Viktor Orban is now in the business of predicting the future.

I have written much about Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, of late (see particularly, “The Return of the Habsburgs” – 7/26/24). He has been busily assembling a group of like-minded European leaders — all fellow members of the EU, and all but Austria also NATO members — in an alliance he calls “Patriots for Europe.” Briefly, he appears to be reestablishing the Habsburg Empire, in a 21st Century version.

And it is most significant that Orban and his colleagues — including Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia — are avowed admirers of Vladimir Putin, to whom Orban has been trying to sell himself as the guy who can settle the “conflict” (i.e., the war) in Ukraine.

Now he is stepping forward to reinvent himself once again, this time as the all-seeing prognosticator whose visions of the future world — the one to which we are now allegedly headed — will create an alternative path, one that will prevent a universal disaster and build a more “hyperrational” world.

A world with Asia and Russia as its core.

What does he foresee? Well, for openers:

He predicts that Ukraine will never be able to become a member of NATO or the EU.

In a speech before ethnic Hungarians in neighboring Romania, he predicts that, “In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant centre of the world,” specifically naming China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future great powers. [Reuters, July 27, 2024.]

(Sorry, Viktor, but Nostradamus — the real one — beat you to that prediction centuries ago.)

And then he switches from forecasting to the blame game:

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well.” He declared that the West was “weak,” and that Russia’s position in world affairs was “rational and predictable.” He praised Russia for its ability to adapt to Western sanctions, and then inexplicably added:

“The strongest international appeal of Russian soft power is its opposition to LGBTQ.” [Reuters, id.]

Well, that’s setting us straight . . . so to speak.

*. *. *

When I said previously that Orban’s voice was one not to be ignored, I now believe I was seriously understating the case.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/30/24