Astral Codex Ten

Socialists

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Socialists

Article

Socialists is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 04, 2021 and November 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “He lost control to the Socialists”; “Fidesz trounced the Socialists and won 68% of parliamentary seats”; “caused by Socialists, their corruption”. It most often appears alongside Angela Merkel, Congress, Erdogan.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 04, 2021
  • Last seen: November 11, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Dictator Book Club: Orban
November 04, 2021 · Original source
Did anyone at all fall for this? I guess yes; Fidesz won the 1998 elections and Orban briefly became prime minister. But he wasn't very good at it then either, and he lost control to the Socialists a few years later. He shrugged, gave up, and retired to live a quiet life in the country.
Haha, no, he spent the whole time plotting revenge. "The thirty-nine year old Orban was not disheartened in the slightest by the shock of the defeat; on the contrary, it filled him with new vigour". Conventional wisdom was that Orban had lost by being overly confrontational; when a journalist asked his opinion, he said that, no, he hadn't been confrontational enough. The book is kind of ambiguous about this, but I think it suggests that during his last few weeks in office he raised everyone's salaries to an unsustainable level, just so the socialists would have to lower them again and look like the bad guys. He started rumors that the election had been stolen - less because he thought anyone would believe it, more just to keep the opposition off-balance - and then started every other rumor he could think of.
The Socialists had a tough start; they had promised everyone lots of money during their campaign, and eventually the country ran out of funds. They replaced their original lackluster PM with charismatic businessman Ferenc Gyurcsany. Gyurcsany had to implement austerity measures, and those are never popular, but he was good at it and potentially could have gone down in history as a strong man during hard times.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
But it's not just that. The big factor that's absent in all these culturalist accounts of Hungarian politics is.... the economy. Hungary went from below-average unemployment rate for its region under Orban 1 to way above-average under the socialists to again below-average under Orban 2.
1) Fidesz rise to power was caused by Socialists, their corruption and mismanagement of Hungarys economy.