So Budapest has held its first Pride since Viktor Orban’s departure, and the British commentariat is already polishing their medals for global moral leadership. We are told that this is a triumph for LGBTQ+ rights, a beacon of progress in a darkening continent, and yet another vindication of the Western liberal order. But let us pause, as is my wont, and consider the matter with a colder eye. The fall of Orban, like the fall of Rome, is not a simple tale of good versus evil. It is a complex saga of decadence, exhaustion, and the quiet rot that sets in when empires—or political movements—outlive their usefulness.
First, let us acknowledge the obvious. Orban was a populist autocrat, a man who made a career of trampling liberal norms and stoking nationalist fires. His exit was overdue, and anyone who cheers the return of some semblance of pluralism in Hungary is not wrong to do so. But this is where my contrarian instincts kick in. The Western press, and especially the British press, has treated the Budapest Pride as though it were the reopening of the Athenian agora after the Thirty Tyrants. Yet what has really changed? Hungary’s economy is in shambles, its demographics a demographic death spiral, and its political class—both old and new—is riddled with the same corruption that plagued Orban’s cronies. The new government, whatever its intentions, inherits a country that has been hollowed out by a decade of nationalist theatre and economic mismanagement.
More to the point, this event has been framed as a British victory. The UK, we are told, is now the global champion of LGBTQ+ rights. Is that not a bit rich? This is a nation where the House of Lords still debates the finer points of gender recognition with all the urgency of a bishops’ tea party. Where trans rights are a political football kicked between warring factions. Where free speech, that sacred cow, is often invoked to defend the most retrograde positions. To claim that Britain is leading the way is either a delusion or a desperate attempt to salvage some moral authority after Brexit, the shambles of the asylum policy, and the endless parade of scandals that have turned Westminster into a caricature of itself.
And what of the broader historical context? We are witnessing, I submit, the end of the cycle that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. For thirty years, liberal democracy was the only game in town, and LGBTQ+ rights became its standard-bearer—a convenient shorthand for modernity and tolerance. But that banner has become frayed. The global order is fragmenting into spheres of influence, many of which have no interest in Western pieties. The rise of illiberal democracy in places like India and Brazil, the reassertion of traditional values in the Middle East, the quiet consolidation of authoritarian capitalism in China: these forces will not be moved by a Pride parade in Budapest. They will simply shrug and continue their ascent.
Moreover, there is something profoundly narcissistic about the Western celebration of this event. It assumes that the rest of the world is watching, that our values are universally desired, and that a parade is a form of liberation. Have we learned nothing from the misadventures of the Arab Spring? Change must be organic, not exported. The Hungarian people, for all their suffering under Orban, are not blank slates upon which we can write our own ideologies. They have their own history, their own resentments, and their own complex relationship with identity. The triumph of Pride in Budapest may well be fleeting, a brief moment of light before the next populist wave crashes ashore.
So let us not be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. The Budapest Pride is a welcome sight, but it is not a victory for the West. It is a reminder that cycles turn, that no political order lasts forever, and that the hubris of the present always sets the stage for the reckoning to come. The Victorians knew this, and they had the decency to be anxious about their empires. We, in our smugness, have forgotten. To the newly emboldened LGBTQ+ community in Budapest, I offer cautious congratulations. But to the British press, I say: keep your medals. The real test of your commitment will come when the next Orban rises, and he will, somewhere else, soon enough.
