Orban urges online campaign against Hungary's surging opposition

Zoltan Simon, Bloomberg News on Jul 26, 2025

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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his supporters needed to ramp up a digital movement to seize momentum from the surging opposition party that’s taken a big lead in most polls.

So-called digital civic groups will aim to boost his party’s support before 2026 elections, Orban said in a speech to ethnic Hungarian supporters in Baile Tusnad, Romania.

The virtual realm is “enemy territory now and that’s not good,” Orban said. He said an earlier ruling party attempt to create an aggressive digital “fight club” hadn’t appealed to all of his supporters.

Cost-of-living crisis and allegations of widespread corruption among the ruling elite have triggered a political upheaval in the Eastern European nation. That’s catapulted the opposition Tisza party of Peter Magyar — a social-media-savvy former ruling party insider — to a double-digit lead in most polls. Orban, though, said internal polling data showed his Fidesz party retaining a majority in elections, which are likely to take place in April.

The nationalist premier reiterated familiar geo-political talking points in his annual speech, including that in his view the West helped provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He also called on the European Union to stop funding Kyiv’s resistance, a position that’s largely isolated Hungary among its European NATO allies.

In sharp contrast, Magyar, in a speech in the central city of Szekesfehervar, vowed to steer Hungary back toward the European political mainstream.

Magyar also pilloried Orban’s ties with authoritarian regimes, especially Moscow, and said Hungary needed to choose the West and Europe as its geopolitical anchor.

“Our homeland’s place was, is and will be in Europe,” Magyar said.