Followers of the radical nationalist Jobbik party commemorate the 167th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848 revolution and war of independence against the Habsburg rule in Budapest, Hungary, March 15 2015. | Photo by EPA Forum Hungary’s hard right turn Jobbik’s savvy leaders would not look out of place in top government jobs.

Whatever one thinks of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, their immediate political challengers look much scarier. The second most popular party in the country, Jobbik — the “Movement for a Better Hungary” — is an extreme-right group, with friendly ties to the Kremlin, as well as to the regime in Iran.

Jobbik has a paramilitary wing, currently called the “New Hungarian Guard” (the group has been banned in the past, and resurrected under a new name), reminiscent of the fascist Arrow Cross Party of the wartime period, with a track record of harassment of Hungary’s Roma population. Worryingly, Jobbik is the most popular political group among young people, according to polls, and its leaders include savvy and charismatic politicians, who would not look out of place in any leading government role.

At a recent meeting with the young deputy leader of Jobbik, Márton Gyöngyösi, I was impressed by his flawless English, eloquence, and wits — a far cry from the stereotypical image of a brainless neo-Nazi.

Gyöngyösi was educated at Trinity College Dublin and worked in international business, with companies like KPMG and Ernst & Young. His friendly presence contrasts sharply with his political views, a mixture of anti-Semitism, Dugin’s Eurasian ideology, conspiracy theories, and odd claims about the origins of the Magyar nation — layered, of course, with verbatim reproductions of Russian propaganda, especially about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The threat of Jobbik’s ascent to power is often used by the defenders of Orbán.

“Fidesz is the only party that can keep Jobbik politically in check,” claims a recent report by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). The report’s co-author team was led by Klaus von Dohnanyi, the former social democratic mayor of Hamburg and an avowed Orbán supporter.

That claim, however, is at odds with the fact that the rise of Jobbik coincides with Orbán’s tenure as prime minister. Until a by-election in February, Fidesz enjoyed a constitutional majority in the Hungarian Parliament, and used its position to push a series of controversial reforms, including a new constitution, passed without any broader cross-party consensus. The party has also made moves toward a massive centralization of power, placing Fidesz loyalists in positions of influence even in nominally independent branches of government, such as the central bank.

This has gone hand in hand with a rise in corruption, as, for example, measured by the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators. Public procurement tenders, typically tailored to specific bidders, are the main culprit.

“A new term has been introduced to everyday Hungarian: ‘Fidesz-közeli cég,’ meaning ‘a near-to-Fidesz company,’” writes János Kornai, an eminent Hungarian economist emeritus at Harvard University.

Hungary’s institutional backsliding is also evident from a number of other indicators, including World Bank’s measure of Voice and Accountability, or its recent downgrade on Freedom House’s report “Nations in Transit,” which reclassified Hungary from the category of “Consolidated Democracies” to “Semi-Consolidated Democracies.”

During our conversation, Gyöngyösi praised Orbán for abandoning Hungary’s staunchly pro-Western foreign policy position in favor of an opening to Russia. Putin visited Budapest for a working visit in February, on his first bilateral trip to an EU country since June 2014. Hungary is also deepening its dependence on Russian energy, by awarding the project of expansion of the Paks power plant to Rosatom, and with its support of Gazprom’s “Turkish Stream” project, intended to bypass Ukraine as a transit country for Russian gas.

Instead of keeping Jobbik at bay, Orbán is sometimes all too keen to beat them at their own game.

Budapest, for example, has been covered with posters addressed to immigrants, warning them not to take the Hungarian people’s jobs, and asking them to respect Hungary’s culture and laws. Written in Hungarian, their true audience seems to be Hungarian nationalist voters, who might otherwise be inclined to support Jobbik. The government is also building a wall on its Serbian border to stop the inflow of refugees, who — as Orbán suggested — should “be treated as criminals.”

Right after seeing Gyöngyösi, I had dinner with a group of Hungarian liberal activists. Many of them seemed quite pessimistic and predicted that Jobbik might be on its way to becoming the leading political force in the country, following the 2018 elections. While chilling, the thought of Gyöngyösi as Hungary’s next Foreign Minister is not at all unrealistic.

Dalibor Rohac is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @daliborrohac.