April 12 saw the beginning of the unraveling of a chummy troika of strongman rule among Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Victor Orban and America’s Donald Trump. Over the past decade or so, each leader has been in a different stage of gaining complete control of all levers of power in their respective countries. Hungarian voters dealt Orban a massive election loss on the 12th, derailing his quest for unlimited power.
Putin began consolidating power in Russia after the turn of the century and achieved absolute control following his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Victor Orban started his journey to tyrannical rule upon being elected as Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010. He became Putin’s closest friend in the European Union and used the Russian tyrant’s playbook to tighten his grip over Hungary to the point of establishing a dictatorship.
Russia is a kleptocracy where Putin and his cronies have gained massive wealth through their control of the economy. Orban followed suit in Hungary. He helped his son-in-law, Mészáros L?rinc, become a billionaire. Not to be outdone, Donald Trump and his family have doubled their fortune to about $10 billion since his election in 2024. Trump is now negotiating with his own IRS to settle a seriously flawed lawsuit he filed against that agency to collect $10 billion. An obvious case of self-dealing.
Trump has been very close to both of the wealthy tyrants. He has consistently agreed with them on numerous things, including disparagement of NATO, Putin’s war against Ukraine and elevating the economic and political rights of the favored few.
What does a freedom-loving population do when it experiences its voting, economic and other precious rights being eroded away by a strongman. The Hungarians have shown the way–organize, demonstrate and vote. The April 12 emasculation of Orban was not a surprise to me. I was electrified by the Hungarian desire for freedom when I was just 14 years old.
There was great fear in America in the mid-50s about a potential war with the Soviet Union. Kids in school were drilled to respond to a Soviet atomic attack by hiding under their desks. When news came out that Hungarian students and factory workers had risen up against their Soviet masters in October of 1956, I was captivated and inspired. I studied every news report about the Hungarian Revolution and prayed mightily that the freedom fighters would win.
It first appeared that the revolution might succeed. Our Radio Free Europe had been urging the captive nations in Eastern Europe to throw off their Russian chains and we had implied that we would help. After that initial encouragement we did not lift a finger for them, which was absolutely heartbreaking for this 14-year-old. As it turned out, the Soviets responded with crushing force on November 4, 1956, killing thousands of brave Hungarians and installing a repressive leader.
That, however, is not the end of the story. I traveled to Hungary in 1964 to see how things stood. Almost everywhere I went, you could see that the embers of freedom were still burning. The guides, border guards and many folks on the street were friendly and pleased to see Americans. Some made guarded, but favorable, reference to the uprising. It was a marked contrast to the gloomy atmosphere and armed military presence I encountered in East Berlin and Czechoslovakia, which were also under Soviet occupation. While the uprising failed, the Soviets applied a lighter touch of suppression in Hungary because of it.
Hungary was finally freed of Russian control when the Soviet Union crumbled in December of 1991. The country enjoyed a period of democracy until Orban began turning it into a dictatorship. The legacy of the Hungarians’ desire for freedom gradually grew in response, resulting in Orban being cast from power by a two-thirds vote in the April election–too much to overturn with false claims of election fraud.
The other two members of the strongman troika should take heed. Putin has such a strong grip on power that it may be hard for Russians to topple him, although the populace has become restive because of the over million dead and wounded suffered in his Ukraine war. It is not too late, however, for Americans to take heart from the Hungarian freedom-lovers and forge our own rebirth of freedom during this 250th commemoration of our casting off the chains of the British monarch.
The US has a tradition of freedom more deeply ingrained than the good people of Hungary. Americans need to organize, resist and vote to reject the repressive agenda being imposed by America’s member of the strongman troika. If Idahoans can defeat Trump’s Idaho enablers–Senator Risch and Congressmen Fulcher and Simpson–we can undercut his hold on power. It’s all in the hands of Idaho’s freedom-loving voters.
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