MIL-OSI Export

Analysis by Keith Rankin, 14 April 2026.

Despite the mega-commentary about the Israel-Iran war, and especially the United States’ participation in that war, almost nothing is being debated about how the war is being funded.

I’ll make some comments about Iran later. But we need to focus on the United States, which is by far the most profligate party to this war. And Israel is being funded, like a charismatic and entitled teenage brat, by its (American) sugar daddy.

Most of us should have noticed that, with the exception of new tariffs which are not a significant source of United States government revenue, there has been no move to raise taxes. (The President has clearly invoked the use of tariffs as means of leverage through extortion; though he doesn’t properly appreciate that these taxes are paid by American residents.) Nor has any explicit ‘war loan’ or ‘war bond’ been floated in Wall Street.

The United States is ‘printing money’ to fund the war. This expression is both pejorative and a misnomer. Because printing money is an unmentionable, it’s hardly ever mentioned! Though it should be, because it’s an important financial mechanism, and it is not as sinful as it’s made to sound.

‘Printing money’ is not a literal expression; actually printed (or photocopied) money, counterfeit money, is illegal. Printing money, a figurative moniker, is in fact the day-to-day business of banking, with billions of dollars printed every day (and a near-similar number of dollars unprinted). The technology of printing money is that of double-entry-bookkeeping. Money is a social technology, as is double-entry bookkeeping.

What matters most to us is the role of the central bank – the Reserve Bank – in creating new money. And in particular the relationship between the Reserve Bank and its privileged customers, most of which are governments’ Treasuries and commercial banks. Even more particularly, we are interested in the most highly privileged relationship of all, that between the United States Federal Treasury and the United States Federal Reserve Bank. This exceptional relationship arises because the United States Dollar is the world’s reserve currency.

The War

Here are two quotes from Al Jazeera’s This is America: War on Iran: Cost of weapons and shift in the nature of warfare, 1 April 2026

Richard Gaisford: “It’s a significant contribution being made to the US economy by the defence industries. The last figures we have were for 2024, and that showed that it generated [?] something near one trillion dollars …”.

This comment reflects a wide belief that money is made by economic activity, and that the United States makes money by making, among other things, military hardware and software. The reality, of course, is that the money is made first, and is then used to purchase such hardware and software.

Interviewer: ‘Who has got the means to keep fighting at those levels the longest?’ Kenneth Katzman (a former senior analyst on Iran at the US Congressional Research Service): “The US Dollar is the main reserve currency of the globe, which means that the United States basically has the capability to manufacture money. Your viewers may not understand the mechanics of it, but basically the United States can print money.” (Actually, not only the United States.)

He goes on to address the military asymmetry between Iran and the United States: “The United States is a 28-trillion-dollar economy; Iran is a 400-billion-dollar economy”. Here he is talking about each country’s capacity to produce goods and services; not its capacity to manufacture money. Any amount of money can be made by any country’s banking-government nexus, and at trivial cost.

The interviewer (New Zealand’s Anna Burns Francis), and the other panellist did not respond to that seemingly provocative comment about printing money; there was no further discussion about how the war is being financed, only about how much it is costing. Discussion about the mechanics (and constraints) of printing money would go against the grain that most of us are fed. The public is not supposed to know – and generally does not know – that money is itself costless and can be manufactured, at will, in smaller or larger quantities.

Kenneth Katzman’s comments are not controversial; they are a statement of fact that no economist would disagree with. All countries’ banking systems (of which the central government is a component) have the capacity to print money; indeed, the New Zealand system (and other countries’ systems) necessarily did so in 2020.

The United States has fewer constraints on printing money than do other countries, but not zero constraints.

We note that money, like all financial and financialised assets, is not wealth; it is claims on wealth. So, the affordability of money – in practice – is measured by the ability of the economy to meet those claims, in the event that those claims are presented. (Indeed, the world can afford an octillion dollars’ worth of financial claims if it can be 100% certain that those claims will not be exercised; will not be spent on goods or services. The current world is awash with massive private holdings of financialised assets which, for the most part will not be spent on anything other than other financial assets. In technical language, such money has a very low ‘velocity’.)

