Othering the Hungarian Opposition – Visegrad Insight

At his inauguration two years ago, Hungarian President Jnos der warnedthat there was a dramatic deterioration in the quality of political public discourse. If this continues, the Fidesz supported der said, [it] can destroy everything that we built up since 1990.

A studyconducted in 2017 found that 43 per cent of Hungarians blame Viktor Orbn, Fidesz, the government and government-linked media outlets for the decay of quality of public discourse. Earlier this year, the Association of Christian Intellectuals wrotein a press release that national public discourse has become increasingly rough, including public figures using vulgar and obscene expressions.

So far, all these warnings have been fruitless. Following the 2018 elections, one Fidesz minister replied to critics that democracy is a race, and consolidation is absurd. The European Parliament (EP) elections and the upcoming municipal elections have been a sufficient motivation for not holding back the well-oiled campaign machine.

The build-up and operation of this media machine is well documented. More importantly, a confrontational stance towards other parties is also a time-tested tool of Fidesz. The most consistent representative of this style is Zsolt Bayer, a proud founder of Fidesz, publicist, and writer.

In 2013, Bayer suggestedthat a large proportion of the Roma are not suitable for living among humans. In 2017, when talking about activists who protested against a law targeting NGOs, he saidthat if these, or their kind appear in the Parliament again () then you must drag them out on their snot and blood.

While Bayer was and still is one of the loudest pro-government voices spreading such violent narratives, pro-government circles have frequently been pushing similar opinions.

Opposition MEPs in the European Parliament, who are not voting in favour of Fidesz candidates, are attacked in a vocabulary that fits better for a civil war than for peacetime. In an opinion piece that appeared on Pesti Srcok, a government-linked online outlet, Pilhl Tams equated the opposition with spy agencies on the payroll of foreigners, representing the interests of large Western powers.

Tams: [They] are also not part of the Hungarian opposition, as they are not the opposition, but an enemy not only of the Hungarian government but the Hungarian nation, all of us.

In the last sentence of the article, Tamssuggested that the appropriate response is to treat them as enemies. To protect ourselves, all means are allowed.

The usage of such narratives is delegated to government-linked media outlets, to drum up voter support. However, Fidesz members are also prone to use demeaning tropes. The most prevalent example is the discourse around the Soros plan.

The discourse revolves around an international network of Soros-funded organisations that plan to flood Europe with migrants. This has become the main narrative of Fidesz communication since 2015.

As Viktor Orbn put it in a speech, Fidesz is fighting opposition candidates who are actually not candidates of political parties but of George Soros. This militant rhetoric dehumanises the opposition and dismisses them as anonymous chess pieces.

All these narratives have shared characteristics, which point to a similar process. Edward W. Said once demonstrated how the people of the East were conceptualised as the Other, something less than human, which in turn contributed to a colonial project and to the oppression of countless people.

The examples above show how in todays Hungary, a similar project is being implemented not only by government-linked media outlets, but also by elected representatives of the governing party. This othering of the opposition in Hungary has led to immense division among Hungarians. It can reach such a level of alienation that (constructive) dialogue will become unimaginable.

Faceless enemies

However, the opposition parties also share part of the blame. There were instances when media outlets not associated with the government, but also the opposition itself, engaged in a sinister tit-for-tat competition with government officials; both sides have tried to see who could dehumanise the others supporters more.

Greater partisan discourse in the Hungarian media has undermined information sovereignty, which is one explanation why Radio Free Europeis set to resume in the country.

Nevertheless, the burden of responsibility is not equal. The centralised nature of the Fidesz portfolio of media outlets and the consistent way in which the government drums up negative emotions, makes the situation imbalanced. Moreover, the government is failing to deliverequal chances for all media actors, and utilises public funds for partisan campaigning.

Given the continuous campaign-mode of Fidesz, the trenches of party politics will only become deeper. This until the opposing camps only see faceless enemies, and no longer fellow citizens on the other side.

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Othering the Hungarian Opposition - Visegrad Insight