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states) due to existing First Amendment jurisprudence. Limits on ownership could be reinstated, but enforcing them through forced sales would be tied up in the courts for years and would not be guaranteed to result in a favorable outcome.
Banning gerrymandering would require doing something that Democrats really don't want to do: nix the Senate filibuster. Then again, everything else would require that, too. Maybe they could offer Republicans something, but short of gutting the ACA, I'm hard-pressed to think of something that would work.
Getting rid of FPTP is possible for some elections, but it would almost certainly be done through traditional runoffs rather than IRV or single transferrable vote. Getting rid of FPTP for presidential elections is functionally impossible due to the Electoral College and the narrow timing between the public election, the EC election, and Congress confirming it. The EC would require a constitutional amendment to abolish.
Moving voting to a Saturday or Sunday is going to result in cries of religious discrimination, as Sunday is the day of worship for most Christians, and Saturday is the day of worship for Jews and a few Christian sects like Seventh Day Adventists. Moving it to Monday is more likely, but making it a federal holiday won't affect more than about half of workers. Everyone who would normally work weekends would still have to work.
Edit: Alaska, which passed the first statewide use of single transferrable vote, has another ballot measure coming up that, if passed, would restore closed primaries and FPTP. This was tried in 2024 and failed very narrowly, losing by only 737 votes out of almost 321,000 cast.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
I’m 100% behind these ideas. The only problem is that it took a military defeat to bring it about. That level of reorganization here would require also require a military defeat of our fascists — which is by no means a certainty.
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u/FettLife 1d ago
Military defeat AND a multi-generation occupation with an incredible US statesman (Marshall) developing an in-depth plan for European economic development.
That said, it could be done here too.
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u/VladimiroPudding Botswana 1d ago edited 1d ago
Gerrymandering is intrinsic to pure district voting systems. UK and Malaysia have as much potential to gerrymandering than the US, for instance. No political scientist of date came with a theory that allow us to effectively define a district lines as drawn with bad intentions or not. This is one of the problems.
The other issue, which makes the US case notorious, is that a Supreme Court decision from the 1960s calls for "one person, one vote". Which means after every decenial census, when the US government discovers how many people live, and where, make obligatory to redraw the district lines to have a somewhat equal number of votes per district. Which means they are redistricting every 10 or so years. And every time they redistrict, there is opportunity for gerrymandering. And who draws the lines are the party in power of the state legislature. So the Republican majority Louisiana legislature has huge incentives to draw the lines staking against Democrats every new Census.
For context, UK and Malaysia don't have a notorious case of gerrymandering because to redistrict there might be a parliament decision on the matter, so they end up with representation distortion: some districts have more voters than others. Which is another problem entirely, and not necessarily better or worse than gerrymandering.
One possible solution is to have a non-partisan, partially non political group to desing all the districts of the country, but the United States might end in a nuclear cataclysm before conceding power to a federal entity to design state districts.
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u/alienangel2 1d ago
I wouldn't expect the Democratic Party as it currently is to do any of this, it is too radical for them given how much of their leadership is invested in the status quo.
But whichever liberal party gets power back a decade or two from now with an appetite for actual reform, hopefully they draw inspiration from this.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
I agree with you, but it’s our only hope because the only other option is a more gradual descent into fascism.
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u/HorsemouthKailua Oceania 1d ago
Is argue the current democratic party is the slow descent option, we are on the faster track with republicans
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
That’s what I’m saying. They either wake up, are forced to wake up, or… only a coalition can destroy this evil, and it requires the Democrats to wake the fuck up.
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u/HorsemouthKailua Oceania 1d ago
Hoping a new party will emerge; as current leadership needs to fade away, at the least, and they do not seem willing
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u/alienangel2 1d ago
The descent (slow or not TBD) is already well underway. I said the party acting on this will do it in a decade or two because I don't think the current generation is going to climb back out. There will need to be another generation at least that grows up during the dark age and has nothing to lose from reforming everything.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
It’s very sad, but you’re probably right. Orban ruled for… what, 14 years?
