Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been leading the pioneering experiment in "illiberal democracy" for the past 15 years, inspired Donald Trump's team during the 2024 presidential campaign, according to some experts. If so, the student has become the master. When it comes to dismantling the democratic model, the second Trump presidency, which began just two months ago, has already moved faster and better than his Hungarian and Polish role models, while attacking the same pillars: the judiciary, the media and universities.
The method, comparable to the war tactic of "carpet bombing," has been spectacular. It has left the Democratic opposition groggy, still hesitant about how to respond. But, above all, it has aimed to hit as many targets as possible, and as deeply as possible, from the outset. Educated by the experience of its first term (2017-2021), during which it was unable to make the desired changes irreversibly, the Trump administration wants to move fast.
This acceleration is reminiscent of what's happened in Hungary and Poland: Having failed in his first term (1998-2002), Orban refined his agenda during his time in opposition, only to return better organized in 2010. Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party ran up against what it called the "legal impossibility" of the rule of law from 2005 to 2007. Back in power in 2015, it methodically attacked the foundations of the system to overcome this "impossibility."
Demolishing everything
The explanation given for this acceleration by Christopher Rufo, one of the conservative intellectuals who feed the ideological base of Trumpism, in a recent New York Times podcast, is enlightening in this regard: When the journalist asked him why he wanted to dismantle the Department of Education when it would be enough to cut the most controversial programs while retaining those that are popular and considered useful, Rufo replied that, if some of the staff is kept on, it would be content to take the hit and wait for the next election: "So you have a system that is unaccountable, and when the culture of that system and the vast bulk of the bureaucracy of that system is captured, you get the status quo of the first Trump administration, which was a Department of Education that was radically left-wing, funding only radical left-wing causes." The solution, then, is to tear it all down in order to change it once and for all, both the culture and the apparatus itself.
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