There are many similarities between American consultant-turned-ideologue Steve Bannon and Hungarian liberal-turned-ultraconservative Viktor Orban. Both have a missionary mind-set; both are interested in ideas; both are obsessed with what they… Read more »
Since Viktor Orbán was returned to the office of Prime Minister of Hungary in May 2010, he and his party Fidesz have transformed the political system of Hungary in a sustained… Read more »
An Illiberal International is now advancing and one of the first to sound the alarm was Yascha Mounk, the author of The People vs Democracy (2018) and a lecturer on government at… Read more »
At a bucolic border post, Western-trained Hungarian counterintelligence agents recently got word that a known operative of Russia’s foreign spy service was driving into Hungary, and asked headquarters for permission… Read more »
Poland’s populist Law and Justice Party appears intent on imposing quasi-authoritarian control over its unruly democracy, analyst Max Boot writes for Commentary. A new draft Law on Higher Education… Read more »
The threat of authoritarian populism will not recede unless a new generation of political leaders offers a credible agenda for improving people’s lives that is more appealing to the public… Read more »
In ‘The Road to Unfreedom’, Timothy Snyder traces the intellectual roots of modern authoritarianism in Russia and how its influence has spread, not least in the West, notes Eurozine.* In… Read more »
For the past twenty-five years, Andrzej Nowak, a decorated historian of Poland and Russia, has been conducting regular interviews with Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice, the conservative political party that… Read more »
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, philanthropist George Soros [inspired by Karl Popper’s Open Society] poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the former Soviet-bloc countries to… Read more »
Disinformation is one of several tools in the Kremlin toolbox as Russia plays a leading role in promoting illiberal, anti-Western and socially conservative civil society groups, popular movements and political… Read more »