Quick explainer: Zebra-gate

In March 2025, Peter Magyar published a post out on Facebook claiming that Viktor Orban has zebras at his family manor in Hatvanpuszta. The post aimed to highlight how much money Orban and his family/friends have stolen from the Hungarian people. 

While there is some dispute about who exactly owns the zebras (some say it was Orban’s college dorm-mate turned billionaire Lőrinc Mészáros’s pet), it scarcely matters. The fact is that someone in Orban’s orbit has stolen so much money they didn’t know what else to waste it on. And one of the grandkids wanted a zebra.

Let’s leave aside that a beautiful zebra should not be someone’s plaything, and focus the fact that his story gives Ceaușescu vibes. 

Nicolae Ceaușescu was the communist dictator of Romania who demanded, for example, that the grand marble entry staircase at the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest be rebuilt and rebuilt until the step heights were perfectly comfortable for he and his wife, Elena. This is while people were starving. 

The gruesome twosome had a penchant for luxury items to the point where their designer shoes, fur coats, artworks and cars had to be auctioned off after they were executed to return some money to the public coffers. And it looks like a love of exotic animals is something the Orban gang and Ceaușescu have in common….the Romanian dictator was into peacocks!

While I do not want Orban to come to the same fate as Ceaușescu (he and his wife were shot against a non-descript brick wall after a two-hour trial just 10 days into the 1989 revolution), I still think Orban should think hard about how reviled leaders become when they are found to be so decadent.

In response, Orban released a social post in front of a street crossing zebra denying having the African pets. But he was standing outside a restaurant called Marischka — a high-end restaurant owned by one of the wealthiest people in Hungary. You can’t make this stuff up!