This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Orbán defeated
As I wrote about it yesterday, Orbán's defeat was clear from the polls, but the scale of it wasn't so sure and it is massive. If you'd like some background on what the topics and issues of the campaign were (not the typical culture wars that many online threads try to shoehorn this into) check that post, but let's now look at the results and what could come.
It's a landslide with a bigger supermajority (around 138-140 seats of 199) than any of Orbán's victories in the last 16 years (the largest was 135 seats). The turnout was 80%, the largest of all free elections since 1990 by a good margin (Orbán's previous defeat in 2002 held the record with 73.5% turnout).
However, this was not only a defeat of Orbán but also of the old opposition. The Socialist party (the legal successor of the old communist state party from before 1990) and its spinoff previously headed by the former Socialist PM Gyurcsány (2004-2009) have been demolished too. The new parliament will be filled with many new faces, and most of them are young enough that they were not involved with or socialized under the pre-1990 system - which I see as a very positive development - and they were also not politicians of either the left or the right in more recent times.
This parliament will have three parties, the broad-tent center-right pro-EU Tisza (138-140 seats), Orbán's pro-Putin right-wing Fidesz (53-55), and the radical nationalist / antivax-right Mi Hazánk (6). The left-wing and progressive liberal parties did not run for the election and instead supported Tisza. This extra-parliamentary party landscape is quite small, but the liberal-progressive centrist Momentum stands out as one that may have a chance to return in a more proportional electoral system and had at least in the past passed the 5% threshold in an EU Parliament election. The green Dialogue for Hungary is only relevant as being the party of the liberal mayor of Budapest, but never had significant measurable support. Now I haven't mentioned the last party who contested yesterday's election: the formerly joke party Two-Tailed Dog Party received less than 1% of the vote and are on the way to irrelevance. It is therefore a moment where the whole political system is prime for refreshment.
Tisza is unlikely to remain as such a broadly popular party. Their main feature is and was in this election that they could form one unified block under a charismatic leader who could unite all opposing sentiment to Orbán's system, from various disparate directions, while not being tainted by the "old opposition". Previously the opposition block always had in its ranks the despised pre-2010 Socialists and their spinoff Democratic Coalition (DK), which simply could not gather the necessary amount of votes. Magyar managed to win by remaining a blank slate on which anyone can project their desires. He avoided divisive topics in the campaign. He promised to keep the southern border fence and not to accept a migration deal, but didn't talk much about the asylum system and immigration. He does not support a fast-tracking of Ukraine's EU membership, but he is against Putin and much less hostile to Ukraine than Orbán. Magyar did not take part in the Pride march last year, which was banned by Orbán and anyway turned out to become the largest participation ever in a Pride march. He supported it in generic terms, the liberty to love who you want etc., but didn't focus on these topics. Instead he toured the countryside in national costumes, always carrying the Hungarian flag, singing folk songs at rallies, visiting Hungarian communities in neighboring countries, wearing national symbols, referring to historical heroes, national poets etc. However, his party does contain more liberal people as well, and social issues will likely be led by Kriszta Bódis who wrote illustrated children's books about gay love and so on. As I said, it is a heterogeneous block.
The supermajority allows reshaping Hungary from the ground up. Magyar has already promised to create a new constitution, and in contrast to Orbán's single-party constitution, it shall be voted on by the people in a referendum. He already called for the resignation of president of the republic Tamás Sulyok, who is even less significant of a figure than would be implied by the symbolic nature of the presidency in Hungary - he is for all intents and purposes an Orbán puppet who signs all laws without question, just like the previous presidents have been in his system. Magyar promises to also join the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and review EU and state fund mismanagement and corruption, to investigate FM Szijjarto's Russian ties and to retrieve stolen wealth by Orbán's inner circle. Such promises we have already seen many times when governments were changed, and usually nothing came of it, there were background deals and the economic sector found new ways to get close to the new system. What may be different this time is that Magyar seems to have a real personal motivation to see the old regime prosecuted. And there is massive public expectation of this and failing to deliver could destabilize this patchwork coalition, as the main topics holding it together are being outraged by Orbán's corruption and the state of public services, and the state of the propaganda media. Improving the education system and hospitals and the punctuality of trains is a much slower and harder task especially when the economy is on a downturn. So he will need some symbolic wins.
Overall, what I see is that post-1990 Hungary had an era of somewhat naive attempt at copying western democracy, switching the governing side each 4 years, until around 2006-2010 which was the first big flip and disillusionment and phase change into the Orbán era, and now there is another big reordering and phase change. I believe Hungarians, mainly the intellectuals, have become much less naive than they were in the 90s. Orbán ditched many unwritten rules and will have a hard time to criticize anything Tisza may do, including using legal trickery to remove Orbán's puppets from high positions even if they were elected for 9 or 12 years (except the chairman of the national bank, whom he said he'd leave there not to scare the markets) and to starve off Orbán's economic empire. Anything Magyar may do, there will be plenty of examples to point to in Orbán's conduct, and backed by an even larger mandate with record turnout, it will be difficult to claim that all this is really done by Brussels and Zelensky. Of course Magyar will want to present himself as not simply copying Orbán's methods. One big promise is to introduce a two-term limit for prime ministers, which is unusual in parliamentary systems, but signals that he doesn't have ambitions for serving as long as Orbán.
I love that his name is Peter Magyar. Imagine if the POTUS was called Joe America.
Or if the President of France were named Charles de Gaulle.
How did that not occur to me, damn.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link