{"id":4297,"date":"2019-05-05T10:12:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T09:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=4297"},"modified":"2025-06-08T10:16:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T09:16:35","slug":"jobbik-a-brief-history-of-a-political-180","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2019\/05\/05\/jobbik-a-brief-history-of-a-political-180\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobbik: A Brief History of a Political 180"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the\u00a0Visegr\u00e1d Post\u00a0<\/em>Editorial Staff<\/p>\n

Hungary<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Long considered the most radical parliamentary party in Europe, over the course of only a few years, Jobbik has morphed into a centrist and pro-European Union party, completely abandoning its former radical rhetoric opposing the EU, NATO, the LGBT movement, and gypsy crime. Today, in fact, Jobbik is trying to ally with the liberal and progressive Left in order to topple Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and his party, Fidesz. Thus, this article is a brief history of a political 180.<\/p>\n

Jobbik now openly demonstrates with Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny\u2019s liberal party, and has concluded its alliance with the liberal Left more broadly in an anti-Orb\u00e1n common front.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fidesz\u2019s prophecy has thus been realized. For years (at least since 2016), Viktor Orb\u00e1n, his party, and their supportive media had been predicting that the former radical nationalist party and the Hungarian Left have allied themselves in order to topple the government. Prior to\u00a0the legislative elections of April 2018, and despite numerous signs of a\u00a0rapprochement<\/em>, this was not yet entirely true. But since March 15, 2019, it is most definitely true.<\/p>\n

Indeed, during the March 15 commemorations \u2013 a national holiday celebrating the anniversary of the beginning of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 against Habsburg domination \u2013 while\u00a0Mr. Orb\u00e1n was hosting Poland\u2019s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, the main opposition parties gathered their supporters to establish a great anti-Fidesz front.<\/p>\n

For the first time, Jobbik has begun openly demonstrating with the DK (Demokratikus Koal\u00edci\u00f3<\/em>, or Democratic Coalition, a party stemming from a 2011 split with the MSZP, the Hungarian socialist party), the party led by Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny, who served as Prime Minister from 2004 until 2009, and who had long been one of Jobbik\u2019s despised enemies. The DK was represented by Kl\u00e1ra Dobrev, Mr. Gyurcs\u00e1ny\u2019s wife and the head of the party list in the upcoming European parliamentary elections. Since the demonstrations of April 2018, following Fidesz\u2019s latest electoral victory, Jobbik has frequently demonstrated with the DK, all the while denying the existence of any alliance.<\/p>\n

Among the other organizations present, there was the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), the liberal Green party Politics Can Be Different (LMP), Momentum (the Hungarian\u00a0En Marche!<\/em>), as well as the Mayor of H\u00f3dmez\u0151v\u00e1s\u00e1rhely, P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay, who is not a member of any party, and\u00a0who was among the first to openly call for a coalition ranging from the DK to Jobbik in order to defeat Orb\u00e1n. These political forces agreed to put a strategy of supporting common opposition (or \u201cindependent\u201d) candidates in place during the upcoming Hungarian municipal elections of October 2019, with the goal of preventing victories by Fidesz candidates.<\/p>\n

Before concluding their gathering to the tune of the EU anthem (see the end of this video), the gathered demonstrators of the opposition, echoing\u00a0the Twelve Points that were demanded by the revolutionaries of 1848, declared\u00a0their own twelve points\u00a0under the heading of, \u201cWhat does the Hungarian nation want?\u201d They are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Democracy and the rule of law<\/li>\n
  2. Non-partisan media, and an end of public financing for propagandistic media<\/li>\n
  3. Independent public prosecutors and courts<\/li>\n
  4. A reasonable and legal use of public money, and holding corrupt public figures accountable<\/li>\n
  5. Tax justice, with an end to excessive income inequalities<\/li>\n
  6. Freedom and support for science, culture, and education, and quality education throughout the country<\/li>\n
  7. Decent salaries and working conditions, and an expansion and enforcement of workers\u2019 rights<\/li>\n
  8. A great social consultation, also including professional organizations, interest groups, and civil society<\/li>\n
  9. Access to quality healthcare for all<\/li>\n
  10. Social security, housing for all, and a stable future<\/li>\n
  11. Effective action against the climate crisis, the protection of our natural wealth, and the defense of our environment<\/li>\n
  12. The defense of the values of our nation and the European Union!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There is nothing new in this attempt to unite the various factions of the Left-liberal opposition. This had already been tried during the 2014 legislative elections, without the LMP \u2013 and without any great electoral success, for that matter. But in 2014, there was no question of Jobbik ever joining such a coalition, given the absolute mutual rejection between the liberal Left and the far Right at the time. The question was again openly raised in 2018, but the time was not yet ripe. But henceforth, they are finally united in their efforts to overcome Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

