Kapil Komireddi in The New Yorker: ‘In a crowning irony, Orbán, setting himself up as a ruthless defender of sovereignty and an uncompromising proponent of the assimilation of minorities, intervened in the internal affairs of neighbouring states—Serbia, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine—by giving more than a million ethnic Hungarians there the right to vote in his country’s elections. These recently enfranchised Hungarians in the “near-abroad,” a reliably pro-Orbán constituency, are allowed to vote by post. Meanwhile, expatriate Hungarians in cities such as Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and London—a smaller contingent, deemed unreliable by virtue of their exposure to cosmopolitan societies—must queue up at diplomatic missions.’

And: ‘For all [Péter] Magyar’s rhetoric, his politics do not actually represent a comprehensive break from Orbán.’

Hungarian minorities in Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine are not going to save Orbán.

But a true change is apparently not what the Hungarians want. Just a superficial change.

(a sf 2103)