The Right-leaning Fidez party under the leadership of veteran politician Viktor Orban came out of its seemingly perpetual status as a minority with fifty-three percent of the vote. That meant the Socialists were out.
This is not the part of the election which is giving the Eurocrats hissy-fits. Rather it was the emergence of the hypernationalist, antisemitic, anti-Gypsy Jobbink party which gained almost seventeen percent of the votes. An obscure, fringe element founded by Gabor Vona, the Movement For A Better Hungry rode a wave of anti-status quo, anti-establishment rhetoric to a stunning degree of success.
Jobbink is deeply disturbing not only for the strong echoes of National Socialism in its verbiage, but for its militia offspring. The Hungarian Guard is also headed by Gabor Vona. In its actions if not its uniforms the Magyar Garda closely resembles the Iron Guard of Hungary's World War II Nazi days. The Hungarian Guard has been outlawed by a local court but the Socialist government did not enforce the suppression order.
The breadth and depth of the anti-status quo vote bespeaks not only a widespread frustration over current economic conditions which are, admittedly, bad even by Central European standards but also anger over corruption which appears pervasive. Of the two the former is the more often pointed to by observers, but the latter is the more critical.
A perception of corruption, of cronyism, of the hoi oligoi ripping off and exploiting the hoi polloi necessarily results in a corrosion of faith in the current system. Taken to the extreme, corrupt acts by members of the government leads to a violent exercise in regime change as in Kyrgyzstan.
Corruption along with economic conditions which seem to have a greater, disproportionate impact on the working class, the small shopkeeper, the lesser farmer provides a very rich soil for politicians hawking the wares of the farther right shore of politics. They cater effectively to a general sense that the status quo is so rigged to the sole benefit of the hoi oligoi that wholesale change is needed. This, of course, along with a hefty dose of national pride and the appointment of an evil "Other," constitutes the stock in trade of Jobbik and similar parties throughout Europe.
As has been seen in the US with the shrill, not to say, hysterical reactions of the Left to the rise of the Tea Party Movement, the European internationalist elites have responded to any success by a so-called "populist" party by attacking the voters rather than soberly assessing the real world motivations for the vote having gone the way it did.
There are very good, quite realistic reasons for disenchantment among the European hoi polloi. The rush toward meshing the many quite different nations of Europe into a single entity has been way too rapid not to perturb the equanimity of those many folks who are not by virtue of employment, education, or background given to celebrating internationalism, let alone the multi-cultural stance so fervently embraced by the "betters" of the EU.
The stresses imposed by Muslim immigration and the apologies offered by the multi-cultis on their behalf have fostered a sense of alienation within their own lands on the part of many. One consequence has been to increase the distrust felt by some as to the motives and worthiness of those in government.
Further stressing the social and political cohesion of most European states have been the effects of the Great Recession. The view from the bottom of the economic pyramid has been that somehow, some way, the Mr and Ms Bigs of the several European states have been able to ride out the recession. The conclusion drawn all-too-often is the hoi oligoi have made a corrupt bargain to protect themselves while offloading the bitter fruit of economic calamity on the lesser sorts.
Absent any of these several stressors there is little doubt but the traditional waver between Center-Left and Center-Right governments would have continued. However, the European social and political compacts have been tried and found wanting under the pressure of these several recent phenomena. The result has been a shift to the extremes on the political spectrum.
The fact that the extreme most favored by recent voters has been that on the Right is quite important. The Right emphasizes the national. National identity. National economy. National interest above all. The European voters have shown in impressive numbers that they reject the forced integration not only of the several European states but of non-Europeans into the local culture, society, polity, and, most importantly, sense of identity.
This is evidence that, once more, the lofty thinking people who live in the high mountains of the Left have no clue how the hoi polloi not only live but think of themselves, their nation, their identity as individuals and as a nation. With disdain bordering on arrogance, the high minded who inhale the rarefied air of an ideal world have shown that their belief in changing the "lesser sorts" to a similar view of life and living if only enough hectoring, lecturing, verbal beating is administered does not work.
The True Believers of the Left in Europe and, dare one write, the US as well, have been and continue to act as if they are the new divinely ordained aristocracy equipped by virtue of birth, education, employment, social and economic status to dictate to all the rest, the vast majority, how they should live, how they should view life and the world, how they should think and behave. This proclamation of being in sole possession of moral rectitude serves to provide grounds for alienation.
The alienation is enhanced when the elite slide through economic hard times relatively undamaged. The alienation is completed when the the two perceptions combine to give rise to a sense of class based corruption. If the perception is reinforced by proof positive of corruption in high (and not so high) places as it has been in Hungry, the result is the rise of the more extreme Right.
Once again an elite has been hoisted on a petard of its own making. In Hungry as in other European states the lurch to the far Right has been caused by the attitudes, words, and actions of the Left leaning elite.
That ground truth is what should be exercising the movers and shakers of the EU, not the specifics of the Hungarian election. Of course, this will not happen. The elite in Europe as in the US is too blinded by its own light, believes too deeply in its own press releases, is too sure of its own rectitude to engage in self-examination.
Failing this, the elite can only lambaste the blindness, the stupidity, the xenophobia of the lesser breeds in need of guidance, care, and supervision. And so the days of the Left elite may be numbered, small numbered.
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