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1.98 MB
Extraction Summary
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People
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Organizations
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Locations
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Events
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Relationships
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Quotes
Document Information
Type:
Report excerpt / freedom house publication
File Size:
1.98 MB
Summary
This document is a page from a Freedom House report (Chapter 5) analyzing the rise of 'Illiberal Democracy,' specifically focusing on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It details a July 2014 speech where Orbán rejected Western liberal democratic values in favor of 'illiberal' state models like Russia, China, and Turkey, and criticized NGOs as foreign agents. The document bears a 'HOUSE_OVERSIGHT' Bates stamp, indicating it was part of a document production for a US congressional investigation.
People (2)
| Name | Role | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Viktor Orbán | Prime Minister of Hungary |
Subject of the report; gave the 'illiberal democracy' speech being analyzed.
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| Barack Obama | U.S. President |
Cited by Orbán regarding the West's weakness.
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Organizations (4)
| Name | Type | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Freedom House |
Publisher of the document.
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| European Union |
Mentioned in relation to the 2008 financial crisis.
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| Fidesz |
Viktor Orbán's political party.
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| House Oversight Committee |
Implied by the Bates stamp 'HOUSE_OVERSIGHT'.
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Timeline (3 events)
Locations (7)
| Location | Context |
|---|---|
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Country governed by Orbán; subject of the political analysis.
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Location where Orbán gave the speech in July 2014.
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Cited by Orbán as a successful system.
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Cited by Orbán as a successful system/dictatorship.
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Cited by Orbán as a successful system/democracy.
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Cited by Orbán as a successful system/dictatorship.
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Cited by Orbán as a successful system/quasi-democratic state.
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Relationships (2)
obstacles facing his own political party, Fidesz
He cited U.S. president Barack Obama
Key Quotes (3)
"There is a race underway to find the method of community organization, the state, which is most capable of making a nation and a community internationally competitive."Source
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Quote #1
"systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even democracies, can nevertheless make their nations successful."Source
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Quote #2
"If we want to organize our national state to replace the liberal state, it is very important that we make it clear that we are not opposing nongovernmental organizations here... but paid political activists who are attempting to enforce foreign interests here in Hungary."Source
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Quote #3
Full Extracted Text
Complete text extracted from the document (3,659 characters)
Freedom House
Chapter 5
The Rise of 'Illiberal Democracy'
In July 2014, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán gave what has come to be known as his "illiberal democracy" speech before an ethnic Hungarian audience in Băile Tuşnad, Romania.¹ Several points in his remarks are worth noting:
• Orbán urged his listeners to no longer regard the 1989 triumph over communism as the reference point for developments in Hungary. Instead of measuring progress from the transition from dictatorship and foreign domination to elections, civil liberties, and sovereignty, Orbán said Hungary should adopt a new point of departure, the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, which also marked the European Union's greatest setback.
• He cited U.S. president Barack Obama and various unnamed sources on the West's weakness, including an "internationally recognized analyst" who wrote that liberal values today "embody corruption, sex, and violence."
• He suggested that in the future it would be systems that were "not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even democracies" that would create successful and competitive societies. He asserted that "the stars of the international analysts today are Singapore, China, India, Russia, and Turkey."
• In a passage devoted to the obstacles facing his own political party, Fidesz, as it seeks to build an alternative to liberalism, Orbán singled out civil society and the nongovernmental sector. Civil society critics, he insisted, "are not nongovernmental organizations" but "paid political activists who are attempting to enforce foreign interests here in Hungary." (In a separate speech in early 2016, he referred to "hordes of implacable human rights warriors" who "feel an unquenchable desire to lecture and accuse us."²)
In this relatively short address, Orbán neatly summarized most of the key factors that distinguish a fully democratic "Western" system based on liberal values and accountability from what he calls an "Eastern" approach based on a strong state, a weak opposition, and emaciated checks and balances.
"There is a race underway to find the method of community organization, the state, which is most capable of making a nation and a community internationally competitive.... [T]he most popular topic in thinking today is trying to understand how systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even democracies, can nevertheless make their nations successful."
—Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary
—Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary
"If we want to organize our national state to replace the liberal state, it is very important that we make it clear that we are not opposing nongovernmental organizations here, and it is not nongovernmental organizations who are moving against us, but paid political activists who are attempting to enforce foreign interests here in Hungary."
—Viktor Orbán
—Viktor Orbán
First, his exhortation to no longer regard the events of 1989 as a seminal, even sacred, juncture in Hungarian history is noteworthy given Orbán's biography. While he often cites his own role in the anticommunist struggle and describes himself as a freedom fighter, he now regards 1989—so redolent of liberal values, ideas about individual freedom, and democratic solidarity—as an intellectual impediment to his plans for a Hungary that is skeptical of such ideals and of European integration.
Second, Orbán included full-blown dictatorships (Russia and China) in the roster of governments he admires, along with quasi-democratic illiberal states (Turkey and Singapore) and one genuine, if inconsistent, democracy (India).
www.freedomhouse.org
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