The border between Austria and Hungary runs through the plains not far from Lake Neusiedl, a line dividing West and East and – at least according to Viktor Orbán – uprooted liberals and steadfast patriots. Only in his country, he claims, are people still safe from rampant immigration and de-Christianization.

In 1989, here on the border dividing Sopron from the Austrian state of Burgenland, people streamed westward through a gap in the Iron Curtain. The iconic images of fleeing East German citizens were long viewed as evidence of the apparent triumph of the Western system of values.