Watching the results coming out of Budapest last night, you will have seen throngs of young Hungarians celebrating the fall of the regime which, they saw, had prevented Hungary from crossing the long arc of history and joining its European neighbors in progress and prosperity. However, a different mood spread online. Scrolling through X’s timeline, you may have come across posts by “academics”, various political “thinkers” and general “thinkers” with little clear connection to Hungary, who nevertheless seem to have taken Viktor Orbán’s defeat rather personally. An Anglo-Irish “economist” stands out in particular among the crowd, his feed slowly transforming over the course of the day from triumphant chest thump, to desperate confrontation, to resigned disappointment. His story is not unusual, but it tells the story of something bigger.
Born in Ireland in the mid-1980s, Philip Pilkington is the symbol of a generation that once imagined itself as the protagonist of a historic struggle, but never saw its revolution come to fruition. Having never known a time before Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of the British economy, and being too young to feel the pain of the left’s wilderness years, millennials saw Tony Blair’s moderation not as a necessary move with the times but as a capitulation in the face of injustice. The Iraq War cemented a moral landscape that had emerged from the intellectual firmament of the New Left, but any political project aimed at revising the neoliberal settlement still had to face the fact that, for most people across the country, it had delivered two and a half decades of (relative) prosperity, as much as it might have left some behind.
The crash of 2008 came as the ultimate vindication for the millennial left: the avarice and cruelty that had led New Labor to embrace war and wealth was not a necessary price of good government, but the root of a fundamental instability which, in accordance with the great moral arc of the universe, had finally brought down the very people who brought it down on their heads. For Pilkington, who, as the clash reached its peak, was just completing a degree in journalism at Independent College, Dublin, it cemented a lifelong quest: to overthrow the liberal order and the injustices it supposedly caused.
After spending several years as a freelance writer and journalist in Dublin, Pilkington began an MA in Economics from Kingston University. He then joined the Kingston-based Political Economy Research Group, a “radical post-Keynesian” outfit very much in line with his left-wing politics at the time. But as the priorities of the left largely shifted from issues of structural economics to issues of structural racism, Pilkington’s politics shifted as well. Following a well-trodden pathhe came to see the right, not the left, as the preferred vehicle for an anti-liberal project and began to develop a new paradigm for conservative government.
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There was only one limit to Pilkington’s ambition – his credentials, as opposed to the title of his 2016 book (Reform in Economics: A Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Economic Theory), were modest, and prestigious academic opportunities that would have provided the necessary influence were not pursued as a result. Moreover, on the British right of 2016, there was little appetite for his recommendations, with dreams of Singapore-on-Thames still holding sway over those anti-establishment elements who might otherwise be receptive. Ironically, Pilkington turned to the world of financial capitalism to find work that would allow him to develop his theories, if only to the extent that they turned a profit.
In another world, this might have been the end of Philip Pilkington, at least as a public intellectual. But 1,000 miles away, fate had other plans. The Danube Institute was founded in 2013 by allies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as his party was consolidating its control over Hungarian institutions after his return to power in 2010. The aim of the institute, along with a wide range of similar institutions based in Budapest, was to develop an eco-based, national conservative intellectual alternative. post-liberal ideas.
As the Western world followed Hungary to the right in later years, the Budapest scene grew from its original status as the intellectual engine of Orbanism to a center of right-wing thought that was influential throughout Europe and even North America. The strong connection between these institutions and their parallels in the United States (Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, etc.) has been a key factor in the second Trump administration’s support for Orbán, beyond shared political interests in weakening European unity (for all Orbán’s talk of national sovereignty, he has certainly done much to prevent European operations on their technological efforts to establish US control). Conservative intellectuals from all over Europe, and especially from Britain, descended on the Hungarian capital, where they found like-minded individuals and a vibrant social scene, as well as the rarest and most desirable thing in right-wing political activism: abundant funding.
It was in this world that Pilkington found himself in 2023, having developed a curious spontaneous interest in Hungarian politics – as many others did at exactly the same time. He took a position as a senior researcher at the Hungarian Institute of International Relations and shortly after as a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. With that platform, Pilkington became one of the main spokespeople for the Budapest scene – and for Orban himself – in the English language. Alongside a symphony of other voices, including Danube Institute president (and former Thatcher adviser) John O’Sullivan, he tried to explain to English-speaking audiences how Hungary had triumphed over liberalism and how they could do so. For the most part, the plan seems to start with BAN pornography – actually, Pilkington it seems there is a special one obsession with the subject. What comes next, unfortunately, is much less clear. One hopes that his suggestions are more reliable than his predictions, which have included the imminent collapse of Nvidia, the inevitable resurgence of Assadand of course the eternal victory of Fidesz.
Since Sunday, which saw Orbán’s landslide defeat amid ongoing corruption scandals and, far more importantly, deep economic stagnation (to which Orbán has responded by tarnishing the hard-line anti-immigration record that has been so central to his success, opening the country to significant inflows for the first time), that advice may not be heeded. As the new government shuts down the flow of Hungarian taxpayers’ money to this network, Pilkington – along with many of his fellow expatriates – may soon find himself out of a job, without the credibility or the platform to continue his mission.
As someone on the far right, one might expect me to end this piece with despair. After all, Budapest has been the backbone of the European right for 15 years now, with Orbán the role model for many aspiring populist leaders – or at least, he’s tried to be. Still, I can’t help but feel a sense of relief about this result, even if it might prove unfavorable for Hungary in the long run (and the jury is still very much out on that one). Orbán’s attempt to build an alternative intellectual sphere shows an understanding that a sustainable political solution cannot be built on the basis of one person holding high office, and for that he should be congratulated. However, the purpose of an intellectual sphere is to generate solutions that will be implemented in government and, more importantly, to build an ideological base that can foster support now and in the future.
On both these counts, the Budapest scene has been a failure. For all its laudable efforts, Hungary has failed to push birth rates above replacement, despite the heavy spending of its pro-natalist policies. It has failed to build a new economic model, or even manage well the one that already existed. It has failed to rebuild Europe in its own image, serving instead as a bloc for needed reforms (now led in large part by right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni) and aligning itself with Putin’s crumbling regime, much to the detriment of Hungarians and Europe as a whole. Above all, she has failed to convince Hungarians that she is the future. Meeting young Hungarians over the past few years, one will usually find a reserve to connect with their country. In fact, most seem ashamed to be associated with a government they see as archaic and reactionary. A party can win elections with the votes of the elderly, but any regime that the young, cool and talented people are ashamed to associate with cannot survive for long.
It is for this reason that the fall of Budapest gives reason for hope. As long as the right is in love with what is essentially a doomed project, it cannot turn its eyes to something more fruitful. Regardless of politics, it is clear that our societies in the West will be very different two decades from now. Like John Bew recently identified in these pages, we have reached the end of a road of sorts and a new way forward will have to be found. It is in the interest of all of us that both the left and the right offer a reasonable, clear and convincing step to determine the future at such an important moment. We all have a lot of shibboleths to burn before we can seriously approach that task. As for Pilkington, we can only wish him the best. Perhaps he can use his abundant free time in the near future to learn SLOVAK – I hear it’s all the rage in Budapest these days.
(Further reading: Michael Ignatieff: Global Orbanism is over)
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