    How was Jobbik able to undergo such a change? Let\u2019s take a look at\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0political reversal of the decade.<\/p>\n

    A Radical Party Which Arose in the Troubled Autumn of 2006<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Jobbik as a party was founded in 2003, coming out of a youth movement that was created in 1999. It tried to occupy the nationalist niche in the face of the other nationalist party, the declining MI\u00c9P (Hungarian Justice and Life Party), that was led at the time by the playwright Istv\u00e1n Csurka.<\/p>\n

    Following rather modest first steps, Jobbik managed to take advantage of the dramatic events of the autumn of 2006, when a private speech by the Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny was leaked to the press, in which he revealed in particularly crude terms the lies he had told during his campaign in order to remain in office during the April 2006 elections.<\/p>\n

    There were several consequences stemming from this exceptional political scandal:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Uncontrolled riots throughout autumn 2006 (we recall in particular the \u201cstroll\u201d taken by a T-34 tank, which had been surreptitiously commandeered by an anti-government protester during the October 23 commemorations for the 1956 revolution against the Soviets), which were brutally suppressed by the police, who often attacked peaceful protesters and even beat up M\u00e1riusz R\u00e9v\u00e9sz, a Fidesz MP.<\/li>\n
    • The Left\u2019s electoral collapse and the political death of the liberal party (SZDSZ, or Alliance of Free Democrats), which had been a major pole of Hungarian politics since the end of Communism and the regime change of 1990.<\/li>\n
    • The complete domination of Hungarian political life by Fidesz, which has won every vote since the local elections of October 2006.<\/li>\n
    • The emergence of radical nationalism on the electoral stage in Hungary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      In 2006, whereas Fidesz respected the rule of law and categorically refused any risky attempt to overthrow the government outside of the legal and democratic framework, radical nationalism prospered among those who wanted Gyurcs\u00e1ny to be thrown out of office immediately. During the subsequent years, Gyurcs\u00e1ny as a personality became something of a punching bag for a population exasperated by the government and which was being victimized by the severity of the economic crisis \u2013 first in 2006 in Hungary, and then worldwide in 2008, which forced the country to accept a financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union, and the World Bank. At the time, Jobbik\u2019s leaflets explicitly called for Gyurcs\u00e1ny to be put in jail.<\/p>\n

      As a young party, Jobbik managed to thrive in this atmosphere of cold civil war and achieved a great political victory with the creation of an (unarmed) civil militia in 2007: the Hungarian Guard.<\/p>\n

      Under the leadership of its young President, G\u00e1bor Vona, Jobbik took off in the 2009 European elections by winning fifteen percent of the vote, and then seventeen percent in the 2010 parliamentary elections, when Fidesz handily won with more than fifty percent, securing a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament, which gave them the ability to make changes to the Constitution without having to consult the other parties. Until the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik was considered the most radical Right-wing party that had attained parliamentary representation in Europe. Jobbik made national and international waves several times, notably when it sent the Hungarian Guard to march in villages against what they called \u201cgypsy criminality.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Although it was their critical statements about certain Jews that caused the biggest scandals. In particular, MP M\u00e1rton Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si sparked a worldwide scandal and made a great impression as a result of comments\u00a0he delivered in Parliament in November 2012. During a one-minute statement in which he mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in the Gaza Strip, Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si concluded by saying, \u201cIn the Parliament and in the Hungarian government, how many people of Jewish origin are there who pose a risk to Hungary\u2019s national security?\u201d<\/p>\n

