Lessons From a Renters’ Utopia – The New York Times

By Francesca Mari

Photographs by Luca Locatelli

May 23, 2023

“When Eva Schachinger married at 22, she applied for public housing. Luckily, she lived in Vienna, which has some of the best public housing in the world. It was 1968. Eva was a teacher, and her husband, Klaus-Peter, was an accountant for the city’s public-transportation system. She grew up in a public-housing complex in the center of the city, where her grandmother, who cared for her from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, lived in one of five buildings arranged around a courtyard. Eva played all day with friends from the complex.”

Opinion | What We Have to Fear – by David Leonhardt – NYT

Orbán is no Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. He doesn’t put opponents in jail or brutalize them. “There aren’t secret police listening to us,” one Orbán critic told me over dinner. Zselyke Csaky of Freedom House, the democracy watchdog, told me, “There is no violence, not any kind of political violence.”

What Orbán has done is to squash political competition. He has gerrymandered and changed election rules, so that he doesn’t need a majority of votes to control the government. He has rushed bills through Parliament with little debate. He has relied on friendly media to echo his message and smear opponents. He has stocked the courts with allies. He has overseen rampant corruption. He has cozied up to Putin. To justify his rule, Orbán has cited external threats — especially Muslim immigrants and George Soros, the Jewish Hungarian-born investor — and said that his party is the only one that represents the real people.

Does any of this sound familiar?

via Opinion | What We Have to Fear – The New York Times