Gaslighting is a psychological term that we hear more and more. It covers serious emotional and mental abuse, a manipulation technique whereby the perpetrator controls the victim by invalidating their perception of reality. In particular, the term political gaslighting is spreading in a new wave of political science mainly in Western Europe and the United States.
At the moment, according to statistics, one woman is killed every week in Hungary because she tried to leave an abusive relationship.
EU countries are trying desperately to incentivize people to boost the population –to little avail. This phenomenon, in turn, leads to an aging population, which increasingly burdens social systems.
It is a basic need for every human being to connect with others. Social psychology classifies the need for connection as one of the basic human motives, since humans are essentially social beings. Belonging somewhere has countless advantages. But what about when it’s not a partnership or a group, but a crowd?
In December 2022, the Hungarian government launched its 12th national consultation, asking voters about their views on the Ukraine-Russia war and the European Union’s sanctions. The consultation, as usual was filled with manipulated questions, false dilemmas, and vague expressions, and was preceded by a strong, one-sided Eurosceptic and state-funded campaign.
The following article is an analysis of how the Orbán government transformed the form of conditional distribution in Hungary over the past 12 years. How did the support system for the poor become the support system of the middle and upper middle class and how did it exclude the most disadvantaged groups from almost all benefits?
Hungary’s right-wing government, since Fidesz’s first landslide victory in 2010 and their subsequent successes in 2014, 2018, and 2022, has been increasingly willing to put cultural issues, particularly gender and LGBT+, at the forefront of its campaigns. Fidesz’s framing of the issue regularly contained the need for children’s protection rather than overt attacks on sexual and gender minorities.
The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) is a Hungarian organization, which – according to its website – “is the leading talent promotion institution in the Carpathian Basin.” However, it is much more than that. Nowadays, the Mathias Corvinus Foundation offers an immense collection of educational programmes, publications, with a network of businesses and think tanks abroad, having a significant lobby power.
Eszter Nova, lecturer at Cevro Institute in Prague and political commentator, who runs a blog Meanwhile in Budapest, wrote a publication Outlook for Hungary 2023 that further unfolds the above-mentioned developments of the Hungarian political landscape and its possible impacts on 2023.
In the past years, illiberal political regimes emerged in Poland and Hungary. One of the victims to these regimes are media. Freedom and independence of media in those countries are now under pressure from various angles, such as legal regulations and outright political pressure. The joint research of Project: Polska (PL) and 21 Research Centre (HU) is focused on small, rural media outlets and rural society in general.