We note also that newly printed United States’ dollars permeate into New Zealand through exports, including New Zealand made supplies to America’s war industry; to the United States’ military/industrial complex, which includes the space industry.

How does a country fund a war by printing money?

There are two key issues: rationing, and responsiveness.

The liberal critique against governments’ printing money is a general claim that governments are untrustworthy and spendthrift. In the eighteenth century when the liberal critique emerged, one principal concern was government adventurism in the form of warfare. This classical liberal critique presents one consequence of such government largesse as inflation (extra spending coming up against finite resources), and also presents any instance of general price increases as a consequence of government largesse. When governments consume relatively more resources, then – through the catalyst of inflation – private households and businesses consume relatively less.

The classical liberal critique emphasises this rationing issue, known as crowding out; in doing so, that critique presumes that private spending on goods and services is, per se, more efficient than public sector spending and redistributive transfers. There are two parts to this rationing argument: first, private parties are deemed to better assess (compared to bureaucrats and politicians) which items of spending translate to greater utility (ie happiness); second that relatively more private spending can be classified as ‘investing’, meaning spending for future rather than for present happiness. (Neither of these two propositions is generally true.)

The second issue, less emphasised by classical liberals, is responsiveness or ‘supply elasticity’. Classical liberals tend to assume that spending enabled by printed money does not elicit new production; ie does not bring-about a supply response. While this is true by definition for a hyper-taut economy, for the most part, economies are not hyper-taut and are indeed responsive to additional spending.

In the present case of the United States, the Israel-Iran War – on the pro-Israel side – is being funded substantially by new money printed for the United States government by the United States federal banking system; in the public accounts, this shows up directly as a huge increase in the United States’ fiscal deficit.

While prices are rising faster in the United States than before, this increase in general prices would appear to be substantially due to the supply-side cost-impact of the war itself, and not by increased aggregate demand inside the United States and the countries the United States imports goods and services from.

The United States domestic economy is not as supply-elastic as it might have been, given what ICE is doing to that country’s labour force. Nevertheless, the United States’ economy has been sufficiently depressed that it is now able to increase output without much difficulty. Hence, extra United States’s government spending has not in itself caused consumer prices in the United States to rise. The present chokehold on imports – a result of the war – is however causing CPI-inflation in the United States and the rest of the world. Prior domestic underemployment is one reason why money-printing may not be inflationary.

The second component of a country’s economic responsiveness to wads of newly printed money is that much production can be outsourced to the rest of the world. Thus, United States’ imports increase, the United States’ current account deficit increases, and the rest of the underemployed world gets to benefit from this as an economic stimulus. So, if the New Zealand banking-government nexus refuses to print money as a form of stimulus, the present Trump-printed money does create an alternative stimulus in New Zealand.

Certainly, New Zealand has very high visible and hidden unemployment, so (at present) is easily able to respond to the Trump stimulus. On that basis, New Zealand’s economic growth this year may not be as slow as is widely anticipated; though domestic confidence – in itself, a form of stimulus – may be countering the stimulus coming from the United States. In New Zealand too, any rise in CPI-inflation will be almost entirely due to the global supply chokeholds, and not to the American president’s money printing largesse.

Essentially, the United States is funding its war through its twin deficits: the United States fiscal deficit, and the United States current account deficit. The war is being funded through increased utilisation of underemployed resources throughout the world. In New Zealand’s case, we can see this easily and directly, by observing New Zealand’s increased exports to the United States.

How easily can other countries print money?

Technically, it’s as easy to print money in New Zealand as it is for the United States. However, the New Zealand dollar is not a global reserve currency, so a flood of new New Zealand dollars into the global economy is likely to generate financial risk; or at least perceptions of financial risk. ‘Investors’ – that is, financial traders – out there most likely would be more cautious about holding large quantities of New Zealand dollars (or $NZ assets) than they would be about holding large quantities of United States dollars. That caution generates an exchange rate risk; a risk that would be communicated to financial-asset-holders by the New York based rating agencies such as Standard and Poors.

