Whenever and wherever a European nation reverts to its legacy, history, culture, and traditions, it immediately finds itself being tamed by alien “democratic” forces which trim national aspirations across the world to make peoples conform to the preferences of the global financial sector. The developments around Hungary at the start of 2012 provided a vivid example of the paradigm: the country which became a UN member back in 1955, joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the precursor of today's WTO) in 1973, entered the IMF and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development in 1982, got a seat in the Council of Europe in 1991, and merged into NATO in 2004 seemed to be in every sense a part of the community of Western democracies centered around the IMF and the EU but is at the moment being treated as a beating boy by the West. A recent paper in The Financial Times explains with utmost clarity the causes behind the shift: “Hungary’s prime minister presents a reminder – should anyone on this continent need one – of the familiar trajectory from economic chaos to political authoritarianism. The European Union has had two grand projects since the fall of the Berlin Wall: the single currency and the advance of democracy eastwards. The euro is now in serious trouble. Mr Orban sends a powerful message about the perils facing democracy”. The round of media invectives against Hungary, especially those churned out by US outlets, illustrate the West's mechanics of dividing the world into those who currently belong to the elite club and those who do not. Evidently, Hungarian premier Victor Orban was weeded out for his “journey from anticommunist progressive to populist xenophobe”, the latter being a description slapped on Orban as a severe reprimand for his advocacy of Hungary's national interests. “Paradoxically for a politician so visceral in his hostility to post-Soviet Russia, Mr Orban’s version of democracy is one that would surely win plaudits from Vladimir Putin”, says The Financial Times. 

What the hammering reflects is the West's concern that the situation in Hungary can eventually replicate that in Greece where social spending used to seriously limit the financial sector's ability to prey on the national economy. In the case of Greece, unhappy investors rushed to parts of the world ready to offer sweeter deals and thus forced the country to borrow ever more from the IMF and the EU. 

Strictly speaking, in Hungary it is not the swelling sovereign debt that tops the grievances list of the greedy horde of global financial players. The debt stayed at the level of 75% of the GDP – by all means a tolerable figure for Europe – in the second quarter of 2011. It did climb to 82% in the third quarter, but, considering the modest proportions of the Hungarian economy, the trend still did not look particularly alarming. Nevertheless, the Hungarian government's two consecutive attempts to market fresh bonds in Europe ended with a fiasco, the forint suffered a major value drain over the first week of 2012, and the Hungarian bonds are being traded on increasingly harsh terms. The yield on Hungary's five-year and ten-year bonds jumped to around 10.5%, which is an indication that international investors are unwilling to lend money to the country whose credit ratings were downgraded to junk status and outlook – assessed as grim by Moody's and Standard and Poor's in November, 2011. The lesson to be learned from the records of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal which all had to request IMF bailouts shows that even a 7% yield signals imminent sovereign insolvency. Hungary which will need Euro 16b by the end of the year to repay the maturing part of its sovereign debt is a candidate for more or less the same, but it is fair to say that the country with an economy which was considered relatively healthy a short time ago is facing a debt crisis for political rather than fiscal reasons.

According to Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Hungary's political problems began when its nationalist forces convincingly won the parliamentary elections in the spring of 2010 and the Fidesz-led coalition gained two thirds of the seats in the legislature. The outcome would not have bothered the West too much if Hungary's sweeping sellout benefiting Western investors continued, but already in the summer of 2010 the new Hungarian premier V. Orban opted for a definitive turn away from the IMF by rejecting the Fund's austerity demands which, if met, threatened to plunge much of the Hungarian population deeper into poverty. Contrary to IMF recommendations, Orban imposed additional taxes on the financial sector in a belief that those who pump revenues out of the Hungarian economy more than others should also bear the costs of re-energizing it. Importantly, Hungary went so far as to subject to an overhaul the regulations concerning the status of its central bank. The step momentarily drew the ire of the IMF and the EU which interpreted it as Orban's attempt to put under government control the financial institution which so far used its independence to engage in speculative financial games while looking down on the Hungarian administration.

