Slouching Toward Hungary
Americans will have to rely on trusted independent and international media for truth in reporting because just like in Orbán’s Hungary, the Fourth Estate is being captured, weaponized, and neutralized
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A decade into fighting for democracy and exposing Trump-Russia, I find myself reflecting on moments. Like that moment in 2016 at one of my first underground resistance meetings — we did not know how quickly things would turn so the meetings were private, word of mouth. It was there I met an activist from Romania, who told me that it starts with the silencing of truth. Whether it’s Russian Fascism or Communist Totalitarianism, truth is dangerous and truth-tellers are silenced.
I think about this today as I learn that the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes will now be controlled by the Department of Defense, run by the lowest wrung in broadcast news, the weekend anchor. Job applicants were questioned about their commitment to the Orange Führer, according to a Washington Post report.
With each day being a new day in the Trump Reality Show, where he is made to appear like he’s vanquishing his enemies, this news comes a day after a WaPo reporter’s office was raided. The silence from its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, surely caused Katherine Graham to turn over in her grave.
And this just days after PBS weekend newscasts were forced to shut down due to funding cuts.
I have documented the decline of the Fourth Estate in many reports over the past decade, and I included how the destruction of freedom of the press directly correlated with the rise of autocracy.
It’s very important not to confuse the argument by billionaires for ‘free speech’ — which we hear a lot from the likes of internet troll JD Vance, who along with his programmer Peter Thiel, invested in the Russian propaganda outlet Rumble, which is used to wage psychological war on its viewers. Rumble hosts Russian military intelligence linked RT and Tenet Media, whose YouTube influencers were paid millions from RT cutouts and some of whom are now in the White House press pool.
As I cautioned in my first Unmusked report about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the new media landscape was actually a battlefield and the casualties continue to pile up. Here is an excerpt from that report, published December 11, 2022:
When Twitter owner Elon Musk Tweeted his support for returning Crimea to Russia, Russian analyst Fiona Hill accused Musk of actively transmitting a message on behalf of Putin.
Canadian academic Michael MacKay agreed, describing it as ‘active measures’ - a term used to describe how the Soviet Union used covert disinformation operations.
“Elon Musk is turning Twitter into VKontakte, the Russian information warfare outlet disguised as a social media platform”, MacKay told Byline Supplement.
These claims have to be taken seriously. Hill is a foreign affairs specialist who was a witness during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, and MacKay is a noted Ukraine expert with a PhD in political philosophy from the London School of Economics.
“Under the guise of ‘free speech’ Musk’s purpose is to destroy civil speech – genuine communication that connects people”, MacKay explained. “Musk and Kremlin propaganda do not present a point of view. They seek to destroy the idea that truth and a shared experience of reality exist.”
To understand why the purchase of Twitter by a Kremlin-friendly billionaire matters, one need only to look how other autocrats and oligarchs around the world have abused their powers.
Donated Freedoms
In 2018, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban encouraged owners of hundreds of Hungarian media properties to ‘donate’ them to a Government allied foundation. The Central European Press and Media Foundation (CEMPF) began absorbing cable news channels, internet platforms, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines. The result was a centralized right-wing Government-controlled media syndicate.
Freedom of the press has been on a steady decline in Hungary ever since.
Orban’s attacks on the rule of law ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he declared a state of emergency and began seizing unlimited power to rule by decree. Among the targeted groups were the LGBTQ+ community, women, journalists, academia, and asylum seekers.
Russia itself has a similar history. Two decades ago in Russia, as Vladimir Putin came to power, the media tycoon Vladimir Gusinksy said he was pressured to relinquish his empire to the Government…
In modern times, autocratic leaders are increasingly seeing the value of controlling social media. Former Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte had a rabid fan base online, with an army of bloggers who defended him, and who also went after journalists critical of his savage anti-drug policies, which often resulted in bloody public executions.
Before leaving office, Duterte used his presidential power to block the franchise extension of the country’s largest media conglomerate, ABS-CBN, silencing a network that had been critical of him and which he said refused to air his 2016 political ads.