      The outcry was immediate. The statement was condemned by all the other Hungarian political parties, and a demonstration even took place uniting Fidesz officials with those of the liberal Left. And at the end of 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center classified Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si among the ten leading anti-Semitic figures in the world.<\/p>\n

      Jobbik also surprised observers through its international orientation, which was turned exclusively towards the East. Besides calling for Hungary to withdraw from the EU (whose flag Jobbik burned during a demonstration in January 2012) and NATO, Jobbik also wanted stronger ties not only with Russia, but also with Turkey, the Turanic world, and the Muslim world.<\/p>\n

      The Onset of Detoxification (2013)<\/strong><\/p>\n

      While Jobbik made a splash through its scandalous statements, between 2010 and 2014, Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government successfully reduced the public deficit, repaid in advance the IMF loan taken by the previous government, put a new Hungarian Constitution in place, and began its ongoing struggle with Brussels. And Orb\u00e1n\u2019s popularity has remained intact since his triumphant reelection in 2010.<\/p>\n

      Dealing with a political radicalism which had its limits, and that led them to run up against an electoral glass ceiling, G\u00e1bor Vona attempted to achieve his party\u2019s \u201cdetoxification.\u201d This strategic U-turn is known in Hungarian as\u00a0n\u00e9pp\u00e1rtosod\u00e1s<\/em>. This term, which is not easy to translate, brings to mind something like the transition towards a \u201cpeople\u2019s party.\u201d<\/p>\n

      At the end of 2013,\u00a0G\u00e1bor Vona explained that Jobbik had always had two faces: the radical face and a mainstream one, the latter embodied by more conventional people, and he said that it was perhaps a mistake to have only put forward the radical face of the party up to that time. He nonetheless added that these two \u201cfaces\u201d had always coexisted and continued to do so, in harmony. He also added that this new communications campaign would not change the fundamental points of Jobbik\u2019s program: to return Hungary to the Hungarians, to solve the problem of the coexistence of Hungarians and gypsies, and to refuse to accept Hungary\u2019s domination by the European Union.<\/p>\n

      This detoxification, inspired by those of other populist parties in Western Europe, had to deal with an important obstacle: the lack of changeover in the party\u2019s management, meaning that the attempted shift was not very credible (unlike, for example, the Front National in France, whose detoxification was personified by Marine Le Pen\u2019s assuming the party leadership).<\/p>\n

      In the 2014 elections, the results were more or less the same as in 2010: Fidesz kept its supermajority of two-thirds of the Parliament, while Jobbik made slight gains, winning twenty percent of the vote \u2013 lagging behind, however, the Left-wing coalition, which received twenty-five percent of the votes. Jobbik became the single largest opposition party, however.<\/p>\n

      2015 was the year of great changes. It began with a dispute between Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Lajos Simicska, a businessman and media mogul who had until then been very close to the Prime Minister. Simicska, normally a very discrete person, publicly insulted Orb\u00e1n and unceremoniously purged all his media of people favorable to the government. (Curiously, neither this nor the sight of journalists being immediately fired without cause stoked any indignation among liberals, either at home or abroad.)<\/p>\n

      2015 continued as a difficult year for Fidesz with the loss of two by-elections, which caused it to lose its constitutional supermajority. One of the two constituencies (half of Hungarian MPs are elected by proportional representation and half by one-round, first-past-the-post constituency elections) was won by Jobbik in\u00a0a close result\u00a0(thirty-five to thirty-four percent). Given Fidesz\u2019s difficulties, the opposition parties, including Jobbik, began to develop great hopes for 2018.<\/p>\n

      The migrant crisis upended the situation. In 2015, more than four hundred thousand migrants illegally crossed the Serbian-Hungarian border, which is along the Balkan route that leads to western Europe.<\/p>\n

