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Budapest • After eight years of bending this nation to his increasingly autocratic and illiberal will, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has only a smattering of disorganized opposition parties to overcome on the road to winning four more in elections next month.
But in his own telling, he is locked in an epochal struggle with a far more worthy competitor: a shadowy international puppet-master whose dangerous ideas and limitless resources put him on par with the great invaders and occupiers defeated across centuries of Hungarian history.
"We sent home the [Ottoman] sultan with his army, the Habsburg kaiser with his raiders and the Soviets with their comrades," Orban thundered to an adoring crowd of more than 100,000 people in central Budapest this past week.