What Happens When an Autocrat’s Conservative Enablers Finally Turn on Him?

Yesterday, the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted to approve a report detailing the threats to democracy and the rule of law in Hungary, triggering a process that could result in the suspension of Budapest’s voting rights in the European Union. This is a serious setback for Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary and the pioneer of authoritarian populism in Europe—not least because many mainstream conservatives who had shielded him for many years from criticism finally abandoned him. Viviane Reding, a former European Union commissioner from Luxembourg and nominally an ally, charged his party with nothing less than “destroying our values.”  

But what happens when conservative enablers of far-right populists in government withdraw their support? Will the populists moderate? Or will they become more radical? In the case of Orbán, once celebrated by Steve Bannon as the “Trump before Trump,” we should probably expect