Subsequent developments in Hungary kept fueling the discord. Saying that democracy and free market only help the key Western powers tailor the world to their liking became too commonplace to outrage Washington or Brussels. These days, one gets an impression that the global heavyweights are tired of pushing for “democracy” and the countries weak in comparison – of protesting on recurrent occasions, but the new constitution which came into force in Hungary on January 1, 2012 simply had to draw a furious reaction. “Suffused with ethnic nationalism, it reeks of an ambition for one-party rule. It promises repression of personal freedoms within Hungary…”, writes The Financial Times. One might only wonder what could prompt the outcry.

The constitution, for example, states that God and Christianity – not banks, the EU membership, or democratic values, therefore – unite the Hungarian people. It should be realized that this happens to be the view to which Hungarians subscribed in a national poll. Charging the state with the mission of protecting human lives, the constitution says unequivocally that life begins at the moment of conception. Chances are you find the approach commendable, but from the European feminists' perspective it de facto represents an infringement upon the right to kill unborn babies. Furthermore, the Hungarian constitution boldly defines marriage as a heterosexual alliance. In other words, Hungary's fundamental law establishes that Muslims or Hindus do not fit into the core of the European Christian nation and denies homosexuals equal rights.  

The noisy campaign rising in the Western media and picked up by Hungarian NGOs thriving on foreign grants really deserves no attention, but Washington and Brussels are already pressing the same message that Orban's reforms are eroding civilian liberties in Hungary. Orban and his Fidesz, the party with two thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament, are slammed as nationalists steering the country away from the democratic values Hungary adopted two decades ago in the wake of the collapse of the communist regime.

The US is also leveling heavy criticism at Hungary's new law on religion which grants official recognition to a total of 14 confessions, thus outlaws a number of sects, and is slammed over impeding the spread of untraditional religions in the country. Brussels is sharply critical of Hungary's new personal data protection code and of the law on the prosecution for crimes committed under the communist rule, particularly during the suppression of the 1956 rebellion. Western democracy watchers are concerned that the latter can serve to tighten the political pressure on the Hungarian opposition socialist party – the popular support for it has long evaporated and the desperate socialists would gladly accept Western donations in return for joining the game against Orban. To ward off criticisms against the political platform shared by the pro-Orban majority, the Hungarian leader established a budgetary council authorized to veto budget drafts and, consequently, to block risky liberal initiatives or even call snap elections. Orban's government appointed the supreme court chairman and the chief prosecutor who were similarly given extensive additional powers. Eötvös, G. Soros' pet institute, released a statement in response warning that a governance crisis would hit Hungary in case its ruling coalition is ousted from power. No doubt, any regulations being prescribed to the financial sector must sound like a crisis of governance to someone like Soros, but Hungarian taxpayers welcome the measures as means against inflating bubbles at the expense of the national budget. 

The EU is currently planning a crackdown on its unexpectedly defiant member. European Commission president José Manuel Barroso sent several letters to Orban with expressions of concern over the reforms in Hungary and threats to probe into the compatibility between the country's legislative innovations and the EU norms. Barroso does admit that in this regard the EU has limited space for maneuver as, like any other European country, Hungary is entitled to decide for itself. One gets an impression that if the EU had rapid reaction forces like those of the US, Brussels could discover much greater space for maneuver. Since the EU tends to focus on the economic dimension of the brewing conflict with Hungary, its natural priority is to talk Orban's government into leaving the independence of the Hungarian central bank untouched, that is, to let it go on avoiding accountability to any of the Hungarian statehood institutions. The European Commission employs both economic and legal leverage to regain Hungary's obedience, by demonstratively breaking off negotiations with the country over the necessary credits or by looking into the possibility of an inquiry into its case in the EU Court of Justice. 

As always, the interests of the international financial lobby are initially advanced by civilian means, though such stories occasionally escalate into military campaigns. Money is usually the means of first resort. Banks have sufficient resources to cause thousands or dozens of thousands of people to take to the streets. Around 30,000 people flocked to the January 2 anti-government rally in Budapest to urge Orban to step down and to express support for the independence of the Hungarian central bank. Leader of the opposition solidarity movement Sandor Szekely told Reuters that the new constitution came as a heavy blow to the democratic mechanisms Hungary had been cultivating since 1989. The 30,000 people marching to the IMF tune will surely go a long way…