The Canadian historian Michael Ignatieff knows what Orbánization means: As rector, he had to move the Central European University from Budapest to Vienna. A conversation about Herbert Kickl‘s plans to rebuild the country along the lines of Hungary.
4
Comments
This is an experimental tool. The results may be incomplete, outdated or even incorrect.
The FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl sees Austria as part of an international movement led by Viktor Orbán. Orbán is aiming for an authoritarian direction and Kickl wants to steer Austria in this direction. However, historian Michael Ignatieff believes that the democratic order in Austria is more difficult to reverse than in Hungary because of the deeper-rooted rule of law. He advocates including right-wing populists instead of isolating them and emphasizes the importance of democracy. Nevertheless, he warns against underestimating the danger posed by right-wing populists in power, as the example of Hungary shows.
text_length: 9373
text_tokenized: 2572
prompt_tokens: 2579
completion tokens: 181
total_tokens: 2760
© Basso Cannarsa/Opale Photo/Laif
THE TIME: The FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl once said that Austria must become a “fortress like Hungary.” How seriously should you take this?
Michael Ignatieff: Kickl is actually a phenomenon of the Austrian provinces. But now he can – thanks Viktor Orbán – see them as part of an international movement. Orbán once said the key sentence: “After the fall of the wall, we here in Central Europe believed that Europe was our future. Now it shows that we are the future of Europe.” And Kickl believes that too.
