Orbán vs. Soros: What Looking at Hungary Can Also Teach Us

Book Review by Wolfram Schrems*

This coming April, the Hungarian Parliament will have elections. The synchronized German-speaking media landscape has been drumming up support for the opposition candidates for months. The direction Hungary takes will, one way or another, have repercussions for all of Europe. That is why the Hungarian election is particularly hard-fought.

In this tense situation, the book Orbán gegen Soros (Original: Orbán kontra Soros, Budapest 2024), published in German last June, serves as an important orientation guide for German-speaking readers. The Jungeuropa Verlag once again had a good publication idea; it comes at the right time (following the Orbán biography already reviewed on katholisches).

The present title is a political work whose author is well aware of the spiritual dimension of these events. It is recommended to the readers of a Catholic website for the reason that experience shows many Catholics are not always well-informed on political issues and all too often trust the press system. Anyone who feels called as a believer to be active politically or "metapoliticaly" should inform themselves thoroughly.

Publisher Philip Stein again had the fortunate idea of asking Hungarian historian Mária Schmidt for a foreword. She is the director of the House of Terror Memorial (Terror háza) in Budapest and was once a Soros scholarship recipient. Professor Schmidt had already contributed to the German edition of Michel Onfray’s Theory of Dictatorship, also published by Jungeuropa.

The Author and His Topic

Gábor G. Fodor is a habilitated political scientist and a close friend of the Prime Minister. He headed the board of the Századvég Foundation and has been the strategic director of the 21st Century Institute since 2021 (which, incidentally, co-organized the Patrimonium Sancti Adalberti conference in Prague last October).

Fodor presents the events since the first influence of the Hungarian-Jewish speculator and supposed "philanthropist" György Schwartz, alias George Soros, in Hungary in an exciting and witty manner. Soros (pronounced "Sho-rosh" according to Hungarian phonetics) is an assumed name from the constructed language Esperanto, meaning: "He will rise" (135).

Fodor traces the decades-long relationship between Soros and the rising opposition figure and later Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. This relationship culminated in 2017 in an open confrontation by the latter, after Soros had for many years committed "foul after foul" against Orbán and Hungarian interests "below the water's surface"—to use the author's water polo analogy. Orbán initiated a poster campaign featuring George Soros's face ("Let's not let Soros have the last laugh!") and removed his Central European University—a "cadre forge for subversion and regime change," indeed, "an elite gladiator school for the region's future prime ministers" (66)—from Hungary.

From the Foreword

This overview by Mária Schmidt serves as the book's main motif:

> "In the blink of an eye, he [Orbán] rose to the leadership of the opposition forces [late 1980s], who wanted to change the system from the ground up and became the beacon of hope for all people longing for a new, democratic Hungary. Soros also immediately recognized the signs of the times, the man of the future, whom he supported with a study abroad scholarship. This could have been the beginning of a wonderful friendship. But nothing came of it. Orbán soon realized that free things are the most expensive. Already as an MP and party chairman of Fidesz in parliament, he rejected any further support from Soros and waived his financial aid" (9).

> 

After long battles beneath the surface and a patient wait for the right moment by Orbán (Prime Minister from 1998–2002 and continuously since 2010), he went on the offensive following the 2015 invasion orchestrated by the Soros empire:

> "He lifted the veil over an army of politicians, NGOs, and aid organizations controlled and paid for by Soros, as well as over the 'objective' and 'independent' experts and media representatives who serve him faithfully" (10).

> 

The Background: Capitalism and Communism – Underground Connections

It is very interesting and likely unknown to most contemporaries in the West that George Soros gained a foothold in Hungary as early as 1984 with the founding of the so-called MTA-Soros Foundation Committee. (Incidentally, Soros also founded a branch in Moscow in 1987.) Fodor finds this "extraordinarily exciting" (19).

The Temptation

On June 16, 1989, Viktor Orbán appeared in public when, in connection with the reburial of Imre Nagy, he called on the Russians to withdraw from Hungary: "You can pack! The end! The game is over!" At that time, Orbán became known throughout Hungary as a self-confident, even bold, opposition figure.

In 1992, Soros invited the rapidly rising young politician Orbán to his office in New York:

> "Central Park is the center of the globalist world; the top floor belonged to Soros, and he invited the young Fidesz politician there. For Viktor, it was as if the devil personally wanted to tempt Jesus by laying the world at his feet and saying: 'All this can be yours!' Viktor looked down from the 60th floor, and indeed the world lay at his feet. [...] Soros said he liked what Viktor and his team were doing. Therefore, he had decided to cover all future costs for securing the election victory. That was the offer" (59).

This was rejected. Orbán was now an enemy.

George Soros – Anti-democrat, Nihilist, and Dark Figure

Orbán vs. Soros: What Looking at Hungary Can Also Teach us. 

Fodor is a sharp observer and notes the obvious, which many would prefer not to see and even less to speak out:

 "The most absurd point in Soros's views is that he must simultaneously protect (supranational) liberal democracy from the political elite and from the voters themselves" (71). 

Fodor summarizes George Soros's destructive state of mind: Seeking meaning in life is foolish; therefore, Soros strives to rob people of their identity. Family, paternal duties, the thousand-year-old Hungarian civilization, Christianity—all meaningless.

