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  "path": "/video/gzero-world-with-ian-bremmer/how-viktor-orban-went-from-pro-democratic-dissident-to-authoritarian-strongman",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-08T17:17:01.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gzeromedia.com",
  "tags": [
    "Hungary",
    "Putin",
    "Trump",
    "Conservatism",
    "Far right",
    "Orban"
  ],
  "textContent": "\n\n\n**Viktor Orbán** started his political life as a pro-democracy liberalist, according to Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies **Ivan Krastev**. Orbán first made history in 1989 by demanding Soviet troops leave Hungary. What happened next, Ivan Krastev argues, was a genuine ideological transformation.\n\n\"I do believe he internalized his own conservatism,\" Krastev tells **Ian Bremmer.** Orbán's politics are rooted in a very specific strain of 19th-century Hungarian nationalism: the grief of a nation that lost vast territory and millions of its people after World War I, and that cannot afford to be a loser again in the 21st century. That makes him, Krastev argues, far more like **Putin** : deeply anchored in national history, than like **Trump** , who is largely indifferent to his predecessors.\n\nThe contradictions, though, are glaring. For all his fierce anti-immigration rhetoric — which made him a hero of Europe's 2015 migration crisis — Hungary quietly issued more work permits to foreign workers than almost any other EU member state that same year. Orbán, Krastev suggests, is an opportunist who has also become a true believer.\n",
  "title": "How Viktor Orbán went from pro-democratic dissident to authoritarian strongman"
}