      The migratory chaos that wracked Hungary throughout 2015 contributed to Fidesz\u2019s fall in the opinion polls, while Jobbik\u2019s shot up to nearly thirty percent support. This, along with the two by-elections lost by Fidesz earlier in the year, led to great hope among Jobbik\u2019s ranks. But they could not have anticipated Orb\u00e1n\u2019s coming response.<\/p>\n

      Contrary to the other transit countries, Orb\u00e1n did not organize a \u201ctaxi\u201d service for migrants to get from the Serbo-Hungarian border to the Austro-Hungarian one. Instead, he respected the European Union\u2019s Treaty of Schengen (according to which Schengen border states must protect Schengen\u2019s external border) and chose a frontal strategy. He erected a fence along the Serbo-Hungarian border to block the migrants\u2019 passage, which was completed in September 2015.<\/p>\n

      Concerned about this migrant flow and by the EU\u2019s wish to impose a quota for the redistribution of migrants on all Member States, forcing all nations to accept them, the Hungarians massively supported their Prime Minister\u2019s policy of securing the border and opposing Brussels\u2019 quotas. The Left-wing opposition sided with the proponents of immigration, while Jobbik was put in an impasse by the hardening of Fidesz\u2019s discourse, which also began to denounce George Soros\u2019 networks. Jobbik backed Fidesz\u2019s position regarding the migrants, since doing otherwise would have alienated their existing base \u2013 but this allowed Fidesz to win back the momentum.<\/p>\n

      Orb\u00e1n continuously pursued his campaign against mass immigration and\u00a0organized a referendum in October 2016\u00a0in which Hungarians were asked to accept or reject the EU\u2019s migrant quotas. Under Hungarian law, a referendum must achieve a quorum of fifty percent in order to be valid. This threshold was not reached, but participation was nonetheless fairly good \u2013 forty-three percent \u2013 given that the Left had called for a boycott.\u00a0The result: 98.36 percent of electors voted against Brussels\u2019 mandatory migrant quotas.<\/p>\n

      During the campaign, Fidesz and Jobbik (as well as the Communist party, the Munk\u00e1sp\u00e1rt [Worker\u2019s Party], which is not represented in Parliament) called on voters to participate and vote \u201cno.\u201d Most Left-wing opposition parties called for the vote to be boycotted so that the quorum would not be reached.<\/p>\n

      Jobbik constantly repeated throughout the referendum campaign that the government ought to resign in the event that the fifty percent quorum was not reached. Prior to the referendum campaign, Jobbik had proposed to Parliament a constitutional reform which would make it illegal for foreign powers to settle populations in Hungary without the approval of the Hungarian authorities. This proposal was rejected by Fidesz, which preferred its own referendum strategy. From its point of view, the referendum had the twofold advantage of consolidating its position in Hungarian public opinion as well as being a democratic argument it could use in the struggle against Brussels.<\/p>\n

      Jobbik\u2019s only really active participation in the referendum campaign was\u00a0a video clip featuring L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai, who was (and is) the Mayor of \u00c1sotthalom, a village along the Serbian border, who had become famous for his\u00a0social media campaigns against illegal immigration, and who had joined Jobbik\u2019s leadership in 2016, becoming one of its Vice Presidents.<\/p>\n

      However, despite this video, Jobbik\u2019s almost daily repetition of their call for the government to resign in the event of the referendum\u2019s failure leads one to think that perhaps that is what Jobbik really wanted. At that time, the conflict between Fidesz and Jobbik had already intensified, as the oligarch Simicska had thrown his support and considerable media resources behind Jobbik.<\/p>\n

