Portions of this blog appeared on the Progress Texas Daily Dispatch, delivered every weekday by Progress Texas Communications Director Chris Mosser. Rapid response on the breaking news stories Texas progressives need to know—all in less than 10 minutes! Click here to listen along!

Play this guessing game: who does the following paragraph from The Independent describe?

“He consolidated power around himself, justifying his alternative system as a necessity to preserve the country’s Christian heritage and ward off dangerous outsiders.” His party “would crack down on migration, stifle LGBT rights and attack the freedom of the press. It also restructured the judiciary to funnel appointments to the bench through party loyalists, redrew legislative districts to make it much harder for [his party’s] members to lose elections and helped push [his country’s] media companies to be sold to tycoons allied with [him].”

Sound familiar?

It’s the fascistic, autocratic, authoritarian, dictator’s playbook: could be written into Project 2025 if you ask me, set in stone to put President Donald Trump into lasting political power. But this paragraph is about Viktor Orbán, who was just ousted from the Hungarian Prime Ministry, by a landslide victory in favor of the more liberal-leaning leader, Péter Magyar.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lost his 16 year grip on power in a landslide to Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party, who leveraged a strategy of Democratic Populism: appealing to disaffected conservatives and mobilizing a record 80% voter turnout, driven largely by younger voters. Hungary’s media is even more thoroughly corrupted by the state than American legacy media is, and even so, Magyar bypassed it with an aggressive road-dog campaign, holding up to six rallies a day across the country and focusing on “bread-and-butter” issues like inflation and healthcare. I hope this also sounds familiar, and we need to see the same intense on-the-ground campaigning back in America and Texas if we hope to overcome authoritarianism on our side of the sea. 

What to make of this? 

Take it as yet another sign that people across the world are awakening and mobilizing against the undermining of freedom at the hands of oligarchic autocrats. Orbán cemented his power in hate, corruption, and allied relations with other authoritarian types, like Putin and Trump. In fact, Trump’s endorsement of his ally is being labeled the final “kiss of death” to Orbán’s loss, between disfavor for the war in Iran, to sending his lackey, JD Vance. All the while, VP Vance seems to have become our own international version of Losin’ Cruz, and who is having a “Veep-like-week.” (For reference, we are Humans Against Ted Cruz for reasons beyond the fact that when he shows up to football games, the home team loses). 

Vance’s VEEP-week has included a long list of blunders, from this visit and resulting loss, to failing to solidify peace relations with Iran, and he even made sure to warn the most significant holy figure in the world, Pope Leo, against discussing religion. This of course comes after Trump compared himself to Jesus, which unleashed one of his rants against the Pope (all because Pope Leo denounced the war in Iran, and our Commander in Chief threw a hissy fit about it.)

I would go as far to say that you could joke JD is a closeted progressive with the impact his presence brings: anywhere he goes, failure follows, and that’s good for progressives. If authoritarians can stumble over themselves, while people on the ground campaign and organize, we have some hope here. As a Longhorn, and stretching this analogy, JD Vance is welcome in two places only in my world, and that’s at A&M’s Kyle Field and in Governor Abbott’s election watch party in November. 

If other countries can do it, why can’t we?

And still, despite all the desperate campaigning and pandering from Trump and Vance, Orbán lost. His power was not absolute, and if Hungary can elect a "big tent" challenger who mobilized record turnout, notably among younger voters, then why can’t we? Texas progressives can learn from this, and see that it IS possible to vote out an established autocratic regime. 

For us in the Lone Star State, the lesson is clear: an entrenched regime can be defeated by a “Big Tent” movement led by credible messengers who can flip moderate voters while simultaneously energizing non-voters. Magyar’s landslide gives him an opportunity to undo over a decade and a half of damage done by Orban, and proves that even longstanding supermajorities are not invincible when faced with a unified front and high-participation turnout. We’d all do well to pay attention to this global movement as it manifests around the world, and to work hard to make sure that Texas is a major part of it.

What’s next?

One Week To Local Election Early Voting! There are not one but two Texas elections approaching: municipal, city-level elections on May 2, and the statewide primary runoffs on May 26. Early voting in municipal elections starts April 20. In the midterm runoffs, your registration deadline is April 27, and early voting for the runoffs will begin on May 18. More on all of this at our carefully-crafted voting information website, GoVoteTexas.org.

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