"Reality Free of Ideology" – Viktor Orban’s Realism and Illiberalism

The paper attempts to explore the political thinking behind the turn that took place in Hungarian politics in 2010 when Viktor Orban came to power with a supermajority in parliament allowing the government to carry out deep changes in the political system of the country. It will be suggested that what Prime Minister Orban called illiberalism has strong links to the realist understanding of politics. The question is whether it was a realist turn in Hungarian political thinking that grounded illiberalism or, on the contrary it was a break with liberalism that opened the way for realist politics. It will be supposed that illiberalism in Viktor Orban's thinking is different from mere anti-liberalism and it is realism what makes a difference. The paper argues that the change of 2010 was under way both in thinking and practice well before Orban and his party gained power. The paper explains how realism and opposing liberalism are related in the political thinking of the Hungarian Prime Minister who, stirring domestic and international indignation, in a 2014 speech claimed to be his goal to "build an illiberal" state. First, the paper addresses the problem of realism as ideology. Second, the specific Hungarian context of political thinking need to be elucidated. A main point is that, in the Hungarian context, realism emerged not as a coherent political theory against a mainstream liberal political philosophy rather, it evolved as an implicit understanding of politics against a technocratic, deterministic, and depoliticizing approach to politics. Third, by analyzing Viktor Orban’s speeches before and after 2010, it will be shown that illiberalism is not merely an opposition to liberalism, it is not simply anti-liberalism but realism as the ideology of the institutional changes of the Hungarian political system carried out by Viktor Orban’s government.