8. Democracy under pressure “If we are able to form a government in Germany, we will follow the Hungarian model step by step”, said AfD’s leader Alice Weidel in a press conference in Budapest in February 2025, while standing next to Orbán. The‘Hun ­garian model’ is, to all intents and purposes, a system of autocratic social, economic and political controls. And it is also a playbook, an action plan, a range of tactics and strategies which illiberal movements try out and exchange. It encompasses a set of common themes which are full blown calls for action: anti-Brussels estab­lishment, anti-immigration, anti-abortion and anti-LGBT rhetoric and so on; a rhetorical apparatus which diverts social and electoral frustrations onto a plethora of tar­gets constructed insistently and artificially. It is state-of­the-art Finkelstein formula. The true purpose of this identity-based social decon­struction, the obsession with‘culture war’(one of the catchphrases most insistently used by MCC Brussels’ Füredi) and the right’s belief in the ability“to make use of Gramsci’s cultural hegemony concept”(once again Füredi’s words) is to hijack the drive for change and the conflict dialectic against certain fixed targets. Targets which are identity rather than social emancipation based. The Hungarian prime minister benefited from the toler­ance of the former German chancellor Angela Merkel in the name of the car manufacturing companies gifted an overtime time law known as the‘slave law’. As a tur­bo-liberal leader, Weidel’s priorities do not include reduc­ing inequalities. Meloni has coined a“let’s not interfere with manufacturers” motto taken up by von der Leyen on the Europe scale to justify the current deregulation. Their use of the illiberal barrage does not mean that these leaders and parties cannot or do not want dialogue with the economic and political powers, from the starting point of the European People’s Party family. Quite the opposite. Orbán was a member of the PPE until 2021, after which Fratelli d’Italia took over the centre-right and far right liaison role. The normalisation of the far right and the illiberal dis­course is also the outcome of certain specific policies and strategies. The role of the leader of the PPE, Man­fred Weber, in this should also be cited. Since 2021 Weber has helped to bring the far right into the EU fold. In exchange for a boycott on plans for a single large far right group, Weber joined a tactical alliance with Fratelli d’Italia which culminated in the European Conservatives obtaining vice-presidency of the European Parliament in January 2022 and a vice-presidency of the European Commission in 2026. The communication channel between Weber and FDL has also set in motion a season of co-operation between Meloni and von der Leyen and opened the way for‘variable majorities’. Even in the pre­vious legislature, with certain Green votes, and to an even greater extent during the current European Parlia­ment legislature, the PPE has voted more than once with the far right, including the AfD, for example on the immi­gration theme. In the meantime, Trump’s return to the White House and direct action by the ultra-rich‘broligarchy’ in political dynamics is currently supercharging the illiberal play­book. The erosion of the rule of law currently under way in the EU is turning into a global level attack on demo­cratic equilibria. Attacks by the leaders of the Polish, Hungarian and Italian far right on the judiciary and its independence may have been under way for some time, but Trump is magnifying this beyond measure. Attacks on immigrants’ rights may have been under way in the EU for some time, but the US has moved onto the use of force. We may have been getting used to‘full powers’ being invoked here in Europe, but in Washington use of these has been fully under way for some time now. We may have got used to the various Brexit and Polexit calls to arms, but the US president and vice president are now launching full frontal attacks on the EU and its rules. If this is the new normal, any one with a memory will recall that there is nothing normal about it: democ­racy is under threat after years and years of incessant illiberal attacks. Democracy under pressure 15