THERE was never much doubt that Hungarian voters would return Viktor Orban as their prime minister. But EU mandarins in Brussels had been hoping that they would clip his Euroskeptic wings by robbing his Fidesz party of the constitution-changing powers of a two-thirds parliamentary majority it has enjoyed at the previous two elections.

But Orban is back, arguably stronger than ever and the danger to EU cohesion has been enhanced. On Sunday night, after the polls had closed and when the extent of his victory was becoming clear, Orban told cheering supporters the country’s voters had given themselves “the opportunity to defend themselves and to defend Hungary”. This is precisely not the anti-collegiate talk that Brussels wanted to hear.

Orban’s triumph is likely to have consequences far beyond his own country. It will have heartened other right-wing parties elsewhere in Europe with their Euroskeptic platforms. With the UK now almost a year away from quitting the EU, Brussels simply does not need the risk of further deep fissures. Hungary is a member of the Visegrad Group, along with the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. The Group’s literature makes no secret of its objections to the EU, saying its member states share “cultural and intellectual values and common roots in diverse religious traditions, which they wish to preserve and further strengthen”.

Whatever else such assertions mean, there is a clear racist message here. Orban had no hesitation is spelling this out at the final Fidesz party rally on Friday when he said that migration was “a rust” that slowly but surely would consume Hungary. Orban has resisted attempts by Brussels to accept a quota migrants. In October 2016, after a referendum which failed to meet the required 50 percent threshold, he claimed that Hungarians had decisively rejected the EU plan to relocate 160,000 migrants across the bloc. Hungary would have received 1,294 asylum seekers. It has also built a frontier fence to stop asylum seekers moving up from the Balkans. Worse it has held in appalling conditions, those refugees who succeeded in entering the country.

There is no concealing the unappetizing truth that parties in EU countries which are challenging the existing dominance of Brussels are using their nationalist credentials to disguise their racist agenda. Nationalism of itself is not a bad thing. For instances, Saudis are rightly proud of their country and its key role in regional and international affairs.

But in Europe, politicians who wrap themselves in their nations’ flags are deliberately defining themselves by their hatred of other ethnicities, be it the Roma gypsies of Hungary and Slovakia or the largely Muslim refugees who have fled the dangers in Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Afghanistan.

Hitler’s Nazi party defined itself by its anti-Semitism. It claimed Jews were endangering the racial health of the German nation. The end result of that disgusting bigotry was the death, through deliberate extermination and six years of warfare of approaching 30 million people.

It is not simply the cohesion of the EU that is under threat but the fate of civilized politics throughout Europe. Brussels needs to find a way to push back against this dangerous trend. That will surely be best managed by building a genuine consensus against race hate. Simply stamping the EU’s regulatory foot and demanding backsliding states comply with the diktats from Brussels will reinforce the nationalist bigots.