State of the Discussion

The first two chapters of conservative Annie Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy”,...

If TLDR.

"Overall, the book is a passionate warning from a centrist-liberal perspective but is limited by its subjectivity, selective focus, and tendency to pathologize political opposition rather than engage it as legitimate contestation within democracy. It excels at describing mechanisms of institutional capture and elite complicity but falls short as a comprehensive or balanced diagnosis of democratic challenges."

Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy Analysis

This is for wjca.

The first two chapters of conservative Annie Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy", written about her experience living in Poland and becoming, by the right wing's declaration, the enemy of the Law and Justice (anything but) Party, which was defeated in 2023, for her traditional conservative outlook, now branded commie gay Jew leftist by the fascist right's radical movement in Poland of the Overton Window to somewhere overlooking Heinrich Himmler's chicken farm).

It's remarkable not only for the similarities with Orban's Hungary but also with Trump here in the "homeland's blood and soil".

Just to point out that I know how wj feels and where he stands as a lonely traditional conservative.

https://stroudradicalreading.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/applebaumtwilightofdemocracy.pdf

Rod Dreher did not like the book for obvious reasons, but he's decamping to Vienna to start Christian populist trouble among the "emasculated" there too.

Well, this is very interesting. A NYT report of a trial in France, headlined A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality, signals quite a change in the way these things have always gone in the past:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/opinion/lafarge-corporate-terrorism-syria-france.html?unlocked_article_code=1.blA.FvGi.Zv079P7l-Uca&smid=url-share

I beat you to it, GftNC! Marina Hyde:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/17/pope-leo-jd-vance-donald-trump-catholicism

(The truth is, you hipped me to her, which is why I was quick to read the piece in the first place. You really led me to it.)

Ezekiel 25:17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2WK_eWihdU

https://www.thedailybeast.com/scotus-justice-clarence-thomas-77-goes-on-unhinged-rant-about-intellectuals/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/02/trump-indecency-jan-6-pardons/685324/

By the way, it's way past time to be "appalled". If you are still at the appalled stage, you're already offloading from the boxcar and trying to pet the Commandant's rottweiler.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/how-the-internet-fringe-infiltrated-republican-politics

They are telling us, and have been telling for us decades that they will murder everyone of us. Their vermin God has ordered them to kill us.

The genocide of all of the enemies ... worldwide and on every street in America ... of the poisonous, vermin conservative Christian Nazi movement is upon us.

I now believe in preventative genocide against THEM to defend myself and my loved ones.

What the word "freedom" means to a Christian MAGA conservative libertarian (or, whatever the eff they call themselves and whatever race creed and color they are) in America is that even a Jew such as Stephen Miller can grow up to be a fucking Nazi and cut down all the cherry trees and be proud to tell their truth of it.

The big Holocaust tent.

This recent shitshow of MAGA conservatives now threatening EACH OTHER and using up all of the oxygen in the room arguing which ones of THEM are anti-Semites and which ones are the true Americans and the true conservatives, and the true patriots in nothing more than a practice purge for their common goal, to murder all of their mutual enemies: US.

I find no comfort, as the asinine media does, when I see Marjorie Taylor Jewish Space Laser Greene and Donald Genocidal Trump going after each other or Tucker Motherfucker Carlson and Mark Muslim Pogrom Levin going apeshit on each other, or the the smug, cutely murderous smirking Christian Mike Johnson and any other piece of garbage Republican on the Hill doing a mock cage fight over some genocidal bill before the Congress, or the Nazi, lying white supremacist gay-hating Elon Musk and the gay-loving Nazi Jewish lying white supremacist Sam Altman suing each other over their division of all of the wealth and ownership in the world, or Jew-burner and n*gger-lyncher Nick Fuentes and fellow Jew-burner and n*gger-lyncher Christian Charlie Kirk arguing over their "methods", or fascist racist Christian Texas and fascist, racist Christian Florida competing for the gold in the Evil sweepstakes.

It's all just another of the 1934 night of the long knives arguing over who is most genocidal conservative and we still have the Holocaust and nuclear World War III in front of us.

All they are arguing about is their mutual disagreement on the niggling details of how and when they are going to kill me or just fuck me over and then kill me.

And you.

That's why I keep one round in the chamber and one in reserve because two kill shots are required to survive these subhumans.

novakant: that Hegseth thing is good, but it's not as good as J D Vance saying the Pope should be very careful when discussing theology!

