Ruth Ben-Ghiat

And people are waking up now.

And there's fissures in the party.

And I think that all of this is going to continue.

So the sleeping is like a moment where, remember that the elite bargain thing.

It only works if the people around you keep saying, you know, the emperor has no clothes thing.

When they refuse to repeat the lies anymore, then it can fall apart.

Well, Hungary shows, it's really interesting the more you look into it, because the way that Magyar campaigned

was designed to get around this trap that Orban had essentially completed a level of media capture, as it's called, when you have bought out or had friends by or allies by.

So in the preceding elections in 2018, 2022, the opposition candidates and their messages weren't even heard by people outside big cities.

because all of the TV stations and radio stations refused to air them.

They didn't give them any airtime.

So Magyar did this thing, which at first I was like, why is he doing that?

For two years, he went on this like, you remember what Mamdani did where he walked the length of Manhattan?

Magyar did this all over Hungary in rural areas.

And he did a million step march and he went to like hundreds of small towns and small cities.

He went to almost all the parishes in Hungary.

So this is why it took two years.

And he presented himself in person to these people.

And he held rallies, even small ones.

And he just had this, he's in his 40s, so he had huge amounts of energy to do this.