An article in the April 15, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal explored the implications of the recent vote in Hungary that defeated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Online, the article was titled, "How An Upstart Politician Reclaimed Hungarian Nationalism To Topple Orbán."
In the hardcopy version of the paper, in a little "box" included in the middle of the article, a headline proclaimed, "We Didn't Have A Choice, One Voter Says." The text that appeared under this statement noted that the successful candidate, Péter Magyar, "energized a budding grassroots campaign by urging Hungarians to start organizing 'citizen circles' made up of ... volunteers pushing for change."
Small groups, organized around a strongly-desired political change, played a dramatic role in achieving this incredibly important transition in Hungary, taking the country from an authoritarian government to a much more democratic one.
If those "Citizen Circles" sound like what I often advocate for in my daily blog postings, that's because they are! What happened in Hungary exemplifies the power of a politics based on voluntary associations of small groups of concerned citizens (in the American Revolution they were called "Committees of Correspondence") which collaborate and coordinate to make nation-level political change.
There is still time to mobilize such "citizen circles" before our upcoming midterm elections, here in the United States. As I said in my blog posting yesterday, "It's Time For The Shy To Step Right Up."
And, as a reminder, there will be a workshop on this coming Saturday, sponsored by Indivisible Santa Cruz County and Indivisible Pajaro Valley, that will focus on some of the ways we ordinary people can get more directly, and effectively, engaged in local government and politics.
My French friends have asked me why they don't see on their news more street protests in the U.S. Of course in France when the citizens don't like something their government is doing, they take to the streets and they are very effective in influencing the government. I did have to point out to my friends here that the United States is a much bigger country than France, which has a population of about 66 million as compared to 350 million in the States. Hungary has an even smaller population, of less than 10 million. Really the U.S. is too big, making it very difficult to ever come together in a significant enough number of citizens to make the kind of impact made in countries in Europe. Not to say it should not be tried, only to point out that it is a much greater challenge.
ReplyDeleteI think your response is on target, but there are a couple of other things that may be relevant. First, how much does the French news cover local events in the United States? Not a lot, I'd bet. Second, and related, street protests in the U.S. are occurring, I believe, but they are often occurring in relatively small communities, so they are not covered, even in the U.S., by the national press. The incredibly successful street protests in Minneapolis, which I think are still ongoing, hopefully did make the news in France and the rest of Europe.
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