When the exchange-rate risk is not widely seen as a matter of concern, New Zealand benefits mainly through its routinely-high current account deficit; that is, just the same way as the United States is able to benefit from printing money and enjoying the economic bounty of the world.

If the exchange rate risk becomes a concern however, the world would discount New Zealand dollar assets, and New Zealand would experience high levels of domestic inflation; that is, higher inflation than most other countries. The resulting low New Zealand dollar would confer a ‘competitive advantage’ on New Zealand; the current account deficit would close, exports increase, and reduced imports would create an increased demand for New Zealand- made goods and services.

The issue then becomes how responsive (ie supply elastic) the New Zealand economy is. If the domestic economy is able to respond to these new circumstances (which is the more common experience of other countries), then New Zealand would recover and soon prosper. The alternative is that New Zealand would go into an inflationary tailspin; that is, if its productive system is so hamstrung that it cannot respond to the stimulus of a low dollar exchange rate. One bad sign is over-dependence (as distinct from over-reliance) on imports. A dependent economy cannot switch away from imports. A country which relies on imports by choice, because imports are easily funded by exports, can usually pivot – if required to do so – towards more ‘tradable production’.

So, New Zealand can print money too, though printing in the proportion that the United States does certainly would be unadvisable. However, if a country overprints money, the normal situation is that the extra money just sits there in the banking system. (The brief real estate boom of 2021/22 has been widely attributed to excessive printed money stimulating a process of real estate speculation; though the unique circumstances of that few months – including labour and capital pandemic lockdowns – have not been properly researched. The government could easily have borrowed and then parked that money, but chose not to.)

Generally, the rest of the world is accommodating when some countries print more money (though not when all countries print too much money). The world has been very responsive to the United States for the entirety of post-WW2 history; it was American spending of new money that drove the economic growth of the capitalist world for 80 years.

The present US money printing to fund a globally-significant regional-war can be expected, sooner or later, to encounter an inflationary wall of its own making. The consequences of this war are to make the world economy much less responsive (ie are breaking the world’s economy) just as the American military-industrial complex – indeed the world’s expanding military-industrial complexes – are placing so many extra demands on the world’s economic environments.

War funding under pressure

Countries’ invaded or otherwise attacked on the perception that they are ‘easy meat’ tend to be much more capable of defending themselves than is widely understood. Their monetary systems are not integrated into the orthodox channels of the wider capitalist system; but their domestic monies work to keep domestic economies fully employed while on a war-footing. Yes, Iran will be printing money, and Iranians will be facing substantial visible and suppressed inflation. For Iran, that monetary process is a necessary part of its own defence. Money printing facilitates both necessary rationing in favour of the public sector, and also necessarily pushes the production system to its limits.

War times, historically, have shown that our economic systems are generally much more responsive than we presume them to be. Surprisingly often, the bullies neither win nor even achieve a limited range of objectives. Syria may be coming right today, despite rather than because of the nation which set off that 2010s’ war; a war which cruelly sandwiched the Syrian people between foreign bullies and a consequently more oppressive domestic tyranny.

We note that, when the United Kingdom was under threat during the first years of World War Two, it was able to import much on credit – especially from the United States, which was then a neutral country. China has played a large role in facilitating the United States’ more recent wars, through its current account surpluses. This time China will be helping to fund Iran’s war; as well as accommodating the United States through its ongoing – almost infamous – trade relationship with that country.

Indeed, when the Israel-US-Iran War is eventually over, it will be China’s version of the Marshall Plan which will revive the degraded world economy; part of that revival will be to write-off war debts, just as the United States – through plenty of printed money – eventually accommodated Germany’s reparations bill after World War One, and the West’s war debts after World War Two.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/14/keith-rankin-analysis-printing-money-to-finance-this-and-other-wars/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute

Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has grown too big, too fast.

