Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances. “Trump is trying to break things quickly,” says Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University. She also notes Orbán’s involvement in the right-wing Project 2025 initiative and his adoption of the motto “Make Europe Great Again” during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union last year as further evidence of the close ties between the two leaders. As Orbán works to “consolidate this movement of anti-democratic far-right forces” in Europe, warns Scheppele, Trump is tightening his grasp on the other side of the Atlantic.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We turn now to an expert on autocracy who says the Trump administration’s moves to gut the federal government, shape the judiciary and punish critics are all following a well-known playbook — not just the right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025, but the autocratic playbook of Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Today, in an in an unprecedented move by a European leader, Orbán hosted the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, AfD, ahead of an election in two weeks, even as other Western leaders have sought to contain the party.
At least one key member of Trump’s new administration has closely studied Orbán: the controversial far-right pundit Sebastian Gorka, who previously worked at the Hungarian Ministry of Defense before Orbán and is now Trump’s deputy assistant to the president and senior National Security Council director for counterterrorism, a top post that did not require Senate confirmation. Gorka advised Trump in his first term but was pushed out after The Forward revealed he once had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic and racist paramilitary militia in Hungary. This week, Gorka addressed a security forum.
SEBASTIAN GORKA: If you share our values, you are on team Western civilization — not just Western Hemisphere, Western civilization. President Trump stated the following: The only question of our time is if we have the will to defend and save our civilization from those who wish to destroy it. And if you believe that, the next four years will be beautiful for you and America.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as candidates for top national security positions are now facing questions that appear to be a Trump loyalty test, including whether they accept his false claim that he won the 2020 election.
For more, we’re joined by Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, specializing in the rise and fall of constitutional government, focusing on Hungary. Her recent guest essay for The New York Times is headlined “Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?”
Professor Scheppele, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you answer your question? What are you seeing in this country, as you lived for many years in Hungary, and what you saw there?
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah. Well, so, first of all, nice to be back with you.
Unfortunately, we’re under very difficult circumstances. And so, I think it’s really important, in looking at how democracies fail these days — and the crucial thing to say about Hungary is that it was a robust democracy, sort of top of its class in Eastern Europe in 2010, when Viktor Orbán came to power. And by the end of that decade, virtually all of the democracy raters rated it as no longer a democracy. I would say the collapse happened even faster. Really, Orbán did almost everything to undermine democracy for Hungary’s future just in the first three years.
So, as we’re looking at what’s happening now in Washington, one of the things we see is this everything-everywhere-all-at-once attack on all of the pillars of democracy. And that was exactly how Orbán did it. Came into power. While he had been out of power for eight years before he was elected in 2010, he had private law firms, private groups write a blueprint, so that when he was — as soon as he took office, he could hit the ground running and just, you know, come out with thousands of pages of laws, with all kinds of programs, that hit sort of every sector of civil society, of the economy, you know, all at once. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing here, is that kind of playbook.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Scheppele, I’m wondering: In your studies, is there any essential or qualitative difference between an autocratic government and a fascist government? Does it even — is it even worthwhile to make the distinction? What’s your sense?
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah. Well, so, I tend not to be very big on labels in this area, in part because as soon as you define what each of these regimes looks like, someone like Orbán, who actually does read and actually is pretty knowledgeable, unlike the U.S. president, who, shall we say, probably hasn’t gotten all the way through a book in a long time — Viktor Orbán knows what he’s doing. And so, as soon as you label him something, he will do something that misses, you know, item four on what you have to have to get the label. So, I’m a little nervous about the labels. And, you know, fascism, I think, also means an ideology.
What I’m concentrating on when I talk about autocracy is the system of checks and balances that allows for the future rotation of power and that prevents it from being captured by one political faction. Now, you know, governments that are trying to capture all the levers of power can have all kinds of surface ideologies. Now, what we’re seeing is that Trump is even echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric. So, if you think Orbán’s a fascist, you probably think Trump is, as well. But for me, the really crucial thing is: Are you eliminating checks and balances? Are you eliminating the things that allow future elections to be free and fair?
