The Impossible Friendship of Extreme Nationalisms

Illiberal democracies around the world are being increasingly characterised by the admiration their “strong leaders” seem to profess for each other. Narendra Modi has made overtures to the US President Donald Trump and the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, named “Trump before Trump” in his celebration of illiberal democracy, has been fulsome in his praise for Brazil’s Jair Bolsanero and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Indeed, as historians János Mátyás Kovács and Balázs Trencsényi have pointed out, Orbán has become a pioneering all-European symbol of breaking with the principles of liberal democracy, earning a motley range of allies, including Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, Janez Janša, Jarosław Kaczyński, Benjamin Netanyahu, Victor Ponta, Matteo Salvini, Horst Seehofer, Geert Wilders, and Miloš Zeman. Similarly, the Romanian far-right leader, Călin Georgescu, had support from J.D. Vance and Elon Musk in the US, who were outraged when his victory in the 2024 Presidential elections were voided on accusations of corruption and Russian interference. And one could go on.

But can this mutual admiration club turn into real alliances?

This is a critical question for the world order that is shaping up before our very eyes. Many of these leaders and oligarchs share a vision of the world that can potentially join them together. But it is also the nature of their nationalisms to exclude rather than to build cross-cultural bridges, to look inward rather than outward – to remain stridently provincial rather than embrace a transnational cosmopolitanism. This clearly shows in Donald Trump’s “American First” policy as well as European right-wing nationalism’s hostility to the idea and reality of the European Union. What happens when strategic partnerships, ideological kinship, and topical realities do not match each other? 

I write these lines from Hungary, where, at the moment, the alliances between right-wing leaders look promising. Early April saw the hearty welcome of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest, by his friend and counterpart Orbán, who also admires Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, which, as Kovács and Trencsényi have pointed out, illustrates for the Hungarian leader the best model of European Christian Democracy – “Brazil first and God above all.” Hungary’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court that had declared Benjamin Netanyahu a war-criminal in several countries of the European Union, was also well-timed with the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit to Budapest. 

Orbán’s friendship with the autocratic Turkish President Erdoğan has also given a whole new spin to the historic presence of Turkish culture in Hungary, a rich example of which is the restored 16th century Ottoman tomb, Gül Baba’s Tomb and Rosegarden, a short walk from my current home in Budapest. But a recent visit to neighbouring Romania flashed an unexpected ray of hope on the giant cracks that exist in the very dream-nightmare of international right-wing alliances.  

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In Bucharest, The Palace of Parliament, the grand house constructed by the Communist autocrat Nicolae Ceaușescu greets you with the historical reality of a dictatorial friendship. Alexandru Matei, the academic from Transylvania University who’d invited me to speak in Romania, pointed out that Ceaușescu was inspired to construct this great, imposing palace as his residence and office on the suggestion of his friend, Kim Il Sung, the dictatorial founder of North Korea. Kim reputedly got his palace built in just six months, and the Romanian dictator didn’t lag far behind, getting it all done in two years. But it was not a place he ever got to live in, as he was executed in 1989, following the coup-d’état that overthrew his regime. 

But the reality of 21st century central and eastern Europe is very different, where conflict often comes to a head between a liberal, pro-EU position and one of right-wing nationalism that leans towards Putinist Russia, resulting in painful divisions in the Russia-Ukraine standoff. My visit to Romania coincided with the second and final round of its Presidential election, in which the ultra-nationalist candidate George Simion was pitted against the moderate, pro-EU mayor of Bucharest Nicușor Dan. As I travelled to Brasov, where I was to speak at Transilvania University, I realised that the stakes in this battle were of a different order in Transylvania, with its concentration of ethnic Hungarians who voted both in Romania and Hungary. 

Beyond the expected support in a liberal, academic community for Dan, a former mathematics prodigy and academic, what I sensed in the university town of Brasov was a particularly strong opposition to the strident anti-minority rhetoric of Simion, directed just as virulently at the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. There was much breathlessness, much of that evening spent in Brasov, but as the exit polls started to come in, hope started to rise. Exhausted by the day in Bucharest and the evening travel to Transylvania, I went to sleep by ten-thirty or eleven. Early in the morning, I got the news of Dan’s from excited messages from friends, on my phone and social media updates.

How did this happen? In an election that looked once inevitably titled to George Simion and the rising wave of extreme nationalism in Romania? What changed the game were the votes of diasporic Hungarians in Romania, primarily in the Transylvania area. From what I’ve been hearing from my Romanian and Hungarian friends and colleagues, Keno Verseck gets it exactly right in this article – that “Ethnic Hungarian, Moldovan voters saved Romania's democracy”. The Hungarians in Transylvania, along with Moldovians with voting rights in Romania, pushed back against Simion’s anti-minority rhetoric, and voted for Dan in large numbers. 

This is where the alliance of right-wingers failed in central and eastern Europe. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán supported his ideological ally, George Simion, both part of the “sovereigntist” camp, pro-Russian and anti-EU in position, and autocratic in its functioning style. But there was a major crack in this alliance. Just the way Orbán has been strident in his opposition to the minoritized and marginalized populations in Hungary, including the Roma gypsies, immigrants, and non-Christians, Simion’s anti-minority stand was also turned against the ethnic Hungarians in Romania. Orbán, in effect, supported an anti-Hungarian candidate in Romania, and the ethnic Hungarians of that country refused to follow his lead. 

Dan’s victory in Romania is a small light of hope for liberal thought and policy worldwide. Crucially, it has revealed the giant fault line that tries to hide under the wishful alliance of right-wing nationalisms around the globe. Orbán and Netanyahu’s deep alliance brought dark despair to anti-Zionist groups that I met in Budapest. But an attempt at this partnership failed in the Romanian election. It is a failure that is ironically consistent with Orbán’s opposition of universalist political projects, such as the vision of a “supranational Europe”, which have drawn energy from the triumph of Donald Trump and his “America First” slogan. Insular nationalism has revealed the real contradiction in the ambition of an international right-wing alliance. They may wish to come together, but their innate narcissism, let us hope, will in the end, keep them apart. 

Saikat Majumdar is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Budapest. Opinions are personal.

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