The NDIS is a government-funded program providing support to more than 760,000 disabled Australians. It launched in 2013 as a way to make disability support more accessible and equitable.

But public support for the NDIS is faltering. It’s one of the most expensive items in the federal budget, expected to cost taypaxers more than A$50 billion this year. And it’s a flawed system in urgent need of reform.

Reform is coming in May, with the federal government aiming to reduce the scheme’s annual growth from 10% to between 5% and 6% in the forthcoming budget.

So is that achievable? And what needs to change?

Ripe for reform

The NDIS was designed to replace an existing disability support system that was underfunded, fragmented and deeply inequitable.

In 2011, the Productivity Commission estimated the fully-developed scheme would cost $13.5 billion and would grow between 3% and 6% each year.

But this year its costs will grow to more than $50 billion. And growth is tracking at over 10% this year so far.

The government is now aiming to curb the annual growth of NDIS expenditure to 5% or 6%. This is not an unreasonable target. Both Medicare and aged care costs are projected to grow within this same range.

But if it’s not careful, the government risks hitting the target while missing the point. Rather than fixing the flaws in the NDIS, tightening at the margins alone may make the scheme worse for Australians with disability that need it most.

Where to start?

One of the clearest flaws is early childhood supports.

When the Productivity Commission first proposed the NDIS in 2011, it estimated how many adults and children would be supported by the scheme. Today, the number of adults on the NDIS is only slightly higher that original estimate. The number of children, however, is more than double.

Children with autism or developmental delay make up almost half of all people on the NDIS. In 2025, about 170,000 of these children were receiving early intervention supports, such as speech pathology or occupational therapy.

These supports are delivered through individualised funding. This means each person on the scheme is given a budget with which to purchase their own supports. That’s instead of funding going directly to a service provider.

However, this individualised funding model has its downsides. It has led to a disproportionate focus on therapies delivered in clinical settings rather than supporting children and families in their everyday environments, such as at home or in childcare.

This NDIS has also contributed to an increase in diagnoses. Research suggests during the NDIS rollout, there was a 32% increase in reported diagnoses of child autism compared to rates before the NDIS was introduced.

The government made a major policy misjudgement in including early childhood intervention in the NDIS. It’s a major reason why the cost of the scheme is growing so rapidly.

Instead, we should deliver early childhood intervention supports as a commissioned program. This would involve directly funding service providers to offer evidence-based supports for children in places where they live, learn and play.

The government should expand its Thriving Kids initiative. This new nationwide program aims to support children with developmental delay and/or autism who have low to moderate support needs.

In its current form, Thriving Kids will target children aged eight years and below. But to help curb the growing costs of the NDIS, the government should make this program available to all school-age children. The NDIS should be reserved for children with permanent and significant disabilities.

What else needs to change?

To reach its 5% to 6% growth target, the government should prioritise reform in three other parts of the NDIS.

1. Improving planning

The current way the NDIS builds plans for participants is a major driver of the scheme’s unsustainable growth. The process involves a person requesting support items, and an NDIS planner then determining which ones are “reasonable and necessary” for them. This is a highly subjective, and often adversarial, process which leads to inconsistency between plans. It also contributes to year-on-year inflation, meaning individual plans cost more.

Importantly, the government’s “new framework planning” approach is a step in the right direction. It aims to make planning clearer and more transparent for NDIS participants. Standardised assessments, which look at a participant’s individual support needs and personal and environmental context, should ensure funding is more fairly distributed, according to need.

2. Rethinking psychosocial support

To date, the NDIS has failed to provide suitable support to many people with psychosocial disability. This refers to disability arising from significant mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia, major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, that affects a person’s ability to function.

Current NDIS psychosocial spending is poorly targeted. More than 90% of all government spending in this area funds packages for 66,000 people on the NDIS. Meanwhile, more than 130,000 adults with the greatest support needs miss out entirely.