Earlier this year, an ally of Duterte’s took control of the network, causing media watchdogs to decry the move as ‘shameless’ and ‘concerning’.
I admit I had low expectations of billionaire and corporate-owned media — I am celebrating 20 years without a TV in my home — despite a long career in broadast news. Sometime in 2006, I turned in my cable box and never got another television. Anything important can be found in print in greater depth, and I suffer from Post Traumatic News Syndrome — currently, in remission. I can and do binge worthy TV series, but I refuse to be marketed to.
Still, it was pretty shocking to watch how quickly media capitulated to Trump. Most just obeyed in advance, settling out of court when it wasn’t necessary. Replacing real news personnel with more Peter Thiel replicants.
At least it’s enjoyable watching the ratings sag in the much coveted 18 to 49 demo.
I keep thinking about Hungary, and how media owners were forced to donate their companies to the government.
There’s no freedom of the press in Hungary anymore, Viktor Orbán consolidated control — a decade ago, Hungary ranked 40th on the press freedom index, now it’s plummeted to 85th.
Described as a predator of press freedom, Orbán captured media through economic pressure, restrictive laws, and government control — exactly what Trump is doing.
Trump’s regime is systematically destroying freedom of the press, while also using social media in destructive and psychologically debilitating ways.
The US government is now making snuff films. America has become a 24/7 slasher film, with a scare a minute.
They know that citizens are filming ICE when they murder people in the streets, and they eagerly release videos of people being bombed in boats.
They call it immigration control or the war on drugs, but it’s neither.
They’ve been training up a bunch of brownshirts.
And they want to ensure that we are in despair and fear. And it works.
I don’t have a television, but the newsporn and traumaporn and warporn are everywhere — the violent imagery is supposed to paralyze us. We are being psychologically battered by our own government.
I knew right after the election in 2024 that America was going to become like Russia in the ‘90s, when the oligarchs were running the politicians and when the violence was out of control.
In that report, just days after the election, I wrote:
Democracy was just murdered to thunderous applause, and those who saw it coming were called alarmist, but they were also the people who read history books or have lived experience — who know struggle from their unique perspectives or had fled authoritarian countries.
In the 2015 Frontline PBS documentary, Putin’s Way, we see how it was done three decades ago in Russia. How money was stolen from the people — money that was meant for the starving ended up in the pockets of a deputy mayor from St. Petersburg and his cronies. The theft was never investigated to completion, because when that deputy mayor — Vladimir Putin — became President at the turn of the century, one of his first official acts was to make it impossible to prosecute a sitting President. The crime spree continued unabated, with his St. Petersburg gang benefitting richly.
The documentary shows his journey from “unemployed spy to modern day tsar”. And the people, who were breathing their first taste of freedom after the collapse of the Soviet Union, excited about liberal democracy, got a metaphorical noose around their necks as Kremlin-linked ‘bloggers’ moved in to ensure the Russian people were mind-hacked online, drawn away from any notions of Western freedom and pointed toward totalitarian rule.
The Kremlin crushed independent TV and pushed out any political challengers by the mid-2000s. Before taking their hybrid war on the road, they targeted their own people’s minds first and continuously.
Geopolitical analysts like Joni Askola watched America this week with horror.
Finland-based Askola, who threads his analysis on X/Twitter, predicts that the US is on the cusp of an accelerated slide into violence and inequality.
“By successfully buying their way into power, the South African oligarchs are now exerting influence in the US through their proxies, Donald Trump and JD Vance,” Askola told Byline Supplement. “The US is gradually shifting toward a situation similar to 1990s Russia, where oligarchs control politicians and pursue their own interests rather than those of the state. This leads to a violent and unequal society where citizens feel powerless to shape their own futures. Although we haven’t reached that stage yet, history indicates that oligarchs in such environments often end up waging bloody conflicts at some point.”
At some point…
I believe that point is now. I believe that Trump is already waging war on US citizens. Reporters are already being physically assaulted, citizen observers, murdered.