The description of George III's treatment at the hands of Dr Willis makes me grateful that psychiatric medicine has (mostly) advanced in the years since then. I'm not sure how being bound and gagged would result in him gaining a "better opinion" of himself.

My guess about Trump's future is that he's gonna end up like his father, with minions bringing him meaningless things to sign so he thinks he's still the boss, while they run things in his stead. Who knows, he might basically be there now.

"High-institutionalist justices (Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) land in the majority far more often (Kavanaugh at ~93% historically, Roberts and Barrett in the 90s %). The low-institutionalist conservatives (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch) form a more independent “freaks-and-geeks” bloc, while the liberals vary (Kagan, higher-institutionalist/strategic; Sotomayor and Jackson more strident/individual)."

Sarah Isgur's Two-Axis Supreme Court Map

From an interview with Last Branch Standing's author, Sarah Isgur. Lightly edited for clarity.

"Here's the problem. If we could all have a checklist at the beginning of the term with all the cases that the court is going to hear, and then everyone in the media checks which are the big cases of the term. I'd be great with that, but that's not what we do. Instead, we wait until we have the decisions. If they're 6-3 along ideological lines, they're big cases. And then we declare that the Court is divided 6-3 along ideological lines.
  
"If the case is conservatively coded, we had three cases last term. One was on gun manufacturer liability, one was on religious liberty for tax-exempt purposes in Wisconsin, and one was on reverse discrimination, if you're straight and think your gay boss fired you because you were straight. All conservative coded.  

"Everyone thought they were going to be 6-3. Everyone thought they were big cases before the term. They all came out the same day last June. All three were unanimous. All three were written by a different liberal justice. And we never talked about them again. They were mind-wiped because they didn't fit the 6-3 narrative. So, that's the problem.

"We define the big cases by which ones are 6-3, and then the 6-3 ones are the big cases, and then the court is ideological, and they're divisive. Last term, 15% of the cases were with all of the liberal justices in dissent, right?

"That's your ideological narrative. The exact same number of cases. I just love this when it turned out this way. I mean, thank you, court, for doing the work for me. The exact same number of cases had all the liberals in the majority and only conservatives in the dissent, 6-3 or 5-4, but we just don't talk about those cases, and we pretend that that's not happening."

It’s almost as if you LIKE every one of the nine Supreme Court justices

A book viewing the Supreme Court from a different angle than partisan politics.

"Most people get the Supreme Court all wrong. A smattering of high-profile decisions has popularized a simplistic idea of the Court and its justices. Yes, six of them were appointed by Republicans, and only three by Democrats. So, how does that 6-3 conservative majority explain why, in the 2024-25 term, conservative Brett Kavanaugh was more likely to agree with liberal Elena Kagan than conservative Neil Gorsuch? Or why did the court throw shade on Florida’s attempt to ban drag shows?

To truly understand the Court, Sarah Isgur argues, you have to look beyond partisan politics—the “X-Axis.” The wisest court watchers apply another measuring stick, the “Y-Axis," where the nine justices span from order-loving institutionalists to true chaos agents. Once you appreciate these overlapping and even competing impulses, the Court begins to look a lot more like a 3-3-3 split than 6-3."

Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court

Vance's Bushism*:

During JD Vance’s latest Fox News appearance, the vice president actually said, “What [Iranian officials] have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. … As the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game.”

*

• "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." G.W. Bush, Washington, D.C., August 5, 2004

It's too long to be a news article and it includes a wider array of arguments and perspectives than would normally be found in an op-ed. I'd call this a long form journalistic essay.

OK - from Comment is Freed on the Hungary election:

The fall of Orbán
What it means for the global battle against the radical right
Sam Freedman
Apr 14, 2026

There’s hasn’t been much for liberals to cheer recently, but Péter Magyar’s victory in Sunday’s Hungarian election has unleashed a wave of exuberance far beyond the streets of Budapest.

Magyar is not an obvious liberal saviour. He’s a social conservative and was a member of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party until 2024. By campaigning on corruption and the cost of living, while maintaining iron discipline over his newly formed Tisza party, he’s been able to hold together a broad enough coalition to win. Whether he can keep it together in power is yet to be seen. Some of his supporters are inevitably going to be disappointed. He will also face a demanding task dismantling Orbán’s network of cronies, though having a two thirds supermajority in parliament at least makes it plausible.

