World Politics Digest thread

Orban's tactics in a nutshell:

• Diminish or eliminate independent media directly (via witholding broadcasting licences) or indirectly via witholding state grants from companies who advertise on independent media
• Friendly media pumps out propaganda on behalf of the government
• Requires an existential threat. In the last election it was muslim immigrants. This time out it was the LGBT community. George Soros has been a constant bogeyman.
• Alter the voting system and voting access purely to help his own party stay in power with a super majority in order to allow them to do whatever they want unchecked.
• Form a voting bloc along with Poland, Czech Rep and Slovakia (The Visegrad nations) who back each other up in EU votes when it comes to things like migrant resettlement and LGBT rights.
• Be Russia's greatest ally within the EU. Wield a veto to protect Russia's interests and in term get a good rate on Russian gas (I suspect uncle Vlad taught Orban a few tricks as well in terms of brainwashing the nation)
• Funnel EU money to cronies and family members via awarding of contracts - the richest man in Hungary is an old classmate of Orban. Orban's father is currently building a giant mansion outside of Budapest.

I see the President is still hanging on there - he's the brother of the PM. I can't imagine the people are going to be satisfied until the whole family is out of power.

I watched that yesterday as well. Disinformation is really incredible....and not in a good way. Seeing those children parrot off lines about how Martial Law under the Marcos regime had, in fact, been a good thing for the Philippines was quite chilling.

Between the election of Trump, Brexit, the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, deluges of Covid disinformation during the Pandemic and now this election, I can see historians looking back at this era as the period in which rampant disinformation spread unchecked via the internet with serious negative consequences for many countries around the world.