A former cold war communist dictatorship and component part of the Habsburg empire seems an unlikely source of hope forDonald Trump’s opponents.
One such country, Hungary, is often cited as the model for Trump’s no-holds-barred authoritarian assault on US institutions. Viktor Orbán, the central European country’s prime minister, has been a guest at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate and has won Trump’s praise for transforming Hungary into an “illiberal state” that extols “traditional” values – and for projecting the kind of “strongman” persona the president admires.
Now in his fourth consecutive term, Orbán and his Fidesz party have captured state institutions, tamed the media and been successfully re-elected, despiteperiodic waves of anti-government mass protests–the most recent this weekagainst an attempt to ban the annual Pride march.
It seems an ominous portent for Trump critics who took part Saturday in a second weekend of mass demonstrations,organized across 50 states by the 50501 group, following the“Hands Off” rallies staged in 1,000 locationsacross the US on 5 April.
Yet the contrasting political fate of one of Hungary’s neighbours with similar historical antecedents may provide a glimmer of hope for the prospects of mass protest laying foundations for a successful onslaught against Trump, leading to victory at the ballot box.
TheCzech Republic– once part of what was cold war-era Czechoslovakia and, coincidentally, birthplace of Trump’s first wife, Ivana – is a possible blueprint for how street protest can bloom into a unified electoral strategy that eventually unseats a billionaire leader with autocratic aspirations and apparent scorn for democracy.
In 2018, a popular movement, Million Moments for Democracy, began organizing rallies in the Czech capital, Prague, and other cities to protest the anti-democratic tendencies of the country’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš, who had been labelled “the Czech Trump”.
Babiš, a billionaire oligarch who was the country’s second-richest person, had taken office as head of a coalition that relied on support from the remnants of the Czech communist party after his populist ANO (Action for Dissatisfied Citizens) party won the previous year’s election.
Opponents accused Babiš – whose sprawling Agrofert conglomerate controlled vast segments of the Czech economy and two of the country’s biggest newspapers – of fraud and multiple conflicts of interest, while abusing power to further enrich himself. There were also complaints aboutpast ties – upheld in court, despite Babiš’s denials – to the communist secret police, the StB, for which he reportedly acted as an informer.
Early protests attracted crowds of up to 20,000, but within months attendances had skyrocketed as rallies were staged more regularly, always climaxing incalls for his resignation. By June 2019 – three months afterBabiš was hosted by Trump at the White Housein a visit that seemed to boost his international standing – Prague saw itsbiggest political protest since the 1989 fall of communism, with more than 250,000 turning out in opposition to the prime minister and his close ally, the elderly pro-Russian president, Miloš Zeman.
An even greater number turned up in November 2019, ostensibly to mark the 30th anniversary of communism’s collapse – which had itself been triggered by mass protests. The prime minister stood firm, and as the Covid-19 virus forced the country into prolonged lockdown, protests diminished and Babiš’s position seemed more assured, despite widespread discontent over his handling of the pandemic.
Yet in 2021 parliamentary elections, Babiš and his lavishly funded partywere defeated by a five-party coalitionwhose ideological differences were superseded by their hostility toward the prime minister.
The demonstrations, despite the lost momentum caused by Covid and Babiš’s stubborn refusal to resign even as police lodged criminal fraud charges, had worked by converting discontent into votes at the ballot box.
“We certainly had some role in the election results,” said Benjamin Roll, Million Moments for Democracy’s spokesperson and deputy leader at the time. “I believe we in the Czech Republic are an example of how long-term civic-society activities can bring, or help bring, political change.
“Those protests gave us all the feeling we have the power, that we were not alone, and we can do something. I think this emotion is really crucial.”
It is a potentially decisive factor amid swirling debate about how to respond to Trump as he has smashed long-established norms and assailed institutions at breakneck speed since his inauguration on 20 January.
While the leftwing Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York representative, have attracted vast crowds on their Fighting Oligarchy road tour that seems to emphasize the value of popular dissent, other Democrats have adopted a less confrontational approach, with some opting not to fight Trump at every turn.
The party’s leader in the senate, Chuck Schumer, drew fire from many on his own side for leading a group of fellow Democratic senators in voting for a six-month Republican funding bill last month, averting a government shutdown.
