Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

What is being done by Fidesz is definitely not what "most other developed countries" do. I won't be able to discuss all topics, but I'll give you a few examples of the media situation.

There were several businessmen who became extremely wealthy within a very short period, either by working directly for the government (usually with all the typical signs of corruption), or by getting financed directly or indirectly by the government in the form of huge free loans, grants, etc. These businessmen then started buying different media outlets, some of which were 'usual' business transactions, while others were very nasty stories in themselves (the ownership change of the news site Index.hu was probably the biggest scandal). At some point all of these supposedly independent businessmen decided to give away ALL of the media companies they owned for free to a new non-profit entity. This transaction was given a special exemption by the government from all the usual checks and requirements (like antitrust), even though hundreds of media outlets were concentrated in a single entity, which now governs the majority of print newspapers and radio stations. Since this has happened, all of them transfer exactly the same messages - for example look at the following picture to see the front page of the 19 or so county news sites the day before the last election, where the headline says "Both votes for Fidesz!". These used to have independent editorial boards and focused on local news previously.

https://assets.4cdn.hu/kraken/78sQpRcFFKsevwZIs.jpeg

The state-owned national media holding MTVA (like the BBC in the UK), which of course is supposed to give an unbiased view of the world, also transfers exactly the same messages - there were several scandals where it became public that even senior editors had to send their content for review to Fidesz's people for review, and they got detailed instructions on what and how to say.

Viktor Orban, the prime minister for 10 years, refuses to answer questions or give interviews to any media that is considered to be 'the opposition', even the sites with the highest number of daily readers. At the same time members of the opposition parties are given close-to-0 airtime on the state-owned national channels, and even when they are shown, it is in a negative context.

The national media regulatory body does not check any of the previous issues, but they have been very active for example in revoking the license of one of the last non-Fidesz-friendly radio stations (Klubradio) recently, which also became a scandal.

The work of journalist is made more and more difficult because the state refuses to give information to them or even answer basic questions - for example during the corona virus epidemic, Hungary had by far the least informative site on the topic, yet it was filled with propaganda news. For example to create a chart of the daily cases, journalists had to manually check the site every day and save the currently shown numbers. In order to get a breakdown per county about the cases, they had to submit an official inquiry, where first they said that such data is not available (!), then used all 45+45=90 days to give an answer. Of course the answer only contained the data for the time period when the questions was sent, so it was basically impossible to get up-to-date information.

Viktor Orban still frequently uses the same defence that "they are working in an unfriendly media environment and only try to restore balance", but that is simply not true.

>but in adressing the cause of the fear of the people.

If you address it they won't have a reason to vote for you next time. This problem plagues many US cities.

Only death is inevitable and even that is not that certain.

I am saying this as a person, who likes the science fiction level of species level organization ( vs geographical nation-state ), where we pay with universal credits and basically have few of the issues inherited from the olden days of 2021.

But I dream.

We barely trust 'our' own representatives and you want us to trust those other guys?

In all seriousness, the issue is trust. And I have no idea how we could possibly get there as a human kind.

Having written this, I think it's worth pointing out the main flaw that I see in nationalism: it's that it uses culture and nations as a proxy for principles, as opposed to digging for the actual principles underneath.

As an example, I stand for freedom of speech, in the form of a diverse, largely independent set of publishers and authors that allows me to make up my own mind by exposing me to different viewpoints. Many Western countries have a better track record at this than authoritarian countries. But this doesn't mean that I'm on Team "The West" - if my country drops this value, I'd rather drop my country than my values.

If my country thinks that skin color or wardrobe of a person is more important than what that person is saying, I'd rather drop my country than team up against that person.

If my country decides that Islamic Law or autocratic dictatorship is a better form of government than democracy, I'd rather drop my country than abandon my principles.

It's great to be in a shared space where you agree with everyone. The question is, when you eventually disagree (because you don't get to choose what your neighbors think, and because nationalism is just a proxy for actual values), then are you going to follow your principles, or do you let your nation and culture dictate what your principles should be?