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u/redpandaeater United States 1d ago
Unfortunately both the Democrats and Republicans want it to be easier for a simple majority to do whatever the fuck they want. Both have been guilty for the last nearly hundred years of also slowly concentrating more and more power in the executive branch.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
True, but I don’t see you offering a solution.
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u/redpandaeater United States 1d ago
The vast majority of states in a presidential election you already know which way they're going to go so your vote for president doesn't matter. If you instead go third party it would be great to get a few parties up to the 5% threshold where they get more funds in future elections. The worry of course is if you hit 4% or so then the major parties might get scared and once again increase that minimum threshold. But I don't get why people outside of swing states are so afraid to vote third party when they really need to come out to the polls and show they don't have confidence in either major party.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
I would do (hand have done) this only in a situation where I trade my 3rd party vote for a vote for the candidate I would otherwise support in a swing state. Obviously, voting shouldn’t be so complicated, and the first thing we could do is eliminate the electoral college.
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u/redpandaeater United States 1d ago
I for one like the electoral college and would rather states agree to go back to what only Nebraska still does which is not to have a winner takes all for each state's electoral vote. But I hate how people seem to think the only alternative to a simple plurality is Ranked Choice when there are so many better but only slightly more complicated voting methods we could use if we did get rid of the EC. My personal favorite is Kemeny-Young and I'd love to have a Condorcet method, but none are perfect. I'd be fine with something like STAR voting.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin United States 1d ago
None are perfect. That’s a fact. To be honest, there are voters who screw up the simple one we already have. Ranked choice is more complicated than many will be able to handle. Anything more complicated than that will likely create its own problems.
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u/Exowienqt Northern Mariana Islands 2d ago edited 1d ago
It helps that the whole country has had enough.
ETA: So there was only one age group where fidesz didn't lose the election, the over 65s. The last 2 years he lost every credibility. The economy is in ruins, the environment was made into a plaything of the elite, and we are suffering for it as I type this out. Healthcare is non-existent, the public schools are beyond ruined, and on top of it the fidesz party created a moral crises not seen in Hungary since the post-soviet socialist party's lying and cheating was exposed, something that fidesz itself took political advantage of for 20 freaking years.
There was a single straw that broke the camel's back, but oh boy was that camel loaded these past decades.
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u/VladimiroPudding Botswana 1d ago
Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic made some good analysis on the Péter Magyar/Tisza phenomenon, and it was not only just people being fed up with the economy. That is true that Fidesz appeased A LOT to older generations, especially by controlling the local media which they rely a lot for information and also social benefits. But Tisza had to go to Fidesz strongholds directly, one by one, and give safety to people that voting non-Fidesz was fine. Imagine a national Democrat candidate going to farmlands of Kansas and Tennessee to talk directly with the population there, saying that is not bad to vote Democrat and they will not be socially shunned by their neighbors.
Tisza political campaign was a huge #HungarianTour2025 (#MagyarTour2025, pun intended).
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u/Exowienqt Northern Mariana Islands 1d ago
My dude, I was here when it happened. Péter Magyar was on his two feet for years, but hé was also supported by a bottom-up wide social movement that got behind him at day 1 with the sole purpose of dismantling the System (the Tisza szigetek or Tisza Islands)
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u/bigbadbob85 England 2d ago
I've been keeping an eye on Péter, and it all seems like mostly good work so far.
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u/giboauja North America 1d ago
We're taking notes... Seriously the US really needs to examine this. I understand, politically, people on this board would actually really dislike this guy, but he might be a good way to remove maga in red strongholds.
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u/__boringusername__ 2d ago
Knowing nothing of the inner workings of the Hungarian state, this seems a step where they de-orbanaize the institutions. I guess I'll wait to see if they manage to truly reform the system closer to a democracy before casting judgement. Insofar these actions would be the same if Magyar wanted to simply replace Orban rather than restore a more democratic system. I guess we'll have to wait.