Whats life like in a modern autocracy,?
I think some people imagine it like it's 1984 - or at least like 1930s USSR where black cars stop in front your house in the middle of the night to take you away and you're never heard from again.
In modern times, it's not how it works anymore. You can talk shit about Orbán in public, in the pub, anywhere really - it's fine. The elections are more or less real, in the sense that they are open to everyone and the results are accepted - I live in a district of Budapest where in last year's local/municipal elections, 16 out of 16 constituencies were won by the opposition and as such they currently have a 2/3 majority in the local council. And the opposition has a majority in the Capital's General Assembly, Budapest's central governing body. So it's not quite Lukashenko's Belarus just yet.
But. There are fewer and fewer media outlets that are openly critical of the government and more and more of them are nothing more but pure propaganda channels that regularly engage in delightful character assassinations. The most memorable occasion was when a 16-year-old high school student spoke up against the government at a rally and subsequently, the Fidesz-loyalist media started publishing articles about her grades in school, accused her of being on the verge of failing several subjects (completely fabricated), one of them even posted an upskirt photo of her... as I said, delightful.
Controversial laws are often submitted in the middle of the night and voted on by Parliament on the next day, with zero consultation with anyone beforehand. Apart from the increasing stranglehold on the media, Fidesz is taking over higher education, academia in general, and the cultural scene as well with changing funding systems, putting institutions under the control of freshly-created foundations packed with Fidesz loyalists. These have been allocated serious state funds that, in accordance with a fresh law - submitted on Tuesday night - are now basically locked in: a two-thirds majority will be required in the future to change their funding.
Ahead of the last parliamentary elections, the ÁSZ, the main regulatory body of Parliament's finances, somehow found violations in the finances of all parties bar one - no prizes for guessing which one. ÁSZ is led by a man I happen to know personally, a long-time, deeply loyal Fidesz-member. Yes, the few media outlets that still haven't been bought up by Fidesz-related businessmen are shouting about these things but it's futile against the brutal, relentless propaganda of the Fidesz media, especially the state TV that has long since given up any pretence of public service.
Personally, the worst thing is the feeling of helplessness. Considering the election system, the demographics of the country, the staggering concentration of financial and political power that Fidesz enjoys means that there is next to no chance of the "Orbán-regime" not dominating the next couple of decades of my life. I have to watch heartbreakingly awful and frankly, petty things happening, like completely banning gender transition (making it impossible to officially change your gender, to be precise), or the recent law that pretty much prevents single people and of course gay people from adopting children (the single people part is important because presenting themselves as single people attempting to adopt a child was the best way for LGBTQ people to successfully adopt); the constitution already defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and a pending amendment defines "parents" as mother and father - and I have no hope it will be better any time soon. If it were up to Budapest alone, they could be defeated easily. But it's not - the capital is in a sea of orange, full of people with whom anti-LBTGQ and anti-migrant and xenophobic propaganda is very effective. And of course it's Fidesz who writes the election laws - and the recent successes of the opposition already saw them enacting certain changes to make it even harder - close to impossible, really - for any challenger.
Hey, I'm just asking questions, man!