I will start with what, on the surface, is a light-hearted subject. A Hungarian card game played with a German deck — in Hungary called a Hungarian deck — of 32 cards is called “ulti,” short for “ultimó.” It is Viktor Orbán’s favorite card game, and he claims it provides excellent training for prospective politicians. In fact, he would like his successor to be somebody who has knowledge of the game. From the few articles that have appeared about Orbán’s passion for ulti, it seems that he always finds time for a game, especially after difficult negotiations. Players wager on the game, and, according to a 2017 24 article, Orbán once lost 50,000 forints. Fans of the game call ulti a Hungaricum because, in its present form, it is not played anywhere outside the Hungarian-speaking regions of the Carpathian Basin.
Two years ago, in one of his regular Friday morning “interviews” on Kossuth Rádió, Orbán described Hungary as a difficult place to be successful because “one must fight not only for achievement but also against the surroundings, which rarely inspire us to great accomplishments.” In his opinion, “the fact that the most popular card game is a game in which one person alone must fight against two others who join forces against you reveals a lot about us” — and, let me add, about Viktor Orbán as well.
As for the game, from the detailed description in Wikipedia, ulti sounds exceedingly complicated. What captured my imagination in the description was that there are no fixed rules for the game. According to a conversation with one of the officials of the Hungarian Ulti Association, all play starts with a half-hour discussion establishing the rules for that particular game. Such flexibility in the rules must appeal to Orbán.
What does all this have to do with Viktor Orbán’s negotiations at the last summit two days ago? Apparently, a lot because, among his Facebook messages on his way to Brussels, he posted two relating to card games. The first simply claimed that “the winning cards are in our hands.” The second was specifically about ulti, in which he said that he has a winning hand in a “six-card ulti.” In addition to these messages, he also posted a video in which he reported that “negotiations have been going on with great intensity. It is difficult to accurately assess the situation, but the Hungarian position is strong.” And, he added, “for men to understand what I’m talking about, I have a six-card ulti in my hand with forty and two aces. That can be solved. I think we will have a nice evening.”
Let’s start with one woman’s reaction to the phrase about the men who will perfectly understand his negotiating position as a result of his reference to ulti. Ildikó Lendvai made no secret of her disgust with “Orbán’s bumptious, male-centered politics” and called this attitude “repulsive” and unfortunately typical of Orbán’s exercise of power. “Orbán should play ulti alone if that makes him happy, but he shouldn’t get the country into such a stupid game.” And, as Péter S. Föld, a political commentator, said, Orbán’s message is that “only men can understand the essence of the game and talk about 6-card games and other intricacies of the game.”
As for the popularity of ulti in Hungary, Orbán himself learned the game from his father, who is now 80 years old. Officials of the Hungarian Ulti Association have admitted that the game by now is popular only among men over 50. Lately, many observers have noted that Orbán and his associates live in a bubble, with little knowledge of the wider world around them. As a case in point, relatively few Hungarian men (and presumably no women) would know anything about the game Orbán finds so vital to Hungarian culture.
Two people so far have written detailed interpretations of Orbán’s exact words on the hand he claims to have held at the summit. In the original: “egy hatlapos ulti van a kezemben, negyvennel és két szélásszal” (six-card ulti is in my hand with 40 and two side aces). After some mental effort, I think I understand what kind of a hand Orbán had in mind, but I have no idea what one can achieve with such a hand. The young Donát Szűcs in Azonnali thinks that it is a rare hand which “guarantees victory.” Moreover, this particular configuration of cards indicates that “he might leave the summit with more than an observer or even he himself expected.” On the other hand, a blog writer, P. Kasza, came to the opposite conclusion: that if an expert ulti player has a six-card ulti with forty and two side aces he most likely knows he has lost. I think the two entirely different interpretations of Orbán’s remarks about his favorite card game reflect the confusion about what the Hungarian prime minister either accomplished or failed to accomplish vis-à-vis the European Union.
The other motif that Orbán used in his messages on his way to the summit is much more worrisome. Orbán published a video on Instagram in which he declared that “all negotiations are over; we have had all the preparatory discussions. We gathered all our friends and neutralized our opponents.” Finally, he added that “I have only one more job, to enter the wolf’s den.” In Hungary, this reference to the wolf’s den caused some confusion because the Hungarian word is “farkasverem” (wolf’s trap), whose dictionary definition is a pit dug to catch smaller wild animals. Several commentators were puzzled by the term, until people came to the realization that in Hungarian the word for Hitler’s Wolfsschanze, a complex of fortified bunkers in the Masurian forest, in the town of Gierłoż near Kętrzyn, is “farkasverem.” It was here, by the way, that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler in June 1944.
Wolf’s Lair in Gierłoż
Orbán was obviously fascinated with comparing the venue of his recent negotiations with the European Union to Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair because the word was prominently displayed on his Instagram video. Until recently, Fidesz politicians liked to compare the European Union to the Soviet Union, but lately the Third Reich is becoming a favorite. Tamás Deutsch, for instance, compared Manfred Weber’s criticism to the methods of the Gestapo, and now the prime minister compares his negotiating partners to the inhabitants of Wolf’s Lair, which, given the central role of Angela Merkel and the German presidency, is especially outrageous. More forgiving commentators questioned the prime minister’s historical knowledge and suggested he take a trip to see Wolf’s Lair as a monument to the horrors of the Third Reich. Others were less kind. In Azonnali, Bence Varsányi contended that the use of the word was deliberate and purposeful. The title of the official video is FARKASVEREM, written in big block letters. It is hard not to notice the anti-German tone to the latest hate campaign.