The history of the politics of scripts in modern central Europe is characterised by the gradual limitation of their number. The re-emerging Rovás and Glagolitic scriptures could be used to foster regional revisionism and tension.

The Hungarian story of how the social role of public intellectuals was undermined may help us make sense of what is happening elsewhere today. Hungary’s case highlights that the real danger to critical commentary and its functions in society arises not out of new media platforms, but out of the demise of the democratic multitude.

“In the 1970s and 80s, I met a fair number of western writers, most of them through György Konrád. In our conversations, the mystery that intrigued them the most was this one: how can opposition writers in Central Europe command such respect, play such an exceptional role in politics and in society – a role that they [the western authors] cannot dream about anymore.” Hungary’s prominent public intellectual Sándor Csoóri made this observation in 2006. At that time Csoóri, a one-time luminary of the Hungarian Narodnik tradition and of the post-1989 political universe as a whole, had been a bitter man for a decade and a half. He had been in the fulcrum of a controversy surrounding remarks he made concerning Jewish-Hungarian relations and the cleavage inscribed into them by the Holocaust.

A review of Orbán. Europe’s New Strongman. By: Paul Lendvai. Publisher: Hurst & Company. London, United Kingdom, 2018.

At the end of November last year, a video of a meeting between Chuck Norris, the legendary Hollywood action film star, and Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, went viral. The video depicts the meeting of the two figures and includes a scene where Orbán is driving Norris (and his wife Gena O'Kelley) to visit a counter-terrorism training centre. During the drive, Orbán admits to Norris, "I am a street fighter, basically. I’m not coming from the elite. I’m coming from a small village 40 kilometres from here."

The media landscape in Hungary has all but collapsed, with nearly all major Hungarian online and print media in the hands of the government or pro-government forces. Only a few remaining independent sources exist, and they do so under constant threat.

There is a weekly news magazine in Hungary. It is called Figyelő. When they meet foreign colleagues, its journalists like to refer to it as the Observer (which is the English translation of the word figyelő) – it sounds dignified. On Thursdays, the day that the paper is published, everybody awaits the big story that will land on Figyelő’s front page. It was known as a reliable source of exclusive information, often prompting an official response to its stories. This was the case until the end of 2016.

The leaders of Russia and Hungary might have very different backgrounds, but their approach to the judiciary and media is quite similar.

On April 8th 2018, Viktor Orbán and his governing coalition won an overwhelming two-thirds parliamentary majority in Hungary and will be his third consecutive term in power. Last minute hopes believed that the opposition would fare well (due to high turnout), however, they fell seriously behind. In the end Fidesz will have 133 seats of the 199-seat parliament in Budapest.

Fidesz will start its next term in a context that may require a more flexible and cooperative approach. A few days before the parliamentary elections, a European repositioning of Hungary is quite possible. It is even desirable: just as Hungary cannot do without Europe, Europe cannot do without Hungary.

In this episode, In Between Europe review Paul Lendvai’s new book about Viktor Orbán. They also discuss the system that Orbán has built up since 2010 with András Lászlo Pap, a constitutional scholar and research chair at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

An interview with Gábor Egry, chief director at the Institute of Political History in Budapest. Interviewer: Simone Benazzo.

One of Europe’s premier academic institutions is under attack by one of Europe’s least democratic states. Budapest-based Central European University (CEU) is threatened with closure by legislation proposed by the Hungarian government. This is not just a regulatory spat between Hungary’s administration and academia. It is an ideologically motivated show trial. It has been launched by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the self-professed leader of illiberalism and nativism. It is directed against CEU because the university stands for freedom of thought, liberal values, and internationalism. It is yet another test of the democratic mettle of the West, struggling as it is to fend off closure and autocracy.