Ballot Access: A Familiar Front in the Democracy War
‘Across Europe, establishment forces increasingly block ballot access to maintain liberalism’s tight grip.’
‘Across Europe, establishment forces increasingly block ballot access to maintain liberalism’s tight grip.’
At Brain Bar 2025, Balázs Hankó and Péter Palasics debated whether tradition or innovation should guide Hungarian higher education, the real value of a diploma, and how universities can compete internationally while nurturing talent at home.
Hundreds gathered at the US Embassy in Budapest on Thursday night to honour assassinated US conservative activist Charlie Kirk. At the candlelit vigil, Zsolt Bayer, Miklós Szánthó, and László Molnár called his killing a strike against Judeo–Christian civilization, warning that Western culture must not be erased by far-left violence.
Donald Trump’s legacy split the stage at Brain Bar 2025, where Zoltán Pogátsa slammed him as an opportunist ‘populist clown’, while Jacob Reynolds hailed him as a disruptor who exposed the failures of globalization and elite complacency. The fiery debate showed why Trump remains the most divisive figure in global politics.
Hungarian Prime Minister’s security chief György Bakondi criticized the EU’s migration policy, calling it a failed approach that fuels crime, terrorism, and social tensions. He urged for national-level action to protect Europe’s security and values.
Tensions escalated after Zelenskyy warned that the ‘fate of the Druzhba pipeline’ hinges on Hungary’s stance toward Ukraine’s EU bid. FM Szijjártó hit back on X, urging Kyiv to stop ‘threatening Hungary,’ while Ukrainian FM Sybiha told Budapest to ‘diversify’ and not lecture the president.
European leaders’ obsession with the Munich analogy ahead of the Trump–Putin summit is turning history into a political crutch. Leaders warn of appeasement, yet ignore the radically different context of today’s war, risking self-imposed irrelevance in peace talks and handing strategic advantage to Washington and Moscow.
Ukrainian authorities have refused to investigate the death of József Sebestyén, a Hungarian man beaten by conscription officers, prompting outrage from Budapest. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó says the decision reveals Ukraine’s forced conscription as a state-organized practice incompatible with EU values.
‘Over a decade, between 2014 and 2024, the EU has welcomed more than 8 million asylum seekers. So it’s a bit as if the EU has admitted a new Member State that would be entirely made up of asylum seekers.’
‘I think this is something that’s often missed: communism and socialism, they’re attempts to solve a problem within liberalism. And the problem within liberalism is this individualism, right? Socialism and communism try to solve that problem, but they just repeat all the same problems. And so communism and liberalism are not so far apart. The Hungarians understand that particularly well…’