“The fact that you were born Hungarian has no meaning either, and God is long dead or non-existent. [...] But if at the end there is the great void—if life was therefore useless—then it is completely unnecessary to set goals for which you must suffer and fight or which require sacrifice. It is the Great Nothingness that Soros recommends as the guide for your life. And the Nothingness is strong. Very strong" (75).

The latter statement is likely an allusion to C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, which received Orbán's "special attention" (158). Fodor clearly knows them too. This is gratifying.

The Nothingness manifests in ideologies:

"The soft power that is believed to be most easily exported, however, is genderism. Behind this is the consideration that the Holocaust, as a main ideology, will no longer be sustainable after a certain time and something else must take its place" (102). 

Orbán gegen Soros is already available in English, Czech, and Spanish, in addition to the Hungarian original. A Polish edition is reportedly in preparation.

Nothingness and Mammon correspond in a certain way:

"Soros’ political philanthropy is based on an extremely pessimistic political anthropology, for to Soros, man is an 'empty' being without higher ideals and without interest in truth—a nihilist. [...] That is why everyone can really be bought with money" (114).

Furthermore, Soros likes to fish in troubled waters. The duty of transparency applies to everyone, but not to Soros, the founder of Transparency International (an "irony," 110).

Fodor also addresses Soros's influence on the EU bureaucracy to exert pressure on Hungary (163). Highly interesting are the author's comments on Soros's Ukrainian machinations, who is known to specialize in color revolutions and coups (109ff, 130, etc.).

Existential Risk for Resisters – The Spiritual Dimension

Fodor may lay it on a bit thick, but fundamentally what is said is understandable:

"Viktor's struggle meanwhile bears traits like those of Jesus Christ: Take up the cross and go the way. You are surrounded by a community that you cannot outgrow, no matter where in the world you may end up. You will always return, for you are a 'Somewhere.' You belong here. You take the cross upon yourself, take responsibility, and together we build a successful nation. The contradiction between the two world forces is insoluble—a metaphysical and theological conflict at once" (109f).

Orbán, who is known to be a Calvinist rather than a Catholic, is involved in this conflict with his entire existence; he could easily have "ended up in the slammer":

"What would have happened in the event of a Soros victory can be seen roughly in the Poland of 2024" (173).

But the people "love" Orbán. This love is irrational. “In today's desacralized politics, there is really no rational explanation for it" (183).

Philip Stein – (Overly) Critical Preface

The publisher is perhaps a bit overly critical of his own product in his preface—specifically regarding the author's "use of superlatives," who is also sometimes "naive." The decisive factor for the publication was "the lessons that can be drawn from the power struggle of these two great men for our concrete situation in Germany."

In doing so, Stein finds it completely irrelevant whether one considers Viktor Orbán a true "dragon slayer," sees him more critically, or even despises him as a "conservative." With all due respect, that is somewhat unfortunately phrased. Stein suggests that one might not be able to "unrestrictedly believe every portrayal by Gábor G. Fodor." However, the factual substrate of Fodor’s remarks is surely not to be doubted.

The reviewer can agree with the phrasing: "For that is exactly what this book is at the end of the day: the chronicle of a nation's struggle for self-determination, for the recovery of its sovereignty, its dignity, and above all, its self-confidence" (16)—before the publisher becomes a bit overly critical again. One would like to tell him: Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.

In any case: It is good that Stein published the book!

Summary

The book is deeper than it might appear on the first reading. "Viktor" is certainly Fodor's friend and hero, but since Fodor is neither stupid nor dishonest, he can justify this assessment.

Critically, one would rather have to view Orbán's close connection to the Israeli regime and the dystopian totalitarianism of the Chinese (which, of course, is not the topic of the book).

The book is written fluently and wittily. The translation is apparently professionally done. Nils Wegner's notes are very helpful.

A small error occurred on p. 61: The MDF is or was the Magyar Demokrata Fórum (not Magyar Fórum). Regarding the "bloody attacks in Budapest" (93) in 1998, one would have liked to know more. A footnote would also have been needed for the influential publication Foreign Affairs (99) and the Soros-linked Project Syndicate (156). For Oszkár Jászi (originally Jakubovits, 55), the information that he was one of the seventeen "editors" of the ominous program script City of Man (1940) might have been important.

The reviewer is somewhat baffled that Fodor speaks surprisingly uncritically about the Corona Staging (187).

All in all, the work is a highly recommended read for all who wish to educate themselves on connections in politics that are otherwise seldom illuminated.

Gábor G. Fodor, Orbán gegen Soros – Vier Jahrzehnte des Ringens, translated from Hungarian by Rainer Ackermann, with a foreword by Mária Schmidt and a preface by Philip Stein; Jungeuropa, Dresden 2025. 219 pp.

*Wolfram Schrems, Vienna, Mag. theol., Mag. phil., catechist, pro-lifer; participated on August 19, 1990, in the festival mass with the procession of the relic Szent Jobb of St. Stephen in front of St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest, where President Árpád Göncz and Prime Minister József Antall appeared almost within reach of their compatriots and foreign guests.

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG