The Twenty-Four Two Podcast

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  1. Péter Magyar “behaves like a tank”

    Apr 17

    Péter Magyar “behaves like a tank”

    Last week’s election-eve podcast with Ábel Bede and Gabriela Greilinger was meant to be the last in Twenty-Four Two’s special 15-episode series on Hungary. But, after the partying in Budapest and the incoming prime minister’s hilariously unforgiving first moves, we couldn’t resist a post mortem with political scientist Gábor Scheiring. Among the hot and bad social-media takes on Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Viktor Orbán, the winners have to be: See how quickly Orbán conceded - this was never the dictatorship you said it was! (from the right). No one credible said it was. Magyar isn’t the liberal you think he is (from the left). No one credible said he was. “A competitive authoritarian regime is a competitive authoritarian regime,” Scheiring tells us. “As long as you have elections, it’s possible to beat the ruling party, but it’s just hard, right? It’s much harder than in a free and fair democracy with free and fair elections”. Orbán conceded quickly because his defeat was undeniable. “I’m pretty convinced they had multiple scenarios and multiple playbooks but the result was so overwhelming, they couldn’t really do anything. What do you do against a landslide? Your only option is to use the military and repress society, and the next question is: do you really want to enter Hungarian history books as the dictator despised by his own people who used the country’s security forces to stay in power?” Formerly a left-wing MP who now teaches at Georgetown University in Qatar, Scheiring doesn’t share Magyar’s conservatism but he is optimistic that the new premier will restore liberal democracy and maybe even pluralism. “He has more than two-thirds majority and huge symbolic capital, and now he has the momentum. There’s a Hungarian political scientist Eszter Kováts and she used the term: he behaves ‘like a tank’, and he does indeed behave like a tank and he should go on with this impetus and momentum”. Gábor Scheiring’s The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary was published in 2020. His next book with Benedek Jávor, How Democracracies Revive: Why Illiberalism Keeps Winning And What To Do About It, will be published in 2027. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This really is the last podcast in our Hungary series but we’ll be back soon to talk European politics from a (small-l, small-d) liberal-democratic perspective. We’ll cover national elections in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Slovakia and Bosnia, state elections in eastern Germany, Iceland’s referendum on EU accession negotiations, British reconvergence with the EU, and the geopolitical, military and economic settlement Ukraine when it comes. And more. Subscribe (free) to the podcast and to 242.news. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    1h 4m
  2. "He's more of a surfer"

    Apr 10

    "He's more of a surfer"

    This is it. On Sunday, Hungarians will vote to keep or kill Viktor Orbán’s 16-year “illiberal” electoral autocracy. To talk about the last days of the election campaign and opposition activists’ tempered hopes for regime change, Tim and Pepijn are joined on the Twenty-Four Two Podcast by Ábel Bede and Gabriela Greilinger from the invaluable English-language Hungarian Observer. Ábel, who is a freelance journalist, reports to us from the manic campaign trail of opposition Tisza leader Péter Magyar. Gabriela, a doctoral candidate in far-right politics and democratic backsliding at the University of Georgia, digs into the deep links between Orbánism and the American right. With two days to go, hopes (and fears of hubris) are high. The latest independent polls suggest Tisza could even win a two-thirds majority that would allow a Magyar government to rewrite the constitution, purge Orbánism from the institutions and restore liberal democracy and political pluralism. But how trusted is he to do this? Magyar is “not a leader who Hungarian opposition-minded individuals suddenly decided to follow,” says Ábel. “He’s more of a surfer. He’s riding the waves of huge, huge dissatisfaction with the Orbán regime”. “The Tisza voting coalition is basically a lot of left-leaning and liberal voters, and then also a few right-wing voters, which is a very broad coalition that you need to hold together,” says Gabriela. “The fact of the matter is that you needed that in Hungary to unseat Viktor Orbán because of the way the electoral system is made … It only works that way. You need to have a big party, a big-tent party to unseat Viktor Orbán and from then on, and you can rebuild”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is the last podcast on Hungary but we will be back soon to talk European politics from a liberal-democratic perspective and especially for 2027 and elections in France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Slovakia. So, subscribe (free) to the podcast and to 242.news. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    1h 4m
  3. “Those people don’t care about Vance”

    Apr 3

    “Those people don’t care about Vance”

    Fearing electoral defeat on April 12, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán begged for an endorsement visit from Donald Trump but will have to make do with an April 7-8 fly-by from vice-president JD Vance and his wife. That Orbán believes Vance’s endorsement could push him over the line is in keeping with an election campaign in which the ruling Fidesz party has focused on nothing but their champion’s experience on the foreign stage and hysterical warnings that Péter Magyar, Orbán’s challenger, will follow the EU and Ukraine into war with Russia. No friend of Ukraine or Europe, Vance can be trusted to stick to this line but independent polling strongly suggests it’s not working. “If the issue is that your wife wants to give birth in the local hospital and there’s no doctor to help her so you have to travel hundreds of kilometres to the more central hospital, I don’t think Vance makes a big difference,” says political scientist Miklós Sükösd on the latest Twenty-Four Two Podcast. “Diehard Fidesz fans? But even for them … the voting base of Orbán is older people in the countryside, especially in villages – it’s only in villages where he has a large constituency now and less-educated people including the Roma minority. Those people don’t care about Vance”. Our 15-episode series on Hungary’s pivotal election has covered everything from Orbánism to economics to corruption and false-flag attacks but, until today, we hadn’t dissected Orbán’s rival. The perfectly named Magyar turned on Fideszworld only two years ago and built a mass movement from scratch. Who is he? Where did he come from? How different from Orbán is he? And can he be trusted to return liberal democracy to Hungary after 16 years of creeping autocracy and a “mafia state”? To answer these questions, there’s no one better than Miklós Sükösd. A media scholar and associate professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Sükösd wrote The Challenge – an epic four-part (so far) study of Magyar for HVG – and will publish a book later this year on the man who may be Hungary’s next prime minister. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    1h 1m
  4. “This is a special opportunity to get rid of Orbán"

    Mar 29

    “This is a special opportunity to get rid of Orbán"

    It’s T-minus 14 days until an election that will decide whether Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister since 2010 and icon for global nativism, gets another four-year term for Fidesz or is ousted by Péter Magyar’s Tisza movement. In the final days of the campaign, Fidesz is throwing everything - allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use, claims of interference by the Ukrainian “terrorist state”, intelligence-service surveillance, and a visit by US vice-president J.D. Vance - at Magyar. Yet the latest Median poll shows a growing lead for Tisza - a centre-right party founded only six years ago and repurposed in 2024 as a Magyar vehicle. As an electoral coalition, Tisza - binding together urban liberals and disgruntled non-metropolitan conservatives - is proving uniquely difficult for Fidesz to kill. “This is a special opportunity to get rid of Orbán,” says László Andor, the secretary-general of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) - a Brussels-based think tank affiliated to the Party of European Socialists (PES). “There are many people who now say they will vote for Tisza on April 12 but not because they’re enthusiastic, not because they would want to stay with them for a long time but in order to benefit from this joy: the person of the prime minister would change in Hungary after 16 years and this Fidesz gang could be sent into retirement or maybe worse. This is about one opportunity”. This joy is tempered for Andor, an economist who advised Hungarian centre-left prime minister Péter Medgyessy (2002-24) and served as European commissioner for employment and social affairs (2010-2014) under president José Durão Barroso. It is “not good if Hungary, with all this jubilation, delivers a parliament without a centre-left or without a left at all,” he tells the Twenty-Four Two Podcast. “In all likelihood, Hungary ends up now with a parliament with the centre-right, the far-right and the extreme-right or maybe just the centre-right and the far-right. That’s not something people normally celebrate in the European Union. I would certainly not celebrate this”. If Tisza wins the election, Andor hopes the left will quickly start preparing for municipal and European Parliament elections in 2029. “That’s a lot of time to prepare, to come forward with new initiatives … Normally, in order to have progressive parties, you need progressive movements. You need a trade union movement with more energy. You need environmentalist movements. You need a student movement. You need a feminist movement. You need a peace movement. You need all different type of movements … to uphold politically the progressive alternative in a country”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    47 min
  5. "It’s classic divide and rule"

    Mar 26

    "It’s classic divide and rule"

    Open a history of Europe with “everything changed on the morning of Thursday 24th of February 2022” and you will have the undivided attention of the Twenty Four Two podcast. Roderick Beaton’s Europe: A New History, published today by Penguin, reframes the last 2,500 years as the story of an idea. Starting with the Greek city states and Herodotus’s conjuring-up of “Europe” as the antithesis of “Asia”, he takes “Rome” all the way from the city republic via Constantinople to the demise of its namesake empire two millennia later. He examines Europe as both Christendom and competing Christianities, and covers invasions and assimilations, mass migrations, superstates and nation states all the way to the Ukrainian bulwark against Putinist “anti-Europe”. Beaton fears that Europe in 2026 is too like the ancient Greek city states, who chose division in the face of a ruthless neighbour. “It reminds me so much of what’s in that ghastly US document that came out at the end of last year, the strategy document, where the current White House wants to see a Europe in which European states double down on their distinctive identity,” he tells Tim G. Jones on the podcast. “I mean, it’s classic divide and rule. You can see exactly why a large military power might want to see that happen. But, from the point of view of Europe … it’s a red flag. It’s an example from the past”. Knighted in 2019, Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    43 min
  6. “They have five Ferraris so it’s a different level”

    Mar 22

    “They have five Ferraris so it’s a different level”

    Just three Sundays from today, eight million Hungarians will decide whether to fire or re-hire prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement after 16 years in power. If these MAGA darlings are driven from office, it will be in large part due to their increasingly flagrant corruption. Losing 15 points since 2012, Hungary’s slide in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is the steepest ever recorded for an EU member state. High-profile cases involving Orbán’s father, brother-in-law, close childhood friend and former chief economic adviser have dominated independent media since the 2022 election. What’s worse: this has been fed by EU transfers. The Corruption Research Center Budapest (CRCB) calculates that the net value of contracts awarded (often without competition) to 13 Orbán cronies since 2010 exceeds €19 billion. “The luxury lifestyle, it’s extreme,” says Dávid Jancsics, author of the 2024 book Sociology of Corruption: Patterns of Illegal Association in Hungary. “It’s not like they have a nice car. No, they have five Ferraris so it’s a different level ... The luxury lifestyle of the political elite is visible. What people see is Ferraris, Lamborghinis, properties in fancy locations ... Dubai, New York City ... When you are struggling with your bills, it’s especially annoying to see this extreme wealth”. Dávid Jancsics is a professor at San Diego State University. Before leaving the band in 1999 to start his career in sociology, Jancsics played bass guitar with Budapest thrash/hardcore punk trio Leukémia. A reunion two years ago led to a new single in December 2025. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    46 min
  7. "Hungary would probably be hit harder than many others"

    Mar 15

    "Hungary would probably be hit harder than many others"

    With less than a month to go until a make-or-break election in Hungary, consecutive four-term prime minister Viktor Orbán is desperate to distract voters from the dire state of the economy and his government’s finances. He and his Fidesz party have turned the dial to 11 in their campaign against Péter Magyar’s Tisza movement, who - they claim - plan to sell-out Hungarians to the EU and to Woke globalists while forcing them into joining Ukraine’s war against Russia. Independent polling suggests the demonisation of Ukraine and its president may be only working with voters at the margin. The electorate seems to be motivated more by Hungary’s stagflationary environment, which has not been helped by the surge in oil and natural-gas prices caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran. The outlook for growth in Hungary “might be made a lot worse by ... the energy-price shock that Europe is being hit by now,” says Twenty-Four Two co-host Pepijn Bergsen. “If the suggestion is that Hungary would probably be hit harder than many others in the region, I don’t think that they have a good answer to that. Just trying to cap retail-energy prices is not going to work. It’s too costly, which is why you also get Orbán explicitly arguing for sanctions reductions, particularly on Russian energy. The rest of Europe isn’t going to go along with that anytime soon”. In this episode, Pepijn and co-host Tim Jones discuss the latest polls, the vicious turn in the campaign, Volodymyr Zelensky as Emmanuel Goldstein, and the overdue fiscal and political bill from 16 years of Orbánomics. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    27 min
  8. “Hungary is trailing behind Russia by 10 years”

    Mar 8

    “Hungary is trailing behind Russia by 10 years”

    With just five weeks left before Hungary’s most nail-biting election in 20 years, independent polls show prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement trailing Péter Magyar’s Tisza party by an average nine points. Yet, a system rigged in Fidesz’s favour by 16 years of unconstrained gerrymandering, media control and pre-election fiscal bribes could still see MAGA’s closest European ally returned to office. “Hungary is trailing behind Russia by ten years and that’s true for almost everything,” Márton Schlanger, a political polling analyst at the Republikon Institute, tells the Twenty-Four Two Podcast. “It’s the same in ways of campaigning and how blatantly, outrageously confident the governing party can be in manipulating the public and manipulating the elections”. Hungarian polling has become deeply politicised as independent firms like Republikon, Medián, 21, Závecz and Publicus publish surveys diverging radically from those released by government-aligned bodies including pop-up organisations claiming Fidesz leads. Medián, in particular, is accused by Orbán and allies of manipulating data to produce a bombshell poll, which calculated a 20-point Tisza lead among voters who had chosen a party and would definitely participate on April 12. “I’m not sure if I’m flattered or scared about all of the attention that polls are receiving in this campaign, not just in the past months, but ever since the [2024] clemency scandal and Tisza appeared on the field, it has been immense,” says Schlanger. The US-Israeli war with Iran and Fidesz’s intensified campaign against Ukraine has diverted attention from the incumbents’ economic mismanagement and corruption that has been driving support for Magyar and Tisza. “It could help Fidesz but, overall, I don’t think that this will turn the tide in itself,” says Schlanger. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com

    48 min
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