Twenty years ago, in 2006, Anna Politkovskaya — a renowned investigative journalist who reported on the Second Chechen War — was assassinated on Putin’s birthday Oct 7, 2006.
In America, the media is already capitulating, which is so incredibly dangerous.
Reporting the lies coming out of the regime is so incredibly dangerous.
Even clips that circulate of the Katie Miller podcast are so very dangerous.
Katie Miller is there to normalize American fascism. Would we watch The Leni Riefenstahl Hour? I don’t see any difference.
Maybe, re-read the words of the women reporters who came before me — the ones who risked their lives in World War II to warn and report on atrocities.
All these moments…
I am thinking of that time Jason Stanley told me that should Trump take the presidency a second time, America would quickly look like Orbán’s Hungary. I took him at his word. Here is an excerpt from that interview in June of 2024:
If Trump wins, it’s a historical failure on the part of outlets like the New York Times, who are influenced by a staff that is totally cynical about the situation. That it’s just ‘another election — whiners and haters are saying it’s different’. I mean, they’ll say things like, ‘Oh, how can you risk another four years of Trump?’ Another four years of Trump!? Do you think Putin stays in for four years? It’s absurd.
It’s not another four years of Trump. When you end the democratic system, it’s not another four years of a leader. Maybe it’ll be a different Trump — maybe it’ll be Donald Jr or our first Jewish President, Ivanka. But reporting on it, like the risk is just another four years of Trump, is a fail.
We have a far-right, undemocratically appointed, Supreme Court — the majority was appointed largely by a President who didn’t win the popular vote. They are showing themselves to be simply there to grease the wheels to end democracy — to end the rule of law. So it’s a terrible situation. And the newspapers are reporting it like a horse race, like it’s just another Democratic and Republican election. And anyone who points that out is called a hysteric…
It’s the complete destruction of the United States as an international power…
Fascism is sometimes described in certain political traditions as oligarchical, finance capital-backed nationalism to trick the working class. And that’s classically what we’re seeing.
We’re seeing the billionaire class fund fascism, using homophobia, racism, patriarchy, to create what one headline called the ‘rainbow coalition of hate’. So it’s gonna be a multicultural, multiracial movement, where you have white supremacists, anti-Semites, sexists, homophobes, you’re gonna draw in the Christian right, because they’re drawn in by the anti-LGBT stuff, the anti-abortion line.
So this is the situation, and it’s all funded by billionaires who want to get rid of regulations, so they can plunder the earth and survive climate change in their giant bunkers in Hawaii.
At some point, we’re going to get legal targeting of opponents, probably through the tax system or something like that, if they’re going to continue to imitate Viktor Orbán.
I don’t think we’ll get a Putin-style assassination of political opponents here. I think it’ll be like Hungary where, anti-Trump business people will have to sell their businesses and will get pressure on them…
I think they’re going to be doing what they did to (my podcast partner, Jim) and tie people up in courts and use the legal system to target opponents, but not in the brutal ways that Russia does, but more in the ways that Orbán does.
So we’re already seeing the media being taken over by Clear Channel, by Sinclair Broadcasting — local radio, local TV news. This is how it works. We’re gonna see more local TV being forced to sell to these giant, far right media conglomerates, who will continually send the same messages to listeners. And even if you’re skeptical of those messages, it takes a toll. It has a psychological effect.—Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, on RadPod
We had time back then to listen to him. He told me we needed to get women out in front, and we tried.
Yesterday, I told Jason the reason he is under attack for leaving America to work in Canada is because his work is so incredibly important.
It’s important to keep putting in the work, keep exposing the fascism being sold as patriotism, when it’s just criminals aligned with other criminals trying to stay out of prison or worse.
As I wrote in my report, Welcome to West Russia:
I am told by friends in Russia that people sit around and watch game shows all day, as they send their sons off to die in a “special military operation.”
I ended that report with these words: George Orwell weeps.
Orwell was a reporter, and a damn good one.
Find the good reporters and support them.
And thank you to everyone who supports me.
The work will only get harder.
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Really sad about Stars and Stripes. That is not good.
Funny that I saw a total eclipse of the sun there in 1999.