But while there may be trouble ahead, liberal excitement is justified. Orbán was a figurehead for the international radical right, creating a playbook for cementing executive power. He changed the constitution and electoral system; stacked the courts; took over much of the country’s media; filled the civil service with political appointees; and enriched his business associates. His willingness to fund populist parties and personalities in the US and Europe, and ally with Putin, made him a critical node in the global nationalist network.

If he can beaten, then so can the other parties in that network. But that doesn’t mean they will be. Because every election these days feels so existential there’s a danger in overreading results as signifying a broader trend. Every time a Georgia Meloni or Geert Wilders wins there are articles despairing at the inevitable victory of nationalism everywhere. When there’s a big loss, like Trump in 2020 or Orbán this week, it’s proof that populism has peaked.

Of course the reality is messier. In most democracies a radical right party is now firmly established as a major player. As voters will always eventually tire of incumbents, especially when the economic picture is so turbulent, they will continue to win elections some of the time. In the past year we’ve seen Wilders’s party in the Netherlands lose its way, Putin-backed candidates defeated in Moldova and Romania, and Orbán finally turfed out in Hungary.

But we’ve also seen Karol Nawrocki, the Law and Justice Party candidate, win the presidential election in Poland and the right-wing populist Andrej Babiš become Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Looking ahead the AfD look set to win their first German state in Saxony-Anholt in September, and Reform will win another dozen or so councils in the UK next month. Radical right parties lead the polls in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The lack of a straightforward pattern doesn’t mean that Orbán’s defeat is just a one-off with no broader significance. His loss shows the limits of the radical right: that while the new wave of nationalists are not about to disappear, there are serious flaws in their approach to politics that can be used to halt their progress. In the rest of the post I’ll look at the three big lessons we can learn from Magyar’s victory.

International nationalism

One oddity of the modern radical right is that it’s simultaneously extremely nationalist and yet also operates as a global movement. There’s an obvious contradiction in claiming to represent national interests better than everyone else, while also being financed and supported by other countries.

Orbán benefited enormously from these relationships. He decided to tie himself to Putin in 2014 when the Kremlin agreed a €10 billion loan allowing Hungary to build two new reactors at its only nuclear plant. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Orbán has increased imports of Russian oil from 61% to 92% of the country’s total, getting a substantial discount which enabled him to finance his political network. In return he has blocked critical aid to Ukraine and created no end of headaches for the EU leadership.

His links to Trump were less about money and more about international status. In recent years he funded a succession of MAGA intellectuals like Rod Dreher, a leading postliberal, to live and work in Budapest. In 2023 he hired another big name in MAGA circles, Gladden Pappin, to run the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. One of Pappin’s jobs has been to build relationships with organisations in the US, and with other radical right parties around the world.

Developing these networks meant that Orbán was able to call on the Trump administration for favours, including participating in his battles with the EU, and limiting support for Ukraine. Pappin is an associate of Michael Anton, who wrote Trump’s national security strategy that, when it comes to Europe, essentially sets out Orbán’s talking points. It also allowed the Hungarian Prime Minister to position himself as a global figure, agreeing to host a summit last year with Trump and Putin.

But tying himself so strongly to the interests of other countries opened him up to accusations of selling out the national interest. When it emerged last month that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had been passing on details of European meetings to the Russians, Magyar accused him of betraying Hungary. In the days before the election, the opposition leader was given another easy hit when transcripts of calls with Putin were leaked in which Orbán obsequiously compared himself to a mouse helping the Russian lion and offered to help “in any matter where I can be of assistance.”

Watching young Hungarians celebrating Tisza’s victory by shouting “Russians, go home” indicated the value of this approach. In Magyar’s victory speech he said: “Hungarians said yesterday they will write their history, not in Moscow, not in Beijing, not in Washington.”

As for the relationship with the US, all that positive coverage in right-wing papers and newsletters may have boosted Hungary’s reputation in certain circles, but it turned out to be useless in a domestic political battle. The election was lost before J. D. Vance turned up to speak at campaign rallies. But it may have helped get Tisza a supermajority, given Trump’s rising global unpopularity. At very least it distracted Orbán from talking about issues people cared about. Tisza’s campaign was focused on economic hardship and corruption. Vance’s thoughts on the fight for western civilisation were irrelevant.

