In the past few years, there have been significant changes over the Hungarian media market, more and more media outlets are owned by government-friendly companies, often spreading misinformation to serve political agendas. Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary led to the centralization of several public sectors in order to secure its power over the past decade.
If you look at the political map of Europe these days, you cannot miss the distinctive success of populist movements in Central Europe, not to mention the alliance of Hungarian and Polish governments. With a group of participants from the region, we discussed populism in the Visegrád (V4) countries and its relevance for political communication during the online workshop series “The Story of Visegrád”.
The Hungarian Europe Society cordially invites you to its online international conference entitled “Uncertain Times: The Future of Trans-Atlantic Relations from the Perspective of NGOs and Think Tanks in Central Europe and Hungary”, to be held on Monday, September 27, 2021.
What does populism mean? Why does populism spread across the world & across Europe. Why did populists come into power? Why does populism try to change the core of Europe and the European Union? And why is populism so strong in the Visegrád Group, especially in Poland and Hungary. There is no doubt, populism fueled a widespread crisis of democracy.
Orbán, Kaczyński, Babiš, Salvini, Le Pen, Farage. Politicians from different countries, with different political affiliations, but they definitely have one thing in common: they are all populists. But how come, that one “ideology” can connect these different politicians with different political views? Well, in this article I am going to synthetize and expound these connection points in order to have the ability to forge counter-narratives.
After some initial doubts about the real intentions of this endeavour, Prague, Bratislava, and Budapest incorporated the 3SI into their portfolios of Central European cooperation formats in which they participate. Strong U.S. support for the project makes the initiative more attractive for its reluctant members.
Today, the European Commission will publish its annual Rule of Law Report. The new report could now intensify the conflict between the EU and the two Central European member states. Given the continued undermining of democratic principles in Poland and Hungary, one would expect not only a retrospective analysis, but also concrete recommendations for action against violations of the rule of law. However, this does not seem to be the case.
I wanted to expand on the idea that relatively novel platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok, are changing the way we see things. Everyone with a camera phone can make videos without any regards to aesthetic rules about composition, lighting, narrative structure and so forth. Those videos that are much more composed are regarded as too artificial, and are trying too hard, whereas realism gained in importance.
Once front-runners of democracy in the CEE region, Hungary and Poland have become the most prominent cases of democratic backsliding in the EU. The two countries are famous for their centuries-old friendship (…). While their governing parties and populist leaders are careful to strengthen their friendship, the divisive rhetoric of Fidesz-KDNP and Law and Justice (PiS) managed to excavate the gap among their own people.
The question of whether to leave a successful career behind to enter politics and try to change the political trajectory of one’s own country is central to the new documentary by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom – “Politics Is for Other People”. The documentary “Politics Is for Other People” features remarkable stories of representatives of liberal parties from Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.