And what we’re seeing, I think, you know, as Trump has come to power, with this blitz, with this program, this Project 2025 program, written by private actors while Trump was out of power, is that he’s attacking the nerve centers of American government. I think one thing we’ve missed is that, you know, the first places that Elon Musk went into were the Office of Personnel Management, so controlling the entire federal workforce; the Treasury, controlling all of the payments, as well as the budget, you know, in and out of — money in and out of government; and then the General Services Administration, which controls all the buildings and the facilities, but also all the IT. So they first went into these nerve centers, and we still don’t know exactly what they’ve done there.
But it seems, as people are trying to figure out what they’ve done, that they didn’t just steal data, but they also did things like put spyware on the computers of people at Treasury, so they’re monitoring everything that those people are doing. They’re building a kind of centralized dashboard that can be looked at from the White House and allow the president, or Musk, if he is the X president, as I think we should call him, to allow the people in the White House to exercise direct control over federal agencies without going through any intermediaries, any Senate-confirmed appointments or any checks and balances on the system. Now, Orbán did that, too. He centralized everything in the office of the prime minister. The Cabinet secretaries became, if not irrelevant, then certainly not where the action was. And it’s that really sudden and extreme concentration of power that I think we have to keep our eye on and be very worried about.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And can you talk about Orbán’s role in terms of Project 2025, the Danube Institute, and its relationship with the Heritage Foundation, and also his attempt to become a center for right-wing movements throughout Europe?
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah, exactly. So, first of all, you know, when Project 2025 came out, I sat down and read it, and the first thing I thought was, you know, this sounds so much like what Orbán did. And then, it turns out, a month later, there was a terrific article in The New Republic that made the connection.
So, Orbán has this English-language think tank. It’s called the Danube Institute. You can google it and see what it’s up to. And the Danube Institute had entered into a formal agreement with the Heritage Foundation to actually provide consulting on how the Trump people were going to copy what Orbán had done. In the meantime, you know, when Orbán gives his Hungarian-language speeches, one of the things he keeps saying is, you know, “We are deep into the Trump administration and involved in its central planning.” So, you put all this together, and it’s actually not just that the Trump people are aping Orbán from a distance, it’s that Orbán has actually been involved in the design of Project 2025.
Now, this mirrors what Orbán has also done in Europe. So, the European elections, the elections to the European Parliament, were held last June, and Orbán’s Fidesz party spent more money on campaigning for fellow far-right parties in other countries, like not just in Hungary, but in countries all over Europe, than any other single party in Europe. And remember, Hungary is a tiny country, you know, nine-and-a-half million people, on the edge of Europe. They’re advertising in Germany. They’re advertising in France. They’re advertising in much bigger countries. And it turns out that this advertising, along with the general sort of collapse and weaknesses of party systems across Europe, meant that the far right had victories really all over the place. And Orbán was able to take those far-right victories and cobble together what has become the third-largest political party in the European Parliament. And so, that’s an incredible political accomplishment.
And what you’re seeing is that Orbán is now sort of riding atop this wave of election victories across Europe and claiming to be the heart and soul of this new far-right movement. He was president of something called — the rotating president of what’s called the Council in the last half of 2024. And when he unveiled his presidency, the slogan was “Make Europe Great Again,” which was also the slogan of this far-right gathering that we just saw in Spain as Orbán pulled together all these far-right parties. So, you know, Orbán is a prime minister of a tiny country on the edge of Europe, but he is now punching far above his weight in trying to consolidate this movement of anti-democratic far-right forces.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcoming Donald Trump’s inauguration last month.
PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBÁN: [translated] The stars under which we stand now are much more favorable than they were in 2024. Not only we became stronger, but, in the meantime, the flagship of the Western liberal politics had sunken. The Western world received a patriotic, pro-peace, anti-migration, pro-family president in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you could respond to what Orbán is saying, Professor Scheppele? But also, one of the things you point out is that you have these authoritarian leaders that don’t just take power. I mean, even Hitler won an election. Orbán won an election. And then, what that process is, consolidating the power, so much so that right now President Trump — what is it? — hundreds of executive orders? But isn’t that a sign of weakness, not strength? I mean, he’s got the House and the Senate. Why can’t he pass these laws, and not get around them, with Republicans in the majority in both houses?
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Right. So, actually, if you remember, in Donald Trump’s first term, he had even larger majorities in both houses for the first half of his first term. And even then, he did not move to legislation. So, I think part of the reason is that Trump wants to move fast. Orbán also wanted to move fast. You know, Orbán, in his first year in office, amended the Hungarian Constitution 12 times, changing 60 different provisions of the Constitution. Orbán had a supermajority in his parliament, so he was able to work with them. Trump has got razor-thin majorities now in both houses. Also, amending the U.S. Constitution is beyond the bounds of almost any single political party. So Trump is doing something else. And this is the crucial thing about the autocratic playbook. It doesn’t look exactly the same in every country, because the political systems don’t look exactly the same.
So, Trump is trying to break things quickly so that by the time the courts catch up with him, by the time his own party starts to have second thoughts, by the time all of the forces that are checks and balances regroup and figure out how to push back, the thing will be broken, you know? So, I think what Trump has learned, and what Orbán also, I think, taught him is that, you know, think of government as an aquarium. If you just stick a blender in it and make fish soup, you’re not going to be able to restore the aquarium even when courts tell you, “No, you shouldn’t have done it like that.” So, this is really, you know, break things first, act fast to create facts on the ground, and then, when especially the judiciary is slow to catch up with you, you can’t do anything.
So, let me give you one example from Hungary. In order to capture the judiciary, what Orbán did was to suddenly lower the judicial retirement age from 70 to 62. And in Hungary, like most European countries, the judiciary is a civil service activity, so you come in as a baby judge, you get promoted through the ranks. The people who are the oldest are also the most senior. So, you suddenly lower the retirement age, effective like today. All these judges are forced out of office. They then bring a lawsuit, saying, you know, “We were improperly, illegally fired.” Couple years later, the European courts get around to saying, “Yes, that shouldn’t have happened. This is a violation of European law.” By that time, Orbán has filled all the positions. He goes back to court and says, “Well, do you want us to fire the new judges?” at which point the European Commission, which is enforcing this court decision, says, “Well, we really don’t want you to fire any new judges. Just give the new judges protections so that this can’t happen again.” OK? And what that meant, he captured all the courts and got European blessing for it all, because he moved first, broke things.
And this is what we’re seeing. You know, Trump is just creating facts on the ground. He’ll destroy agencies before the court tells him, “You have to restore them.” So, again, the metaphor is, you start as an aquarium, you create the fish soup, and no court can make you go back again.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 20 seconds, but what about if these federal workers, if the heads of agencies simply refuse to leave, create the constitutional crisis on the other side? The judiciary has to rule, and instead of ruling years later when all these people are gone, they rule now, and the agencies don’t get shut down.
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah, well, a few of the officials who have been fired have tried to make a last stand. You know, some of the inspectors general did, and the head of the Federal Election Commission did. The problem in Washington is that they can just deactivate your badge at the door. So, in Poland, when the judges went back into court after their retirement age was lowered, they could get into the court. But in our government, it’s very difficult, because the buildings themselves have so much security. But still, I think it’s good for people who are in office to say, “I’m not leaving until you force me,” and just create friction in the system. Slow it down is actually the best defense in circumstances like this.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, specializing in the rise and fall of constitutional government, with a special focus on Hungary. We’ll link to your piece in the Times, “Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?”
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