Radical right leaders in western Europe have had to distance themselves from Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, despite getting financial support from him in the past. Many are now trying to do the same with Trump, as he goes increasingly off the rails. Meloni gave a speech last week listing all the ways she’d disagreed with the American President. Here, Nigel Farage has been desperately briefing newspapers with a list of the times he’s pushed back against Trump. The AfD is having a public row about their association with him.

It won’t be so easy to pivot away though. There’s plentiful evidence of prior support for Trump that opposition parties can exploit. And the wider ecosystem around European nationalist parties is still financially dependent on the US, especially in Britain where right-wing papers and newsletters rely on MAGA subscriptions. So speaking out against Trump also carries risks. The dissonance is becoming a major problem for them.

Democratic resilience

Every election against radical right parties seem existential because a loss feels like it might never be recoverable. They all seek to undermine institutions and centralise power. Usually this is done legally, or at least with the pretence of legality. Orbán didn’t violate the Hungarian constitution, he rewrote it. Reform’s proposals to replace senior civil servants and judges with political appointees, while packing the Lords with cronies, could all be done without breaking any laws.

This democratic backsliding can feel irreversible, creating a kind of self-defeating nihilism amongst liberals. But, as Hungary shows, as long as the core right to vote is protected it’s always possible to defeat a government, however much they’ve gerrymandered the system. Attempts to rig things can even backfire. The “winner-takes-all” electoral model that Orbán designed allowed him to maximise gains against a divided opposition. But once the opposition unified it allowed Tisza to take enough seats for their own supermajority that will enable Magyar to rewrite the constitution and remove his predecessors’ cronies. The downside of centralising power is that if your opponents get their hands on it they can quickly reverse your decisions and take advantage of it to strengthen their own long-term position.

A key lesson for those pushing back against backsliding is to be creative in maximising whatever institutional levers are available, even as others are being eroded. Orbán’s opponents were able to make use of Hungary’s EU membership to gain some protection. He was never in a strong enough position to consider leaving the Union given the economic value of cohesion funds (Hungary has received around €50 billion over the past two decades – some has been frozen in recent years due to corruption, but €10bn was released in 2023 as part of a deal to secure aid for Ukraine).

Magyar used his position as an MEP to gain immunity from malicious prosecution, of the type common in Russia or Turkey. Orbán tried to do everything possible to skew the electoral system to his advantage but he was constrained in ways true totalitarian governments are not.

These institutional levers will look different in different countries. There’s no equivalent of the EU to act as a barrier to Trump, but it is much harder to change the US constitution than the Hungarian one. While the conservative Supreme Court has given the President plenty of leeway they have provided just enough of a block to prevent many of his madder plans. As I set out a few weeks ago, despite Trump’s obvious desire to rig the midterms, it’s practically impossible for him to do so without breaking the law or launching a full-blown coup.

Making the best use of whatever constitutional protections are available requires constant vigilance and determination. Fatalism – the belief the battle is already lost – is the enemy of successful opposition. For sixteen years the Hungarian opposition kept fighting, and kept winning small victories, even as Orbán seemed invincible. They also kept finding ways to disseminate evidence about his corruption, despite his control of newspapers and TV.

Social media is often seen as helping the radical right due to its value in disseminating disinformation, but it also prevents authoritarian governments from gatekeeping effectively. Magyar supplemented his effectiveness with modern media tools with old-fashioned campaigning, tirelessly travelling the country for two years giving endless speeches and setting up grassroots networks he called “Tisza islands”.

Democratic backsliding is a real phenomenon and an ongoing threat. The UK is particularly vulnerable due to our lack of codified constitution. But democracies also have a lot of inbuilt resilience, as long as people fight for them. Various indexes of democracy have seen global scores decline over the past two decades but, as yet, no country that was a strong democracy has ceased to be one, even if some (like the US) have seen their overall score decline.

The corruption factor

Magyar’s campaign was built around Orbán’s corruption. His rise to prominence began in February 2024, after it emerged that President Katalin Novák, an Orbán ally, had pardoned the deputy director of a children’s home who’d covered up multiple cases of sexual abuse. Novák was forced to resign alongside justice minister Judit Varga.

When this scandal broke Magyar quit Fidesz and launched an anti-corruption campaign that went viral, as it was so unusual to have someone from within the regime talk about its behaviour. His biggest bombshell was a secret audio recording he’d made of Varga, who happened to be his ex-wife, admitting to corruption in another case.

