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 -
Orban was a corrupt, out of touch wannabe autocrat who lost the election in a landslide despite having control over all the mainstream media. Don’t let the culture war stuff fool you, it was just a distraction so that he and his cronies could rob the country blind. He didn’t care about Hungary at all and was happy for the country to stagnate, suffer economically and to cause a brain drain due to his policies, so long as he was in power.
You are basically just describing the Harris campaign. Not that wild.
This is low effort culture warring. Don't do this.
If you are going to make this sort of comparison defend it or explain it.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it's an accurate comparison though. Orban, with all his faults, was the leader of his campaign and his domain. Harris was an obvious (and quite ridiculous) figurehead to allow The Machine to operate in the same way it already operated under Biden, where nobody is responsible for anything and things just happen. I am not sure which one is worse - authoritarian rule by an energetic kleptocrat or a by an amorphous anonymous blob - but I don't think they are the same thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Most Hungarians below ~50 or so, like in the rest of the (western) world, are now getting their news from social media, but certainly from online new portals as opposed to traditional mainstream media. Orbán took over a lot of the traditional media, like the county-level (online) newspapers, the public media obviously, but these mainly reach the old generation, pensioners. He did try to, and in some sense managed to, take over the most read news portal Index.hu, but basically when the transfer of ownership happened, the whole staff resigned and then promptly made a competitor Telex.hu, which is by now the second most popular behind Index.hu. And there are other online portals, many professional youtube channels who are against Orbán.
Orbán did try to manufacture social media influencers in a topdown way, this was called Megafon, where they basically received central messaging from the government, they were trained how to produce social media content etc, but it was very fake and weak. Then in the campaign they started the "Fight Club" which was about teaching Orbán-supporters to get into comment fights on Facebook to defend the government. Orbán made a WhatsApp group then a Facebook group for this, and he literally sent a list of topics to comment about, for some time every morning (to tens of thousands of group members, so it was not some super secret thing). Then they made the "Digital Civic Circles", which was basically "Fight Club"-light, basically thematic Facebook groups with some celebrities headlining them, but it was still about receiving a centrally crafted message and lists of Facebook post links that you were supposed to like and put comments on.
Orbán was basically begging people to just spend 10 minutes on this per day, even if this digital world is foreign to many supporters (they are mostly pensioners and rural people). Orbán himself still uses a dumbphone and works on printed paper with pen, and generally hates technology. So him pushing for this shows how much he noticed the problem.
All this to say, nowadays it's not so easy to control the media.
More options
Context Copy link
I think you have a pretty unbalanced and prejudiced view of him in totality. I’ve paid pretty close attention to him from all sides.
In the end, how did Hungary fare under his rule, when compared with the regional countries, like Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia? It doesn't seem that he had much of an effect in the direction you're saying. Those other similar, post-communist countries also didn't get flooded with migrants, I don't think there is much higher levels of wokeness in those other countries, however you'd measure it. Hungary has certainly no higher religiosity or churchgoing numbers, and no real tangible "conservatism" compared to those. The tangible effects are the highest food price inflation in the EU, the steepest rise of housing prices, very low economic growth numbers etc. both in comparison with regional and with overall EU countries. And as we saw, fertility is also back to baseline levels.
Orbán is just a great salesman and managed to sell this idea of the big antiwoke fighter to the MAGA people. In the net effect it's showbusiness, marketing, billboard propaganda etc. He's also a master of moving the party strategically in the political coordinate system. From the 90s onwards he has strategically shifted the party position several times. The latest one since around 2014 was aimed at pushing out the 20% strong extreme right Jobbik by shifting towards the far right. Jobbik seriously felt the danger, as their traditional topics were suddenly "stolen" from them and used by the government. So Jobbik shifted into the center, and eventually teamed up with the liberals. This move led to a break in Jobbik, and the radicals went on to found Our Homeland, which is still in parliament at about 5-6% support level. You can read plenty of critiques about Orbán's governing by Our Homeland party, they are quite dissatisfied with him, despite being also right-wing (though Our Homeland also had to find a new niche, and they've been focusing on globalist conspiracies, WEF, BlackRock, antivax etc).
More options
Context Copy link
How is it inaccurate to call him a corrupt kleptocrat? He didn’t lose the election over culture war issues, he was exposed by a conservative politician. How do you think him and his associates got so rich?
Now if you’re saying that the corruption was worth it, that’s a different argument. I suppose that’s how Americans currently defend the Trump circle’s insider trading, market manipulation and cronyism?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link