Many of the supports currently funded by the NDIS don’t encourage personal recovery, which aims to give participants a sense of independence and purpose. Instead, about 80% of currently-funded supports focus on practical daily tasks, such as cleaning, cooking and transportation. These are important for people with psychosocial disability. However, there’s no evidence funding these supports long-term aids people’s recovery. Instead, the government should redirect a portion of these funds to a program outside the NDIS that prioritises evidence-based, recovery-oriented supports to reduce demand on the scheme.

3. Better supporting people with the highest needs

About one-third of NDIS payments go to just 5% of participants. These are people with disability who require the highest level of daily support.

Providing support to these Australians is one of the scheme’s most important responsibilities. However, it’s also where it currently delivers the least value for money.

A major reason is too many participants remain in group homes where they share supports with other disabled people. The Disability Royal Commission raised serious concerns about group homes, with residents frequently experiencing violence, abuse and neglect. They are also expensive, with individual plans including funding for group homes costing an average of $487,300 each year.

Thankfully, there are better options. Alternative models, such as living with host families or in home-share arrangements, allow people with disability to live independently in regular homes while still getting the support they need. They often improve participants’ quality of life by increasing their community involvement. And they can also reduce the cost of care by using different types of support, instead of relying solely on paid support workers.

The bottom line

The current NDIS system is financially unsustainable, so the government must act quickly to moderate its growth. But it must do so in a way that makes the scheme work better for the people who need it most. If not, we risk creating an NDIS that costs less, but delivers less too.

– ref. The government wants to curb NDIS spending. Here’s how it might succeed – https://theconversation.com/the-government-wants-to-curb-ndis-spending-heres-how-it-might-succeed-280033

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/14/the-government-wants-to-curb-ndis-spending-heres-how-it-might-succeed-280033/

COMMENTARY: By Kaveh

As an Iranian living in New Zealand, I wake up every morning to the quiet green hills and the calm sea, but my mind is always thousands of kilometres away in Iran.

The news from home hits differently when you are far away. You feel helpless, but you sometimes also see things more clearly.

For years, I have watched the same old story from Washington and Tel Aviv: they want to change the regime in Iran. Not because they care about Iranian freedom, but because they want more power in the Middle East, control the oil routes, control the region, control everything.

They tried it openly in the 12-Day War last year. They bombed, they threatened, they hoped the whole system would collapse. It didn’t. And now they are trying again, waiting for the Iranian people to rise up and do their job for them.

But it is not happening, and it will not happen.

From my small house here in New Zealand, I talk to family back home almost every day. They are tired, yes. Life is hard with sanctions, constant threats and bombings.

But Iran isn’t run by stupid people. The authorities in Iran have planned for this for a long time. If top figures are targeted, there is a chain ready to continue. It is not a secret. They have built it step by step.

Americans, Israelis don’t understand
The Americans and Israelis don’t seem to understand this because they do not know the religious and cultural soul of Iran. Without that knowledge any plan is blind. You cannot bomb a country and expect surrender when the children in every school learn about resistance from the first grade.

Take Imam Hussein, for example. Most people in New Zealand and other countries have probably never heard the name, so let me explain it simply. Imam Hussein was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the year 680, in what is now Iraq, he and just 72 of his loyal companions including women and children stood in the desert of Karbala against an army of tens of thousands sent by a tyrannical ruler. They were cut off from water for days. They knew they would be killed.

Yet Imam Hussein refused to swear loyalty to a corrupt leader. He chose death with dignity over a life of submission. Every year during the month of Muharram, Iranians mourn this event not as a defeat but as the ultimate symbol of resistance.

We cry, we march, we tell the story to our children: standing for justice is worth any price.

That lesson is not ancient history. It is taught in schools today as a living example of how a small group can defy an empire. How do you expect a nation raised on that story to give up when missiles fall?

We have many such examples from the revolution to the war with Iraq to every pressure since. According to many political analysts, this is exactly why the West keeps making the same mistake.

They don’t see the culture
They look at Iran through their own eyes. They see maps and weapons and money. They do not see the culture that turns every attack into fuel for survival.

