Nika Kovacs

The kind of next big election that everybody's been watching is Hungary.

Slovenia is often seen as a bellwether too.

It's a small country, but it's kind of often been seen as an indicator of where things are going, at least in that part of Europe.

It seems like Peter Magyar, the opposition candidate in Hungary, has the best chance to beat Viktor Orban of anybody since 2010 when Orban came back to power.

I know you have a lot of Hungarian friends.

What is your assessment of kind of the Hungarian election, but also does the Slovenian election...

have any relevance to Hungary in the sense of, you know, Jansa and Orban are buddies and Jansa just underperformed?

I mean, how are you feeling about the Hungarian election?

Well, we need to hold on to hope right now.

Last question I want to ask you is, you know, we've talked a lot on this podcast and, you know, you and I have talked a lot about how networked the far right is, how much they learn from each other, how they help each other.

You've already talked about the fact that, you know, there's Hungarian money, the buying up media in Slovenia, there's Israeli...

Ex-Massad helping both Orban and Johnson.

You had Marco Rubio fly to Hungary to endorse Viktor Orban.

There's all these synergies on the right.

What we need to do more on the progressive side is similarly network and learn from each other.

And frankly, I think a lot of those types of people listen to this podcast.

When you look back on the Slovenian election that just took place,

what lessons would you identify that might be relevant to progressives who are mounting campaigns either in politics or civil society in other countries?

And if I may ask kind of a leading question, it seems like being aggressive in exposing and revealing that foreign interference is probably one lesson.

Don't just wait for the newspaper to print it.