There was plenty of material for him to work with, Orbán is by far the most corrupt politician within the EU, siphoning funds to his business cronies and enriching friends and family members. His personal estate is far more lavish than anything than could be afforded on his salary. Hungary is at the bottom of Transparency International’s EU corruption league table and 76th globally. This is what allowed Magyar to build such a broad coalition.

It’s also a fundamental weakness for the radical right more broadly. Even in opposition, corruption scandals have dogged nationalist parties in Western Europe. Marine Le Pen has been barred from running in next year’s presidential election due to misuse of EU funds. AfD parliamentarians have been caught taking bribes from Russia, as was Reform’s leader in Wales.

In power the opportunities for graft are vastly greater. Trump is an extreme example, being utterly shameless in his determination to use his office for personal enrichment. But it’s a consistent pattern, Poland’s Law and Justice party lost the 2023 parliamentary elections in part because a corruption scandal related to selling visas for bribes, and further allegations around other schemes have emerged since they left office.

Of course, politicians from parties across the spectrum get caught up in scandals, especially in countries with more fragile democracies. But it’s endemic to radical right parties because of their ideological construction. They are typically opposed to institutions designed to protect the rule of law, as they are seen as controlled by the liberal establishment. They always seek to centralise power, which creates more opportunities to misuse that power. As insurgent parties they are typically run by strongmen (or women) whose prefer loyalty over competence and tend to reward that loyalty by granting favours.

If properly exposed corruption is electoral kryptonite. Even in genuinely totalitarian states it can be the trigger for revolution. There’s a reason why Xi Jinping keeps purging senior members of his regime for corruption. It’s a useful way to dispatch rivals but it also manages public anger about the grift that’s pervasive in Chinese society.

It sometimes takes time to happen. Orbán kept going a long time before someone was willing to blow the whistle loud enough to cut through. The Democrats still haven’t managed to fully capitalise on Trump’s venality, though his sheer brazenness about it is one reason his approval ratings are now falling, along with inflation and Iran. But openness to corruption is another limitation on the radical right’s ability to hold power.

Qualified hope

Perhaps in a decade’s time we’ll look back to 2026 as the turning point for liberal democracy, especially if Trump loses the midterms in November. But there’s no guarantee. It could just be a brief respite before the next wave of nationalist victories in the wake of yet more economic turmoil and another refugee crisis.

What should give us hope, though, is that, just as Orbán created a playbook for the global radical right, Magyar has given us one for those trying to defeat it. While local context matters there are generalisable lessons. The radical right’s relationships with Putin and Trump can be exploited against them and can form the basis for the kind of appeal to patriotism with which liberal parties typically struggle. New media, used alongside relentless grassroots campaigning, offers a way to circumvent authoritarianism. The populist’s tendency to corruption is a profound weakness when it can be properly exposed.

Most of all we should take hope from the resilience of democracy. Protecting it requires constant vigilance but it’s hard to kill. They’ll be more depressing days in the future, but if Orbán can be beaten then anyone can.

I couldn't figure out how to work this in the post, but this article, about a 14 year old hacker, quotes him saying this:

"It was disgusting, it was greedy, it was rooted in my own insecurities, it was wrong in every aspect," he said in the interview, two days before reporting to prison.

Why can't we have a president with the emotional intelligence of a 14 year old hacker?

Always have to wait until pretty late to file, because we each get a K-1 form, and hers is always late. 

I can definitely relate. I spent years where the boss took forever to get the information together, so the company taxes got filed at the maximum extension. Which was OK for her, since the same guy did her personal taxes and could file them both at once. A bit challenging for those of us who had to either clear a day (i.e. 24 hours) right at the (extension) deadline, or convince our own accountant to do so. So very relieved by the transition from an S Corp to a C Corp!

Michael, I think that's right. BUT: he has said a) he'll stop blocking the EU from sending that $90billion to Ukraine, and b) he'll pivot Hungary more towards the EU and away from Russia. And the huge crowds at his victory speech were shouting "Russians out! So that is a huge source of relief.

I have seen a few pieces suggesting not to get overly hopeful about the change in Hungary. That the new guy is still center-right, but is willing to make enough pro-democracy changes to get the EU to release some €17-18B in grants they have been holding back. Re Ukraine, pro a large emergency loan, anti fast tracking EU membership.