No more liberal democracy in Hungary

So now we know.

Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán tells his Transylvanian audience that liberal democracy has failed and what he wants is something more like Russia and China. I am providing a translation of parts of the !!444!!! summing up below. For a longer, fuller comment see the article by the always excellent Eva Balogh .
 
Translation:

"The model of liberal democracy collapsed in 2008. We are now seeing a race between nations and large organisations to discover a new system. Hungary is at the cutting edge of these new politics since it has already broken with the liberal democracy model. The new political model in Hungary is the work-based state. It is not liberal in character. It allows for the principle of liberty but is not liberty based..."

The points Orbán continues to make are:

1. The vast differential between the very rich and the poorest in America is of a revolutionary nature. [GS note: Which is of course not the case with Russian oligarchs and Chinese millionaires, or the super-wealthy of Mumbai and Mumbai slum dwellers]

2. No-one is ever concerned for the welfare of the white working class [GS note: I don't need to draw attention to the whiteness of that working class]

3. The super-rich control everything. [GS note: The fact that he ascribes this to liberal democracy rather than capitalism is interesting. That is because Orbán and Fidesz loathe socialism more than anything]

4. Europe is an [economic] basket-case...

The problems with liberal democracy, he continues, were that

a) It did not serve the national interest
b) It did not recognise the nationality of Hungarians abroad to be Hungarian
c) It did not defend public [national] property

He goes on to condemn political [GS: add 'cultural', meaning certain theatres among other things] opposition groups who were, he said 'financed from abroad' and were 'fronts for political activism', blaming particularly the Norwegians.

This, he said, was Hungary's era in the Carpathian basin. [GS: That won't delight all the neighbouring states, but if he is well-in with Putin he won't care about that.]

I think we have seen such statements before, in the 1930s, pointing to the weakness of liberal democracies and advocating the Stalin / Mussolini / Hitler model. Here we go again.