The move sharpened criticism that congressional Democrats had reacted too passively to Trump’s authoritarian power grabs.
At the same time, the party’s exclusion from power in the White House and on Capitol Hill has prompted questions over the effectiveness of mass protests. The failure of demonstrations to translate into electoral defeat for authoritarian-type leaders in some countries – Hungary, Turkey and Serbia are recently cited examples – has fed such doubts.
However, Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard University and a specialist on authoritarian threats to democracy, said dismissing mass rallies as futile – which he called “a new conventional wisdom” after years of thinking they guaranteed a dictator’s downfall – was misplaced.
“Mass protest is less likely to bring down a government in a place where elections are a viable channel, meaning where it is still a democracy or near-democracy,” he said. “Protest is not going to lead to Donald Trump’s resignation, or Orbán’s, but that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant.Protestcan weaken the government, can shape public opinion and the media framing and discourse, which is very important.”
At the “Hands Off” rally in Washington DC on 5 April, whichdrew tens of thousandsof people, participants said one aim was to embolden reticent voters and Trump critics who might be intimidated by the president’s blustering tactics.
Jiří Pehe, a Czech political analyst who is the director of New York University in Prague, said that message had its echoes in the Czech precedent.
“It was this overall, this strategy of waking people up and telling them: ‘Look, you have agency. You can change things. You are not just passive observers of what’s going on, but you can change things, but you have to be active,’” he said.
But allowing millions of dissatisfied Americans simply to vent their frustrations would not be enough, Pehe warned. “If the Czech Republic is to be an example, these demonstrations need to happen again and again across the United States and they need to have one or two strong messages. There has to be a very strong message towards the political class because only it can actually change things. And in this case, there should be pressure on the Democrats, saying: ‘Look, it’s your task to stop Donald Trump.’”
Speaking to the Guardian at the 5 April Washington rally, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland who is the party’s top member of the House judiciary committee, said “a popular resistance strategy” featuring protests could only work in harness with “an effective legislative strategy”, a tall order since the Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
“Ultimately, we’re going to have to win the elections next year, and when we take back the House and the Senate, we will be back in the driver’s seat,” he said.
That aim evokes another lesson from the Czech example, observers say: the need for the Democrats to take their cue from the demonstrators and put aside their ideological differences for the sake of unity.
“What you’ve seen in the Czech Republic is a broad array of political forces coming together to form a pro-democracy coalition and I think that’s instructive for the US,” said Norm Eisen, a former US ambassador to Prague and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who called for a “big tent” approach encompassing anti-Trump Republicans.
“They were for putting aside particular differences on partisan issues, on ideology. That is one of the critical ingredients for success, and I believe we are seeing that here. In these deportation disputes, we filed a brief at the supreme court by more than three dozen conservatives, [who served in] every Republican presidential administration, from Nixon to Trump 1, and I was the lawyer on that, together with a senior justice department official from the Bush administration.”
Levitsky said the US protests had assumed outsize importance given the failure of other institutions and pillars of the establishment – including major CEOs, law firms, the Catholic church and, until this week, universities - to mount a stand since Trump took office.
“This emerging protest movement, and the size of the crowds at the Bernie Sanders and AOC events, is going to compel Democratic politicians to become more active, follow their base rather than so as not to lose it,” he said. “What the protest movement can do is contribute to an erosion of Trump’s popularity, and embolden opposition politicians and probably contribute to an electoral outcome in a couple years.
“In that sense, these guys are not wasting their time. I think it’s a very, very important step in getting the opposition off the sidelines.”
Back in Prague, Roll – recalling the intoxication of the anti-Babiš rallies – had advice for US demonstrators: stay positive and, whatever Trump’s provocations, avoid hateful rhetoric – something he fears the US’s two-party system makes hard to avoid.
“The division in the United States is really dangerous because you see the other side as the enemy,” he said. “It’s crucial to remain non-violent and hopeful. Talking in front of lots of people, we realised you have to be careful about your language because if you are too negative or hateful, it can defeat your purpose. Remember that the other side are people. They’re your brothers and sisters.”