Who Is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Authoritarian Leader and Friend of Trump?

Europe|Who Is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Authoritarian Leader and Friend of Trump?

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, has been at odds with his fellow European Union leaders for years over his right-wing nationalist stance on immigration, minority rights, the rule of law, media freedoms and other issues. He would not get in line with his counterparts’ views on aiding Ukraine and has openly sympathized with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

But while E.U. officials criticized his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” other strongman leaders like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey embraced him — and none more than Donald J. Trump, who welcomed him to the White House in 2019 and has remained close, calling him “fantastic” earlier this year.

A look at Mr. Orban’s rise to power shows how he became a darling to conservatives and right-wing politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

Who is Orban?

When Mr. Orban, 61, first became prime minister in 1998, he was a rarity among Eastern European leaders for having never been part of a Soviet-era regime. At the time, Mr. Orban was an advocate of liberal democracy.

As a young man, he attended Oxford University — courtesy of a scholarship funded by George Soros — and studied how young democracies could make the transition from authoritarianism. In Hungary, in 1988, he became a founding member of the Federation of Young Democrats, known as Fidesz, which was dedicated to fighting communism. Even after it lost power to the Hungarian Socialist Party in 2002, Mr. Orban maintained control of the party, which still dominates Hungary’s political arena.

Mr. Orban was ousted as prime minister in 2002, and lost a re-election bid in 2006. But, in 2010, playing the financial crisis to his advantage, he returned to power in a landslide win and has held on ever since.