Last Sunday, the people of Hungary did something their authoritarian ruler thought was no longer possible – they threw him out.
Viktor Orbán, who spent 16 years transforming Hungary from a democracy into an autocracy, conceded defeat less than three hours after polls closed. His challenger, Peter Magyar, secured 138 of Hungary’s 199 parliamentary seats with 53 percent of the vote, a two-thirds supermajority. Supporters flooded the banks of the Danube river in celebration. Drivers blared their car horns in happiness. People who were told their country was too far gone stood in the streets and wept with joy.
Americans should be paying very close attention, not as spectators of a foreign election, but because Donald Trump and Project 2025’s takeover of our democracy was based on Orbán’s takeover of Hungary. And last week’s election proves we can beat them.
MAGA’s Playbook Came From an Authoritarian
For years, the far-right hasn’t hid its admiration for what Orbán built in Hungary.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote that “modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.”
“It’s like we’re twins,”Trump said of Orbán. During a 2019 press conference, Trump showered him with praise: “Viktor Orbán has done a tremendous job in so many different ways. He’s highly respected, respected all over Europe. Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that’s OK. That’s OK. You’ve done a good job. And you’ve kept your country safe.”
CPAC held its annual summit there – and new information shows the country had been helping to fund the major far-right event.
Project 2025, crafted by the Heritage Foundation, was built with Hungary as the guide: a country where one party rewrote the constitution, captured the courts, strangled the press, and kept power for decades.
The ideological pipeline between Hungary and Washington is intentional. Orbán’s government hosted American far-right strategists.
Heritage Foundation fellows flew to Hungary to study the mechanics of authoritarian rule. Steve Bannon called Orbán “Trump before Trump.“
So when people ask why Trump is attacking judges, strong-arming law firms by threatening their livelihoods, contracts, and clients, trying to defund universities, eliminating federal election security, going after labor unions, and defying congressional authority – it’s because he’s running the Orbán playbook.
How Authoritarian Rule Starts
As NPR reported, Orbán began by weakening Hungary’s courts and filling them with loyalists. Then, he pressured media companies, ultimately turning them into state propaganda or forcing them out of business. After that, he used government power to take control of universities, appointing leaders loyal to him. His focus was ridding Hungary of any institution capable of checking his power.
It’s not rocket science – the authoritarian playbook has been used across the world throughout history. Courts. Media. Universities. Civil society. Every institution with the capacity to oppose the autocrat’s abuses of power is neutralized one by one. Orbán did it without tanks.There was no violent coup. Just relentless, incremental dismantling of pillars of society, disguised up as reform.
This is what’s happening in the United States in 2026. But the pace here is faster. As one Peter Kreko, a Hungarian political scientist observed, Trump “went further in two months than Orbán could in 15 years. In the United States, it resembles a constitutional coup where everything happens very rapidly.” Orbán had a decade and a half to consolidate.
Trump is trying to do it in a single term, because they studied Hungary and learned that speed matters, that institutions can be neutralized before they mobilize, and that public exhaustion is itself a tool of control.
Steve Bannon called it “flooding the zone.” The idea is simple – overwhelm the public with simultaneous attacks on so many fronts that outrage becomes paralysis. The influx of information causes people to lose track of what’s happening and by the time anyone organizes a response, the dismantling is already done.
The Proof is Undeniable
If you needed proof that this is not abstract, ProPublica published a new investigation this week. It may be the most important story of the year.
ProPublica’s report shows that in 2020, at least 75 federal officials across multiple agencies worked to safeguard the results of the presidential election – and stopped Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss.
Today, nearly all of those people are gone, having resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. The people who resisted attempts to overturn the 2020 results have been replaced by roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote. Experts warn the election denial movement has now merged with the federal government itself.
This is Orbán’s playbook, executed with American resources, using government power. Trump has stepped up his efforts to “nationalize” elections, saying that Republicans need “to take over” the 2026 midterms. The people now running federal election infrastructure are, by documented record, people who tried to overturn the last election he lost. The new attack on fair elections comes as his approval rating is sliding to historic lows and polling shows Republicans face a significant electoral loss.
