Barack Obama associates top-down dominant power with Orbán’s Hungary in interview

obama on the daily show

Barack Obama was a guest at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, talking about his book A Promised Land, released in November. Obama, who was president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, said he wanted to reveal the world of the White House with the book and also mentioned some interestings parallels in the interview.

The presenter asked Obama how he would persuade the youth to remain optimistic about the future. According to Telex, he replied that if they read the 700-page book, they will see how many structural obstacles (e.g., the Paris Climate Agreement) one has to face if he wants to make the world better. He also pointed out that that American democracy is not working as it should.

Probably if he were young now, he would be just as frustrated and dissatisfied with the system in place, he said.

Obama has launched leadership training in several parts of the world, and he was asked what a leader is. The former president mentioned the Johannesburg program, where he worked with 200 participants, who did not want to change the world alone, but by working with others, unleashing their potential.

He gave a speech there in which he contrasted the democratic, inclusive and the strongman leadership style. Talking about the latter, he added that “in some ways it was ascendant in the United States… but those are two different stories of what it means to be a leader and power.

That battle between a more democratic, inclusive vision and one that’s top-down, dominant-subordinate…that’s a contest that is taking place here in the United States and around the world.

It’s not going to be finished just because Donald Trump was defeated, because you see examples of this in the Philippines, in Hungary and a variety of countries in Africa and Asia…so that contest is going to continue.”

So Hungary is once again mentioned by an opinion-leader in quite a bad light. A few weeks ago similar comments were made by George Clooney, in addition to Hungary beaing featured on the same show for a different reason:

Source: www.telex.hu

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