Holy shit.

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@cstross

Jailing Orbán sounds like a nice treat for people who like democracy and human rights.

[whitecattamer@mastodon.online]

@cstross Hey remember this story: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mccarthy-trump-putin-pays_n_591cc97ce4b03b485cae64c2

It really does come back to this schmuck half the time, huh?

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@cstross

Orban functioned as a conduit for Putin's foreign threat funding for years.

Petrostate despots and oil oligarchs fund a lot of fascism globally.

nytimes.com

(www.nytimes.com)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html

Republicans & the Epstein Class cannot resist fossil fuel public corruption.

Konstantin Nikolaev—the Putin ally behind Mike Johnson campaign donation

The Russian oligarch gave money to the Republican's 2018 congressional campaign via a U.S-based company in which he owned a majority.

Newsweek (www.newsweek.com)

The N.R.A. Spent $30 Million to Elect Trump. Was It Russian Money?

Congressional Democrats, the F.B.I., and Robert Mueller want to know why Putin-tied oligarchs took such an interest in American gun ownership.

Vanity Fair (www.vanityfair.com)

[onpubcom@techhub.social]

@cstross Gonna bet JD got paid, too.

[mmarcott@bsd.network]

@ltning @DM_Ronin @cstross

https://archive.ph/IZp17
Try there

[mokhtarstork@sciences.social]

@cstross There is a need to get down improving life rather then than to get political hang-ups. Every one comes with the same political gimmick throughout the world. We call it Democracy, but at the end of the day is there any real difference?

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@cstross see https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3mjhbhrv3mc22

[w6kme@mastodon.radio]

@klausfiend @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross Became? I'm sure they were from the start, a lot longer ago that people imagine.

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@cstross Viktor Orban’s Hungary was more meaningful to MAGA than you think. Steve Bannon and many others visited there frequently, and many think-tanks operated from there!

[klausfiend@mstdn.ca]

@W6KME @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross The first CPAC was during the tail end of the Cold War so I think it's reasonable to assume it wasn't always a Republican-flavored Gathering of the Juggalos, and at least once serious policy discussions occurred. (No offense intended to any Juggalos who might be reading this.)

[jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io]

@cstross @pluralistic And CPAC was taking the money

[timolaine@mastodon.green]

@graydon @cstross This fits nicely with @anneapplebaum's thesis in Autocracy Inc. All these autocrats form a network of mutual assistance.

Some nodes, like Putin, are more important to the network, I guess. Orban was mostly a satellite?

[xs4me2@mastodon.social]

@cstross

A treasonous crime and Orban and his whole regime should pay for this.

[militant_dilettante@mastodon.social]

@cstross a person, whose Telegram channel I'm reading since 2022, has this take: every known (far-)right politician contemporary to us is a scam, a fraud, a con artist, a grifter, and a thief. This heuristic more or less holds, with almost no exceptions.

[militant_dilettante@mastodon.social]

@graydon @darkling @cstross pretty grim point of view. Fundametally correct though (well, I give it inordinately high probability of being correct). And, as with many other general things, it came to different parts of the world at somewhat different times.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@militant_dilettante I suspect there used to be some who weren't, who genuinely thought they were doing the right thing for their nation … and they got shoved out of the way or trampled by the mob. And then there's Liz Truss, who *believes* every scam, fraud, and grift they feed her and earnestly regurgitates them without understanding what it's really about (she's the comic relief on the lecture circuit).

[militant_dilettante@mastodon.social]

@Kierkegaanks @cstross wouldn't be surprised, if from Russia. The balding little man was, and is, very fond of spending our nation's endowment on such things.

[ghostdancer@mastodon.sdf.org]

@cstross The main far-right party in Spain Vox is known for their ties and money coming from Hungary.

[militant_dilettante@mastodon.social]

@cstross oh, yes, there might be some types of "true believers", and there might be some incredibly gullible persons. I think, we have both locally, within the so called "Z-movement" for example, and in other places.
Liz-Who-Didn't-Outlive-A-Head-Of-Salad?

[fgbjr@indieweb.social]

@cstross @militant_dilettante If Liz wanted to remedy her public image, she could (pay whatever gatekeeping fee they charge and) join Reform, and then attend a public event with a Comic Relief nose-pincher.