BUDAPEST — To defeat Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in next spring's general election, some Hungarian leftists are advocating the previously unthinkable — working with the far-right Jobbik party.

With Orbán's Fidesz party far ahead in the opinion polls, these left-wingers believe the only way to beat the champion of "illiberal democracy" is for opposition forces to team up, even if that means working with people they have long considered beyond the pale. Their stance is fiercely opposed by other leftists and liberals.

In a sign of Hungary's shifting political boundaries, an eclectic group of around 1,000 people gathered in front of Fidesz headquarters in Budapest last Friday evening to protest against what they say is an illegal government crackdown on Jobbik ahead of the election. The party is facing a possible fine of over €2 million — more than it has in its coffers — for alleged campaign finance irregularities.

Along with Jobbik leaders, high-ranking figures from the Greens and liberal opposition parties were also in the crowd. Not all of them support directly working with Jobbik but for the first time they were willing to be seen alongside the party’s voters and leaders.

Some protesters carried Jobbik party flags and even a few red and white Arpad flags — associated with Hungary’s Nazi-allied Arrow Cross regime. Others waved European Union flags.

“Right now Hungary has a far-right government, even a neo-fascist government" — Márton Gulyás, prominent left-wing activist

For left-wingers who favor at least informal cooperation with Jobbik, the tactic is a necessary evil to tackle what they see as a bigger threat to Hungarian democracy: Orbán’s consolidation of power.

Orbàn's Fidesz is a member of the center-right European People's Party and sees itself as a conservative defender of European values. But Orbán's anti-Muslim comments, his refusal to take in refugees, his crackdowns on NGOs and on Budapest's Central European University as well as his tirades against the European Commission mean his opponents see him in a different light.

“Right now Hungary has a far-right government, even a neo-fascist government,” said Márton Gulyás, a prominent left-wing activist who has been campaigning for the opposition to work together.

“Of course it’s sad that the second-largest opposition party is also a far-right party,” he said. But he argued that Jobbik was now “a moderate far-right party” — an assessment that chimes with Jobbik's own efforts to recast itself as a milder alternative to Orbán.

Simple math

The math is straightforward: Polls show that there is no chance of Orbán losing the election unless Jobbik and Hungary’s left-wing come together — and even then, they face an uphill struggle.

A survey last month by pollster Median found 39 percent of all adults — and 56 percent of those who know who they will vote for in the election — support Fidesz. Jobbik lies second, with the support of 11 percent of all adults and 15 percent of those who know how they'll vote in the election, to be held in April or May.

Multiple liberal and left-wing parties are polling in the single digits, while 30 percent of the population is undecided.

Hungary has a mixed voting system, whereby half of parliament is elected via party lists and the other half in a single round of voting in individual electoral districts.

“If you want to defeat Fidesz, then you have to collect as many seats as you can in the individual districts, and in this you need to somehow cooperate with Jobbik,” said Gulyás, whose left-leaning movement has vowed to fundraise for district-level opinion polling and ask voters to opt for whichever candidate is most likely to win against Fidesz — even if that means voting for a Jobbik politician.

But many left-wing voters and politicians believe it would be immoral to support a party with a history of xenophobia and involvement in paramilitary groups.

“Jobbik is the party which burnt EU flags a couple of years back, this is a party which wanted to list Jews,” Ferenc Gyurcsány, a former prime minister and current head of the liberal-leaning Democratic Coalition (DK) party, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “Jobbik is everything we fight against. The DK under no circumstances would cooperate with Jobbik. The same goes for our voters.”

Reaching out

Jobbik has made a significant effort to reach out to voters who just a few years ago would have recoiled at the idea of voting for them.

“Of course we have a past, and we do have certain things in our past which we’re not very proud of,” said Márton Gyöngyösi, a Jobbik leader and MP, best known for strongly pro-Russian views and a 2012 anti-Semitic speech in which he called for Hungarian Jews to be listed.

These days, in line with Jobbik's effort to draw a line under its past, Gyöngyösi distances himself from that speech.

“It was a bad statement, full stop. And I apologized for it,” Gyöngyösi said on a recent afternoon in his office, down the street from parliament.

Raised primarily in the Arab world and South Asia, where his father served as a communist-era Hungarian trade official, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Gyöngyösi has been one of Jobbik’s intellectual architects for over a decade.

“Things are rarely black and white, and I think that’s one of the things that we learned,” said Gyöngyösi. “I know that we still have some homework to do, and we still have a credibility issue.”

Gyöngyösi suggested Jobbik was now closer to the European mainstream than Orbán.

“Although we reject the redistribution of migrants in Europe on the basis of quotas determined by Brussels, we also warned the government of making statements that basically spark Islamophobia,” said Gyöngyösi. “We cannot go against a world religion … Moderate Islam is our ally in fighting extremism.”

Jobbik’s leaders also point to their recent support for embattled NGOs and the Central European University and their opposition to a government campaign against financier and philanthropist George Soros. They have also teamed up with trade unions to fight wage inequality between Western and Eastern Europe.

The party has even begun to distance itself from Western European right-wing Euroskeptic parties. Gyöngyösi says France's National Front and the Alternative for Germany now have more in common with Fidesz than Jobbik.

Identity problem

Many outside the party are not convinced, however. While some of Jobbik’s most extreme figures have been expelled, others remain. The party also maintains a pro-Kremlin stance, openly opposing EU sanctions and supporting Russia’s role in the Paks II nuclear power plant project — albeit while calling for more transparency.

The Hungarian government, meanwhile, sees Jobbik — which currently enjoys the support of a powerful former Fidesz-allied oligarch, Lajos Simicska — as its primary political threat and has taken to accusing the party of both being too far right and not right-wing enough.

“On the opposition side, and that includes Jobbik, they are waiting for a miracle" — Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital think tank

In Fidesz’s view, left and liberal-leaning figures who support cooperation with Jobbik are hypocrites, while Jobbik is seen as having abandoned its nationalist identity. Government politicians and pro-government media often point to anti-Semitic and anti-Roma statements by Jobbik local officials as proof that the party’s transformation is not credible. A spokesperson for the Hungarian government did not respond to questions for this article.

Analysts believe Jobbik is taking a big risk with its strategy of presenting a more moderate front. While some left-wing voters now view the party less negatively, its overall support is not growing.

“On the opposition side, and that includes Jobbik, they are waiting for a miracle,” said Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital think tank.

As Jobbik tries to rebrand, some of the party's politicians and core voters are becoming alienated. A party that once had a clear — although often unpalatable — message now has an identity problem.

“The danger for Jobbik is that it becomes a boring party,” said Krekó.