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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38202 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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The next obvious culture war front has been opened by the Hungarian government. After importing the immigration, race, gender topics, they have to keep up with American CW discourse on abortion too. It's the hip new thing to discuss since the overturning of Roe. The state-of-the-art polarizing issue, proven to work in America.

Hungary enshrines 'fetal heartbeat' abortion law

Under the new law, doctors must also issue a report that records that the pregnant woman was presented "with the factor indicating the functioning of fetal vital functions in a clearly identifiable manner."

This has been a long time request by the far right Our Homeland Movement, but apparently such laws exist also in the US.

I don't care about abortion. I don't think Orban cares about it either. It's purely about sowing division and polarization. Orban is happy to push the exact buttons that will trigger the left, in a predictable way. But what's the point? I can see two things: an attempt at distraction from the exploding inflation and utility price hikes, in violation of their election promises, or it's about pandering to Republicans (see CPAC, Tucker Carlson) in hopes of not-sure-what, by doing things that are legible to Americans. It's not like Americans would understand the significance of the local CW stuff, so it has to be photogenic sexy up to date topics of the day for the American right to care.

I hope gun control/freedom won't be the next thing coming up. Because now almost all other American CW fronts have been imported.

Immigration and race aren't imported -- the European Union (which Hungary is a member of) had enough problems with both a full year before the Trump campaign made them the salient discussion topics in the US.

Seven years ago there were a few months when it was indeed an important topic that hundreds of thousands of migrants wanted to pass through Hungary.

I can understand that it's an important topic in Western Europe, but in Hungary it's imported and larped.

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