Viktor Orban of Hungary has become paradigmatic of a sort of soft dictatorship, maintaining at least some of the mechanisms of an open society, a republic, with one hand but subverting those mechanisms in favor of an illiberal authoritarianism on the other. When did Orban and his regime earn this paradigmatic status? The key years were 2011-2012. That is when his regime drafted a new constitution behind closed doors, rushed it through parliament in nine days and passed it on a party line. This tailor-made constitution saw a reduction in the number of seats in parliament from 386 to 199. Orban maintains tight control over this shrunken body. A few years later (2020) he had that parliament vote for a bill that created a state of emergency without a time limit, essentially giving Orban the power to rule without them. Now, though, there are signs of life in resistance, forming around the figure of a former disciple of Orban, now on the outs largely over the issue of...
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Last week I quoted from a 1975 book by Adam Fergusson, WHEN MONEY DIES, about the Weimar era hyperinflation. One point the book makes that was new to me was that the Germans weren't the only ones hit. All three of the defeated powers (I say 3 because of course after the war Austria and Hungary were separate countries, no longer connected by Emperor or hyphen) were subjected to the ruinous war reparations demands of the victorious allies, and all three countries gave in to the temptation to gun up the printing presses. As to the consequences, I found this passage of great interest: Only the country people were surviving in Germany [in autumn 1922] in any comfort: anyone who lived off the land had the readiest access to real values. It was not surprising that even when they ensured that the money receipts for their goods were no more than equivalent in purchasing power than what they were used to, they were accused of extortion-- the more so if they del...