Media Captured, Voters Manipulated
One of the most critical and least discussed elements of Orbán’s consolidation was what he did to information itself. Without imprisoning or killing a single journalist, Orbán nearly wiped out Hungarian independent journalism. Fidesz, a Christian nationalist party led by Orbán, came to control roughly 80 percent of the country’s media through a combination of friendly oligarchs buying up outlets, state advertising weaponized to starve independent newsrooms, and regulatory pressure used to silence what remained. Opposition politicians received just five minutes of air time every four years on public television, the legal minimum, to present their platforms.
The goal was to build a parallel reality, a closed information ecosystem where the regime’s narrative was everywhere and the opposition’s was nowhere. As Magyar described it: “This parallel reality is like the Truman Show. People believe that it’s reality.”
Now look at America. Trump has pressured broadcast networks. His allies have moved to acquire major media outlets. The FCC is being used as a lever against media outlets producing unfavorable coverage. Local news is being quietly consolidated by politically aligned ownership. As the European Council on Foreign Relations noted, Hungary’s lesson is that media capture doesn’t require banning outlets or jailing reporters. It requires patience, leverage, and aligned buyers.
The architecture is being built here. Hungarians lived inside it for 16 years before they broke free. Americans are watching it go up in real time.
Trump Officials Stumping for Orbán
If there was any remaining doubt about how personally invested this administration is in Orbán’s survival, JD Vance settled it last week.
The vice president flew to Hungary, days before Hungary’s election and told a rally crowd to go to the polls this weekend and stand with Viktor Orbán. He called Trump from the podium. Trump told the crowd he was with Orbán “all the way.”
U.S. tax dollars were spent to allow the Vice President of the United States to campaign for a foreign authoritarian because losing Orbán meant losing the proof of concept. If the model could be beaten, Americans would have reason for hope.
The Magyar Method
Peter Magyar won by actively fighting back against Orbán’s system – going directly to people, everywhere, relentlessly, in person, with a message impossible to dismiss as partisan.
Magyar visited 500 locations during the campaign, sometimes seven municipalities in a single day. He held town halls and stayed hours after speeches to talk to voters. When state television wouldn’t give him air time, he built his own media ecosystem through livestreams that reached up to 200,000 viewers per episode. His first independent YouTube interview got two million views in three days, in a country of fewer than 10 million people.
But the most important thing Magyar did was get his message right, focusing on corruption, mismanagement, and declining living standards.. Healthcare. Public transportation. The cost of living. The money being handed to Orbán’s cronies. Things that hurt people regardless of how they voted last time.
He gave conservative voters, rural voters, and former Fidesz party supporters a cause to support without abandoning their identity. The vote for Magyar was, in many ways, people saying: I don’t have to agree with everything to know this is wrong.
The result was historic. Turnout hit nearly 80 percent, breaking the previous record set in 2002.
The Authoritarian Playbook Defeated
Authoritarians want you to believe the outcome is already decided. That the courts are too captured, the media too compromised, the system too rigged to fight back. That they are too powerful to be defeated – so why even try? ProPublica’s new investigation documented how thoroughly Trump has dismantled those that held the line in 2020, replacing career officials with loyalists whose mission seems to be delivering him the outcome he wants regardless of how “we the people” vote. That is the Orbán model, fully operational, pointed directly at the 2026 midterms.
But Orbán just lost to Magyar, an opponent with no air time, no incumbent advantage, no billionaire donors. What Magyar had was 500 towns and a message that cut across every line supposed to divide people.
The takeaway for 2026: your vote has real power. It’s the part of American democracy they are working hardest to break, manipulate, and suppress, because it’s the one thing that can stop them. Check your registration. Know your polling place. Make a plan. Vote early if you can, and bring friends, family, or neighbors with you.
Trump is running Orbán’s playbook. But the people who invented it just watched it fail in front of the entire world, because enough people decided their vote was worth fighting for.
Now it’s our turn to decide the same thing.
Fair Fight Action Team
Thank you for this essay, Fair Fight! You have explained it clearly in terms everyone can understand. We can overturn this monstrous regime. We must.
Looks like America needs to be Hungary for change.