      At the same time, internal changes occurred within Jobbik during 2016 with the departure of one of its Vice Presidents, El\u0151d Nov\u00e1k, an anti-Zionist and anti-EU figure. He was fairly hostile to G\u00e1bor Vona\u2019s strategy of\u00a0n\u00e9pp\u00e1rtosod\u00e1s<\/em>, and his reelection was vetoed by Vona despite the fact that he had won the vote among the party\u2019s members. Shortly after, he was invited by the Jobbik parliamentary group to resign \u2013 which he did \u2013 and was removed from all his offices.\u00a0L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai\u2019s joining counterbalanced this departure and enabled them to try to counteract Orb\u00e1n\u2019s advantage in this area, since he had already made immigration the major theme of his social media campaigns. Thus, the appointment of Toroczkai, a respected radical nationalist and the founder of several militant nationalist organizations in his own right, allowed Jobbik to reassure its nationalist base amidst its change of direction.<\/p>\n

      Nov\u00e1k\u2019s elimination also removed an internal problem, however, allowing the party to adopt a strategy going well beyond mere detoxification.<\/p>\n

      Anti-Orb\u00e1nism at Any Cost<\/strong><\/p>\n

      With Orb\u00e1n having \u201cshifted right,\u201d Jobbik then tried to outflank him on the left by launching outrageous propaganda campaigns against both the Prime Minister and Fidesz more generally.<\/p>\n

      Following the referendum on migrant quotas in October 2016, Orb\u00e1n submitted a constitutional reform on the subject to make it illegal for foreign powers to settle populations in Hungary without official authorization. He no longer had the supermajority to pass this without the support of any of the other parties; thus, the support of Jobbik MPs was essential, and put Fidesz in a delicate position. As the French magazine\u00a0Causeur<\/em>\u00a0observed, \u201cOrb\u00e1n, a political animal, is forcing Jobbik to make a Cornelian choice: to either take his side or that of the \u2018foreign party.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

      G\u00e1bor Vona then took a chance: He accused the Hungarian government of having established a legal immigration pathway through the sale of Hungarian treasury bonds (in Hungarian:\u00a0Leteleped\u00e9si Magyar \u00c1llamk\u00f6tv\u00e9ny<\/em>), which allowed rich foreign investors to obtain a Schengen visa in exchange for the purchase of these bonds. He declared that Jobbik MPs would vote for the constitutional reform proposed by Fidesz only if this system of visa distribution were suspended. But Orb\u00e1n did not yield to Jobbik\u2019s blackmail. Jobbik, true to their word, did not vote in favor of the reform, which was then rejected by Parliament, given that it lacked the qualified two-thirds majority.\u00a0The foreign press saw this as another affront against Orb\u00e1n, one month after the referendum\u2019s lukewarm success.<\/p>\n

      In fact, in doing this, Orb\u00e1n managed to establish himself in the eyes of public opinion as the only resistance to illegal mass immigration, thus casting all the opposition parties in the role of the supporters of mass immigration, including Jobbik.<\/p>\n

      From then on, total war was declared between Fidesz and Jobbik. Jobbik had wanted its position on migration to be subtle, and it was swept away by the public relations steamroller of Fidesz and its satellite organizations. Their accusation was hammered home: Jobbik had become a partner of the liberal Left.<\/p>\n

      Jobbik, however, gained one advantage: all the while pretending to cling to its anti-immigration rhetoric, it tried to appear in the eyes of the liberal opposition as Orb\u00e1n\u2019s most determined opponent, and the only party with a realistic chance of unseating him in 2018. What\u2019s more, with the help of Lajos Simicska\u2019s billboard ads, which appeared on nearly every kiosk and billboard across the country, they launched \u201canti-corruption\u201d campaigns against Fidesz, plastering Hungary with signs accusing Orb\u00e1n of being a crook. The exchanges between Vona and Orb\u00e1n in Parliament also became particularly virulent during this period.<\/p>\n

      A Jobbik campaign ad in which Orb\u00e1n is put in prison by G\u00e1bor Vona<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

      In international affairs, also, it was time for Jobbik\u2019s great shift toward the center. In 2016,\u00a0the party no longer spoke of withdrawal from the European Union\u00a0(whose flag they had been burning a mere four years before), but rather simply called for EU reforms.<\/p>\n

