Last year, I noticed that supposed defenders of liberal democracy like the European Union had taken in hand all the tools of suppression and anti-democratic meddling that they had (mostly falsely) accused their populist and nationalist critics of using.

Then it was the new Polish government that treated laws passed by the predecessor government as null when it suited them, and as law when it suited them. It arrested its domestic political enemies and took extraordinary legal gambits to seize control of more of the press. The government had come to power in part because the EU withheld funds from Poland, citing concerns about the rule of law. This was transparent constitutional malarkey. Nowhere do the EU treaties define what constitutes the rule of law, nor have any agreed on a process of adjudicating it, or dishing out rewards and punishments over it. Nonetheless, the people in charge are very much “living Constitution” types, not textualists. And the message was received: elect a government we approve of and you’ll get your billions back. Almost as soon as the new government took power, funds were dispersed.

By the end of the year, in Romania, when a candidate who criticized the ongoing war in Ukraine came out on top of the first round, the Romanian judiciary simply annulled the election.

So far, the EU must be enjoying the fruits of these interventions because the game is now on to take out Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The EU officially denied over $1 billion in normal transfer money to Hungary — a difference-making amount for a country of 9.5 million people — because of its supposed failure to tackle “corruption” and reforms on public procurement. Orbán finally seems truly vulnerable. Covid- and war-related inflation are eating at his reputation for competent economic management. Peter Magyar, head of the Tisza party, has called for early elections this year, to head off a chance that a cease-fire in Ukraine and easing of energy prices will redound to the benefit of Orbán and his Fidesz party.