Hungary turned its back on the Hard Right — Israel can’t

After 16 years of crushing defeat of the radical right-wing Orbán Government, Hungary now has a chance to recover, but Israel will not have that chance, writes Michael Cohen.

When Viktor Orban was ffinally votedThis was not because Hungary had somehow avoided the dark currents of modern history. It didn’t happen. Hungary lived fascism, war, occupation and decades of Soviet domination. He knows what ideological takeover looks like.

But still he came back.

That’s what matters. Hungary could not maintain its balance; He lost his balance, then regained his balance. He moved in a difficult direction and, most importantly, retained the inherent capacity to turn the tide.

You could always feel this possibility in Budapest. Even under Orbán, Budapest has never fully internalized his worldview. remained outgoing, culturally EuropeanHe is instinctively resilient, though not always in politics. It contained a different version of Hungary; A version that never goes away, only declines.

Finally this version has proven itself again.

Hungary’s strength is not moral purity. This is structural flexibility. A deeply entrenched majority culture can drift away without losing access to alternatives. He can get bored without shutting himself off.

Israel works very differently

Israel is not just another country moving in the right direction. This is a society shaped by an ideology that is increasingly out of step with the liberal world in which it exists and, more importantly, has lost the internal conditions that once allowed it to correct itself.

There was a period when Jewish political life involved real, organized internal opposition. Not just People with liberal viewsbut there were entire movements (socialists, Bundists, secularists) deeply rooted in Jewish society.

And they couldn’t leave.

In Eastern Europe, Jewish identity was not a lifestyle choice. This was imposed. Progressive Jews may reject religion, reject nationalism, reject tradition; but they were still Jews in the eyes of the societies around them. In a sense, they were stuck in that identity.

This constraint created something powerful: harmony. He forced the ideological struggle to take place within the Jewish community rather than outside it. If you wanted to be progressive, you had to build a progressive Jewish politics. You cannot interfere with the culture around you.

This is no longer the case.

Today, liberal and progressive Jews, especially in the diaspora, may choose to opt out of this option. They can assimilate, they can universalize, they can completely break away from Jewish political identity. And many do this. Not dramatically, not as a statement, but quietly.

They don’t disappear. But their collective existence ensures this.

What this leaves behind is not a balanced system, but an increasingly narrow system. Because those most committed to a specifically Jewish political framework are by definition those more comfortable with nationalism, religion, or both.

And this is where the dynamic shifts from instability to acceleration.

A different psychological mechanism begins to come into play in Israel, where the Jewish community is no longer a minority but a dominant, self-sufficient environment. The old minority psychology, shaped by vulnerability, caution, and often a kind of forced empathy, cannot survive intact. It’s turning.

Without an outside majority, politics becomes a closed system. Jews no longer bargain for their place in someone else’s society. They are negotiating status among themselves.

And in that environment, a new type of competition emerges.

Who is tougher? Who is less pure? Who is more willing to do what is necessary?

It doesn’t stabilize, it escalates.

Empathy starts to look like weakness. The constraint seems to be hesitation. Doubt is like infidelity. Each generation inherits a slightly tougher baseline and then pushes it further. Things that might once have been controversial are now becoming normal. What was normal becomes unthinkable.

This is not just ideology. It’s a social feedback loop.

A Jewish-only or Jewish-dominated environment creates a kind of internal echo chamber in which harshness becomes the primary currency of legitimacy. And without a strong, interconnected internal counterweight, the equivalent of Budapest clinging to an alternative instinct, this cycle intensifies uncontrollably.

Meanwhile, the people who could form this counterweight are gradually disappearing. He was not silenced, he was not imprisoned; It was simply removed from the system. They have given up psychologically or physically. They no longer see themselves as part of the project, forcing them to fight for management of the project.

This absence is more important than any external pressure.

Because it is not moderation that fills the void. This is the only set of ideas that can sustain harmony under these conditions: religious certainty and uncompromising nationalism.

And these ideas do not diminish over time. They become compounds.

This is where the comparison with Hungary breaks down completely.

advanced towards Hungary more illiberalIt was a more nationalist form of politics, and then it was reversed because it still contained a viable alternative. Its internal diversity never completely collapsed. The majority culture remained large enough to absorb and then reject a period of solidification.

Israel does not have this structural flexibility.

The more oppression he faces, the more he leans on ideologies that prevent reversal. The more dominant these ideologies become, the less room there is for other things. And the less space there is, the more holistic the dominance becomes.

This is not a cycle. It’s a cricket.

Orbán’s defeat shows that some societies can still backtrack even after having come a long way down a certain path.

Israel’s course is different.

It doesn’t just move in one direction. It becomes a more religious, more nationalist, more absolute system that can only function by continuing in this direction.

And systems like this are not self-correcting.

They don’t bend over backwards.

They keep getting tighter and tighter, until the contradictions they’ve learned to live with are no longer manageable.

Michael Cohen is a Jewish Australian writer based in Sydney who has previously made extensive contributions to international newspapers, presenting both articles and conceptual material. He now focuses on human rights issues.

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