      Similarly, M\u00e1rton Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si, who had been known up to that time for his hard-line anti-Atlanticism and his Eastern orientation, went so far as to claim in\u00a0an interview with the\u00a0Courrier d\u2019Europe centrale<\/em>\u00a0in March 2018\u00a0that \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter where you go, all the nationalists, extremists, and pro-Russians in Europe hail Viktor Orb\u00e1n and consider him an example.\u201d He also explained in this interview that it was not Jobbik which represented a threat to democracy, but Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

      Jobbik had also been well-known for its Turanism, or the belief that Hungarians bear close cultural and ethnic connections with Turkic peoples, and its passion for Turkey more generally. While these were never explicitly renounced, they were gradually put to the side. Likewise, Jobbik\u2019s previous critical stance toward Zionism and some Jews was dropped; this was highlighted when, in November 2016, Vona gave an address at the Spinoza Theater in Budapest, a well-known meeting place for Jewish intellectuals, and\u00a0when he sent Hanukkah greetings to Hungary\u2019s Jewish leaders\u00a0the following month (they were rejected). A year later, Vona\u00a0publicly denounced his party\u2019s earlier critical remarks about certain Jews.<\/p>\n

      On social issues, too, Jobbik shifted direction:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • Contrary to its previous position, Jobbik said it no longer wished to ban the Gay Pride parade in Budapest, on the grounds that it formed part of the defense of public freedoms which had supposedly been greatly reduced under Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government.<\/li>\n
      • Jobbik began supporting Left-liberal MPs in their appeal to the Constitutional Court to oppose\u00a0the law concerning Central European University (CEU), which is financed by George Soros. The goal of this law was to force CEU to adhere to the same rules that apply to other universities in Hungary, and to not have the ability to grant foreign diplomas without also offering classes in the foreign country in question (in this case, the United States).<\/li>\n
      • In an interview given in March 2018 on local television and\u00a0published in the liberal opposition weekly\u00a0HVG<\/em>, Jobbik MP and spokesman \u00c1d\u00e1m Mirk\u00f3czki went so far as to claim that Jobbik\u2019s rhetoric prior to 2010 had not been genuine and had not reflected the party\u2019s reality. He even added that Orb\u00e1n had made Jobbik into the party that is most concerned with democracy, and that he ought to be thanked for this. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai would publish a laconic response to this on his Facebook page: \u201cIt is not in my name that \u00c1d\u00e1m Mirk\u00f3czki has stated that the rhetoric prior to 2010 was not genuine.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        This strategy of Jobbik\u2019s, which was publicly criticized within the party only by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai, does not seem to have borne fruit in public opinion, where the polls indicated that Jobbik remained at its usual low-water mark of fifteen to twenty percent.<\/p>\n

        An unexpected event again stoked some hope among the opposition: On February 25, 2018 \u2013 six weeks before the parliamentary elections in April 2018 \u2013 there was a municipal by-election in H\u00f3dmez\u0151v\u00e1s\u00e1rhely, in which P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay, an unaffiliated candidate describing himself as a conservative who was disappointed in Fidesz, received the support of all the opposition parties, ranging from DK to Jobbik. He won this municipal election with fifty-seven percent of the votes, as against forty-one percent for the Fidesz candidate. This surprise win suggested that if there were a coalition of the entire opposition in individual parliamentary constituencies, then it would be possible to defeat Fidesz.<\/p>\n

        But the time was not yet ripe for that in 2018, and Jobbik refused to withdraw a single one of its candidates from the country\u2019s 106 constituencies, all the while inviting liberal voters to vote for the Jobbik candidate when he seemed to have the better chance of beating the Fidesz candidate (particularly in the countryside, given that Jobbik is weakest in Budapest). Jobbik went on to say that it was ready to form a coalition after the elections with the liberal Green party, the LMP, as well as with the young liberals of Momentum, but rejected any cooperation with the MSZP or Gyurcs\u00e1ny\u2019s DK.<\/p>\n

