Viktor Orban spent more than a decade consolidating control over Hungarian media, working carefully within legal boundaries to avoid expulsion from the European Union. Donald Trump is running the same playbook at a speed Orban never attempted - and with willing partners in Silicon Valley.
As "Hvylya" reports, Anne Applebaum drew the comparison on the To The Contrary With Charlie Sykes podcast, placing Trump's moves against media ownership in the context of global autocratic patterns.
Orban's method was methodical: take over the courts slowly, manipulate the electoral system, empower financial allies to buy up nearly all Hungarian media. "He made a great effort to do it all legally, he tried not to break laws, partly because he had a need to stay inside the European Union," Applebaum said. The result left only a handful of independent websites standing.
Trump's approach compresses this timeline dramatically. His administration has used its influence to help allies acquire the company controlling CNN. The tech industry - or at least a significant faction of it - has been an accelerant, sharing what Applebaum described as Trump's "distaste for democracy" and preference for "a kind of tech oligarchy."
"This is not what Stalin or Hitler would have done," Applebaum said. "This is what a modern autocrat does. They don't do censorship. They do control of the media via oligarchic cronies, which is a somewhat different structure." The pattern is identical whether you look at Hungary, Turkey, or Russia - consolidation of media ownership under regime-aligned figures while maintaining the appearance of a free press.
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