The diaspora is another story. When I first came to New Zealand years ago, the Iranians overseas were split into two main groups. One part supported the Islamic Republic, the other part, mostly louder in the West, wanted the return of the monarchy and backed the king in exile. They argued online, but at least the lines were clear.

Now everything is different. The attacks on Iran have created real splits and even anger among those who used to be against the regime. Some of them trusted Trump and Netanyahu. They said on social media and in interviews that the bombs would bring freedom.

Instead, the bombs are bringing destruction, dead civilians, ruined houses, fear in the streets.

Now you see fights breaking out in the comments, in the Persian TV channels, even in family online group chats. The ones who still wave the old flag blame the Islamic Republic for every death.

But many others who once hated the government are saying, “This isn’t freedom. This is an attack on our country.” They feel betrayed. They realise the “liberators” they cheered for only wanted a weaker Iran they could control.

And the war does not look like it will end soon. I speculate it will drag on in this strange way that gets tighter then loosens a bit, then tightens again. Iran will keep using its asymmetric tools: missiles that reach far, drones that are cheap, friends in the region who act when needed.

The system will not fall
The economy will suffer, people will suffer more, but the system will not fall. The Iranian people have closed ranks around the idea of independence. Those in the diaspora who hoped for quick regime change will stay disappointed. The ones who begged for American and Israeli action are now watching their own relatives bury the dead and should be asking themselves what “freedom” really means when it comes with foreign bombs.

Living here in New Zealand, I sometimes feel guilty for the safety I have. I go to work without air-raid sirens. But every time I see the news, I remember why Iran will not break.

It isn’t because the government is perfect. Far from it. It is because the alternative they are being offered is not freedom. Instead, it is humiliation and loss of dignity.

The Americans and Israelis think they are playing chess. They do not realise they are fighting a nation that has turned resistance into a religion, a culture, a memory passed from mother to child for centuries.

I do not know how long this round will last. Maybe months, maybe years of shadow war. But one thing is clear from my quiet corner in New Zealand: regime change from outside will not come.

The Iranian people have decided, consciously or not, that they will decide their own future, even if it is painful. The planners in Washington and Tel Aviv should study Karbala again. They might understand then why their plans keep failing.

Kaveh is an Iranian who has been living in New Zealand for many years. Having travelled across many different countries, he takes great pride in contributing to various communities through his professional work and community activities in New Zealand. Republished with permission from Eugene Doyle’s Solidarity website.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/14/why-iran-will-never-break-and-iranians-will-decide-their-own-future/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

The landslide victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party in Hungary’s parliamentary election represents much more than a routine change of government. It marks the fall of an “electoral autocracy”, a regime that used elections to shroud and legitimise a system designed to keep the ruling Fidesz party and its leader, Viktor Orbán, in power indefinitely.

The Orbán regime was founded on three pillars. The first was the concentration of power in Orbán’s hands and the destruction of constitutional restraints and oversight mechanisms.

Propelled to power in 2010 by a wave of revulsion at corruption scandals and economic crisis, Orbán quickly took over key state institutions like the judiciary, the taxation office, the prosecutor’s office and the election commission. Each were stacked with Fidesz loyalists, who transformed them into instruments of the regime.

The second pillar was corruption. The Orbán regime enriched Hungary’s elite by transferring vast resources to a group of loyal oligarchs and Orbán cronies.

It achieved this through skewered tendering processes to award massive state contracts to people like Lőrinc Mészáros, a former gas-fitter who had been one of Orbán’s close childhood friends. In 2010, Mészáros was a minor local businessman, but his wealth doubled every year of Orbán’s rule. By 2018, he was the richest man in Hungary.

The third pillar was the media, slowly subjugated by a pincer movement of government institutions and loyal oligarchs.

Legislation passed in 2011 created a Fidesz-controlled Media Council, which was empowered to impose fines for “unbalanced” reporting. This had a chilling effect on journalists.

At the same time, the regime distributed lavish subsidies and advertising contracts to pro-regime outlets. And loyal oligarchs acquired the last bastions of the Hungarian mainstream media. In 2016, one of Hungary’s most influential newspapers, Népszabadság, was purchased by a company linked to Mészáros and promptly shut down.

