Orban has encouraged Hungary to follow a dark cultural path - what Allan Bloom called the School of Resentment / Culture of Grievances.
In that school’s thought Hungary is an eternal victim mistreated by the world and the whole purpose of the world is to hurt Hungarians and therefore Hungarians are owed by the world and they don’t need to be bound by conventional morals.
Very similar to “Critical Race Theory” and has the same roots.
That framework doesn’t make people’s lives better and Hungary is falling behind their peers.
The believers of this nonsense find common cause with other grievance culture losers like Russia and China though.
This article by Zsuzsanna Szelenyi describes par of why Hungary is what it is today:
The Generation that Betrayed Hungarian Democracy. How did bright-eyed young liberals become populist reactionaries? A former lawmaker explains the transformation of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.
[Note: Liberal is European liberal, i.e. free market etc, not the leftists in the US.]
Fidesz at this time had a strong liberal voice, calling for the rule of law and transparency. But as we quickly learned, the party was not immune to power struggles, backroom deals and compromises. Elected party chairman in 1993, Orban wasted no time in taking control of Fidesz’s resources and establishing himself as unchallenged leader. He was adept at pressuring members to fall into line, building a circle of loyal cronies and followers who responded to his missionary zeal. By 1993, the party suffered deep internal divisions. The final rupture occurred when we learned that Orban and the party’s treasurer had used party funds to reap profits from a luxury car rental company, with money channelled through a crony’s enterprises.
In 1994, the liberal wing of Fidesz left the party. I was among the five MPs and several hundred members who defected. I felt that my personal integrity and political beliefs would be continually challenged if I stayed in the party of Viktor Orban. The following year, Fidesz formalised Orban’s complete authority and the party made a sharp political turn to the right. Policy was now driven by pure opportunism – like the way Fidesz leaders suddenly started participating in Catholic masses, to court religious voters.
Still, there were worrying signs of Orban’s intentions to strengthen executive power at the expense of other branches of government. Fidesz cut the length of parliamentary sessions, degrading parliamentary oversight and debate even as the party tightened its grip on state media. Another problem was corruption. I remember talking to a Fidesz lawmaker, a former colleague, who blithely explained that party members were entitled to take their share from the public pot. It was disheartening to see how crafty Fidesz was in perfecting well-worn corrupt practices, like favouring cronies with public procurements. Such crookedness laid the groundwork for greater wrongdoing after EU funds started to flow following Hungary’s accession to the bloc in 2004.
https://www.europesfutures.eu/fellow/the-generation-that-betrayed-hungarian-democracy