DYER: Orbán is talking nonsense, but it’s resonating with voters there

That should have been a disaster for Orbán, who rivals Donald Trump in his fanboy adulation of Putin. He even had to slam into reverse gear and let 450,000 Ukrainian refugees into the country. That’s only a fifth as many as Poland has taken, but it’s 30 times as many as the United Kingdom has accepted so he’s safely in the middle of the European pack.

He was just as quick in switching his foreign policy narrative. Instead of holding off the Muslim hordes, now he was keeping Hungary out of the war in Ukraine. “The opposition has lost its mind,” he said in rally on March 15.

“They would walk into a cruel, bloody and protracted war and they want to send Hungarian troops and guns to the front-line. We can’t let this happen. Not a single Hungarian can get caught between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer.”

It’s all nonsense, of course. The opposition coalition never said any such thing, and Hungary is a member of the NATO alliance, which constantly declares that under no circumstances will it get directly involved in the war in Ukraine. Hungary couldn’t send troops into Ukraine even if it wanted to.

But it worked. By mid-March Fidesz was leading the opposition alliance by a clear eight per cent, although more recent polls have shown Orbán’s lead narrowing.

For a people with a reputation for being clever, even cunning – ‘ the only people who can go into a revolving door behind you, and come out of it in front of you’ – Hungarians are embarrassingly naive.

Could this be a clue to why some countries get seduced by these manipulative would-be autocrats while others do not? Are Americans more naive than Canadians?

Are Russians more easily fooled than Ukrainians? Food for thought, but I’ve said enough.