        However, to the surprise of many observers, the 2018 parliamentary elections again gave Fidesz a two-thirds supermajority. As for Jobbik, it peaked at nineteen percent \u2013 which was in second position, but still far behind Fidesz\u2019s forty-nine percent. As for the \u201ctactical voting\u201d strategy, this was also a failure for Jobbik, which won only one constituency out of 106.<\/p>\n

        A Split Allowed Jobbik to Finally Opt for an Anti-Orb\u00e1n Common Front<\/strong><\/p>\n

        G\u00e1bor Vona had promised that, in the event of another electoral defeat, he would withdraw from Jobbik\u2019s leadership, and he remained true to his word. He also resigned from parliamentary office and\u00a0became a vlogger, continuing to promote dialogue and ties between all the members of the opposition with the goal of toppling Fidesz and Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

        In the aftermath, two candidates fought for Vona\u2019s position: Tam\u00e1s Sneider and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai. Both have a radical past: Sneider is known to have been a skinhead leader in the 1990s, whereas Toroczkai had been a leader of the nationalist riots of autumn 2006. Each candidate shared a ticket with another candidate who would then become the party\u2019s second-in-command: Tam\u00e1s Sneider was joined by M\u00e1rton Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si, while L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai had D\u00f3ra D\u00far\u00f3 as his partner \u2013 a Jobbik MP and El\u0151d Nov\u00e1k\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

        Jobbik\u2019s congress vote was close. The Jobbik cadres (notably G\u00e1bor Vona and Secretary General G\u00e1bor Szab\u00f3) largely supported Sneider\u2019s candidacy, who won by a small margin. Toroczkai denounced the congress\u2019 proceedings, saying that he had been allowed less speaking time. Sneider, despite his extremist past, pushed for continuing G\u00e1bor Vona\u2019s strategy, while L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Toroczkai categorically rejected any alliances with the liberal Left.<\/p>\n

        This situation led Toroczkai to create a group within Jobbik for mayors which would call for the adoption of a program that would return Jobbik to its Right-wing roots \u2013 an initiative that was rejected by the party\u2019s leadership. Toroczkai was then dismissed from Jobbik, and soon after created his own party:\u00a0Mi Haz\u00e1nk Mozgalom (Our Fatherland Movement)<\/em>. He was joined by four Jobbik MPs and will lead a list in the May 2019 European elections.<\/p>\n

        Following these departures, Jobbik was now free internally to pursue anti-Orb\u00e1nism to its logical conclusion. In the upcoming European elections, for example, Jobbik declared that one of the issues at stake is preventing Viktor Orb\u00e1n from withdrawing Hungary from the European Union. This list will be led by M\u00e1rton Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si. The opposition parties did not want to put in place a common list against Fidesz, because of the proportional representation system. However, they plan to do so during the upcoming Hungarian local elections in October 2019.<\/p>\n

        With Jobbik\u2019s participation in public demonstrations with its former foes on the liberal Left in March of this year, as discussed at the beginning of this article, there is no longer any doubt concerning what sort of strategies Jobbik is pursuing these days \u2013 unlike in 2018, when things were still relatively ambiguous. Likewise, the liberal Left has been signaling that it is willing to forgive Jobbik for its earlier stances in order to work with them, such as in February, when Gergely Kar\u00e1csony, a liberal socialist who is running for Mayor of Budapest, and who had denounced Jobbik during the 2018 campaign for being \u201cfull of Nazis,\u201d\u00a0publicly defended M\u00e1rton Gy\u00f6ngy\u00f6si\u2019s controversial 2012 statements about Jews serving in government. Thus, Jobbik\u2019s result in the European elections will give a first indication of how successful its common front with the liberal Left will be, given that it has broken with the party\u2019s historic fundamentals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        By the\u00a0Visegr\u00e1d Post\u00a0Editorial Staff Hungary\u00a0\u2013 Long considered the most radical parliamentary party in Europe, over the course of only a few years, Jobbik has morphed into a centrist and pro-European Union party, completely abandoning its former radical rhetoric opposing the EU, NATO, the LGBT movement, and gypsy crime. Today, in fact, Jobbik is trying to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"acf":{"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}