Masha Gessen sees a model in Viktor Orbán’s return to power in Hungary after losing an election and leading the opposition for eight years.
“Other European autocrats never had to leave office—Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenka, and, of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin have not been in the opposition since first touching power—but the cases of Hungary and Poland provide examples of a particular path to autocracy. It involves an aspiring autocrat who is rebuked by voters and who then frames his loss of power as illegitimate, launching a campaign aimed at undermining not only the party that won the election but the very institutions of democratic government.”
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