Analysis
Democratic Security
The Open Question of Rumen Radev
23 April 2026
Authoritarian populists employ hatemongering not only against ethnic or national minorities but against agents that could somewhat restrict their executive power. Hence, the recent attempts of Fidesz to use xenophobic rhetoric against the Roma community in Hungary is not too dissimilar from the attack by PiS politicians on the independence of hte Polish judiciary.
To understand the nature of authoritarian populism in Hungary and Poland, where the governments thrive on identifying enemies and the amplification of fears, one should remember the old joke about the optimist and the pessimist.
In this joke, the pessimist is stressed that the situation is so bad it cannot get worse. Then the optimist says: yes, it can get even worse.
Sense of justice
The Hungarian Prime Minister opened a new chapter at the beginning of the year. After a Hungarian Appeals Court ruled that, altogether, 100 million Hungarian forints shall be paid as compensation to the Roma students whose education suffered due to racial segregation, the leader of Fidesz claimed that the decision was a selfish, self-centred “fundraising mission” of George Soros.
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