The culmination of this war of attrition was the creation of a massive media conglomerate, the Central European Press and Media Foundation. It came to control hundreds of media holdings donated by pro-regime businesses. The result was the consolidation of the regime’s control over an estimated 80% of Hungary’s media market.

Orbán justified this concentration of power by posing as a defender of Hungary’s sovereignty and traditional values against threats to the nation.

His rule was punctuated by a series of scare campaigns constructed around external threats – the philanthropist George Soros, the European Union, refugees and Ukraine. He used these threats to justify increasingly draconian controls over civil society and the domestic opposition.

Who is Péter Magyar?

What enabled opposition leader Péter Magyar to topple this system in Sunday’s election was the fact he was an insider.

As a moderate conservative and former Fidesz functionary, Magyar was not easy to stigmatise using the regime’s usual stereotypes. At the same time, he had deep knowledge of the inner workings of the system.

In early 2024, he broke with Fidesz during a massive scandal over a presidential pardon for a man convicted of covering up paedophilia in a children’s home. And he became an anti-corruption crusader.

On his Facebook page, Magyar reflected he had always believed in Fidesz’s vision of a “national, sovereign, civic Hungary”, but had slowly come to realise:

[…]this is really just a political product, a sugar coating that serves only two purposes: to conceal the operation of the power factory and to amass immense wealth.

A few weeks later, he magnified the impact of this bombshell by releasing audio recordings of a conversation in which his ex-wife, former Justice Minister Judit Varga, discussed how Orbán’s Cabinet chief had organised the removal of files in a corruption case.

Before the Orbán regime had time to react, Magyar had emerged as the leader of an obscure centre-right party, Tisza, in the elections to the European parliament. In a blow to Fidesz, it came from nowhere to win 30% of the vote. The result transformed Magyar into the undisputed leader of Hungary’s democratic movement.

Taking down an autocrat

Magyar undermined the Orbán regime in two ways.

The first was to neutralise Orbán’s populist, anti-elitist politics by focusing on corruption. Magyar repeatedly drew attention to the luxurious estate at Hatvanpuszta, a 19th century country estate and model farm that was massively redeveloped after 2018.

Although formally owned by Orbán’s father, Győző, it was widely believed to be a personal retreat of Viktor Orbán himself. Magyar called Hatvanpuszta “the heart of the system”, and likened it to one of Putin’s palaces.

The second was to reach out to Orbán’s rural heartland. In 2025, Magyar walked hundreds of kilometres in a series of political marches across the Hungarian countryside, visiting the small towns and villages that traditionally voted for Fidesz.

[embedded content]

His party, Tisza, soon overtook Fidesz in the pre-election polls, but a peaceful transition of power was far from inevitable.

During its final years, the Orbán regime had became increasingly repressive. It used the security services to conduct a covert operation to penetrate the Tisza party’s computer servers. It also laid espionage charges against the country’s famous investigative journalist, Szabolcs Panyi, for exposing how Orbán’s foreign minister was collaborating with the Kremlin.

And a disinformation campaign, apparently of Russian origin, prepared the ground for a government crackdown by raising the spectre of post-election violence and attempts to assassinate Orbán.

But what broke the regime was the tidal wave of popular support for Magyar’s campaign. In the lead-up to the election, fractures began to emerge within the regime. A combination of whistleblower testimony and leaks from the security forces shone a spotlight on its abuses of power.

When the scale of Magyar’s victory became clear on election night, there was no room to dispute the verdict of the people. Orbán was finished.

– ref. He exposed corruption and walked across Hungary. Now Péter Magyar has defeated a powerful state machine – https://theconversation.com/he-exposed-corruption-and-walked-across-hungary-now-peter-magyar-has-defeated-a-powerful-state-machine-280455

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/14/he-exposed-corruption-and-walked-across-hungary-now-peter-magyar-has-defeated-a-powerful-state-machine-280455/