Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Goulash Authoritarianism

Is that what we want?

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Anne Applebaum
Apr 22, 2026
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Over the past few days, a peculiar argument has emerged on the American right: If Viktor Orbán can lose an election, then he wasn’t really an autocrat. James Kirchik, who eloquently opposed this claim in The Free Press, sums up their arguments like this:

“It seems commonsensical to say that if an ‘autocrat’ loses an election, he wasn’t an autocrat after…

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