Orban’s Populism Followed The Info Wars Script We See Everywhere

BusinessPolicyOrban’s Populism Followed The Info Wars Script We See EverywhereByMelik Kaylan,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Melik Kaylan covered global geostrategic conflicts for three decades Follow AuthorApr 28, 2026, 05:00am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on July 15, 2018. (Photo by Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP POOL / AFP) (Photo by YURI KADOBNOV/AFP POOL/AFP via Getty Images)AFP POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesHungary’s change of government has infused hope for many there and elsewhere in areas far beyond politics. The populist-authoritarian model embodied by Orban came with a cluster of attributes that seemed to render it unbeatable. These include oligarchic economy, media monopoly, institutional corruption, bribery of the electorate and the like. In other countries such as Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Belarus, the aging leaders have endured in power over two decades. What made Hungary different was its presence in the EU whose overarching structure prevented Orban from achieving complete state capture. That is to say, the EU imposed a reality check. By requiring certain immobile rules for democratically testing a politician’s legitimacy, the EU literally kept a reality test alive. It kept reality measurable and contained within certain boundaries. This is a crucial factor because since the early days of Putinism’s rise, the attack on dependable information has intensified and metastasized across continents to the point of creating widespread uncertainty on any important topic of news. Consider what we do or don’t know about the situation in Hormuz. Or the migrant situation in Europe. Or the state of things in Syria. Or the fundamentals of the stock market. As this column has noted before repeatedly, Putin’s Russia was the first to launch this particular kind of multi-vectored confusion-inducing attack on news domestically. Before him, the Soviet system had a monolithic party-line approach to information. Soviet citizens looked for the truth by finding ingenious ways to access the West’s free speech-based multi-channel sourced approach. Putin initiated a revolution whereby he allowed multiple channels but had them broadcast a bewildering array of false and contradictory takes. This phenomenon is brilliantly documented in Peter Pomeranstev’s classic 2014 book ‘Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible’ about Russian disinformation and propaganda. The new approach deliberately induced confusion and fear among citizens about events in the world and threats to their country so relentlessly that they chose apathy and trust in a strongman leader. This was not just an assault on news but on the nature of reality itself - the ability to arrive at or conceive of stable truth. The confusion has since spread globally on the back of the internet to infect all countries to varied degrees of success, at least those with open access to the world. Here is a story about a Russian disinfo operation dubbed ‘Storm 1516’ that has racked up hundreds of millions of views under different names on social media. The Bloomberg article is titled “The Most Potent Weapon In Russia’s Disinformation War.” In a country like Japan where trust in the MSM remains high this kind of operation makes few inroads.…

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