As enabling acts go, Viktor Orbán’s might be one of the most sweeping since Hitler got his in 1933. On Monday, Orbán—the quasi-fascist former Communist who has dragged Hungary to the far right since becoming prime minister a decade ago—secured his parliament’s sign-off on a law that effectively makes him a dictator until he decides the coronavirus emergency is over.

At the beginning of March, before Hungary had a single infection, Orbán had blamed foreign migrants for the spread of Covid-19 and sealed his country’s borders to noncitizens. The nation now has more than 600 confirmed cases and 26 dead, figures that may reflect gross underreporting. Most societies might see that as evidence that Orbán’s authoritarianism doesn’t work, but he’ll get plenty more leave to try now: The new law suspends elections, mandates imprisonment up to five years of anyone spreading information “that alarms the public or impedes government efforts to protect people,” and permits Orbán’s government to rule by decree or invalidate existing laws as it sees fit for as long as it deems necessary.

“When this emergency ends, we will give back all powers, without exception,” Orbán said Monday, convincing no one. By Thursday, his deputy had proposed a ban on legal recognition for transgender people.

The world was already well dipped in a brine of authoritarian ambitions before 2020 threatened it with contagion. But just as the coronavirus and its devastating effects have exposed much of the world’s citizenry to the limits of its leaders’ power, the crisis has given those leaders powerful tools of repression: home quarantines, forced reliance on trackable electronic communications, dependence on government resources and information.





“In the long term, the pandemic might undermine autocratic leaders—as the usual tactic of blaming scapegoats fails and citizens come to appreciate the value of expertise and functioning institutions,” political scientist Florian Bieber predicted in Foreign Policy this week. “But if strongmen are threatened with a loss of legitimacy, they’re likely to double down on their authoritarian practices and take advantage of the state of emergency to consolidate power.”

