‘But he has nothing on at all!’ Underground videos targeting Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s celebrity politician

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has established a monarch-like celebrity status and exploited it to systematically dismantle the checks and balances of democratic polity. Drawing on nationalist mythology, local traditions of personality cult, and media techniques to personalise the politics, Orbán has fashioned himself as Hungary’s crownless king. In the absence of effective political contestation, a significant pocket of resistance has been politicised art and popular culture: a culture that this article maps out and interrogates.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity
• politics
• populism
• Hungary
• Orbán
• popular culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Magyarország Alaptörvénye [Hungary’s Fundamental Law] 25 April 2011. p. 2.

2. Viktor Orbán ‘Retaining the Hungarian Qualities of Living’ A kötcsei beszéd. [‘Megőrizni a létezés magyar minőségét’ The Speech at Kötcse]. Available from: http://www.fidesz.hu/hirek/2010-02-17/meg337rizni-a-letezes-magyar-min337seget/.

3. According to a legend, St. Stephen, Hungary’s first ruler, famed for imposing Christianity on the country in 1000, had no offspring to whom to bequeath his throne. He dedicated his crown and, symbolically, his country, to Virgin Mary. Regnum Marianum (Mary’s Land) was an early name for Hungary.

4. Following the Berlin Wall’s fall, József Antall, head of the first postsocialist government, raised eyebrows by declaring himself leader of ‘15 million Hungarians’, only about 10 million of whom lived within the borders. He primarily referred to the ethnic Hungarians of the neighbouring Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia-Montenegro and, secondarily, the émigré diaspora worldwide. Orbán’s regime took this ethnonationalist concept of citizenship further in 2011 when granting dual citizenship to all extraterritorial non-resident Hungarians in the name of national reunification beyond the borders.

5. Studying Donald Trump’s election campaign and presidency suggests that his superstar celebrity gimmicks, mixed with his narcissistic personality traits, have provided popular culture with an inexhaustible source of subversive humour, possibly more than any other aspects of his presidency (Lichter and Farnsworth 2020).

6. The name is a sarcastic reference to Orbán’s Hungary, widespread in oppositional and social media.

7. In a televised debate, Miklós Gáspár Tamás expressed concern that the Hungarian intelligentsia as a group failed to react with outrage to what he called ‘the elimination of Hungarian culture, traditionally centrd around journals and book publishers’, most of which the government forced out of business. In contradistinction, Péter Hamvay stated that the intelligentsia ‘has been doing nothing but protesting during the six years of Orbán’s rule [since 2010].’ See „De hát ez hazugság!” – TGM kiborult az ATV-ben. 21 May 2016. Online. http://www.atv.hu/belfold/20160521-de-hat-ez-hazugsag-tgm-kiborult-az-atv-ben/(Last accessed 11/20/2018).

8. Before the elections of 2018, Jobbik shifted its politics from ultraright to moderate conservatism, denouncing its racist and antisemitic roots, while Fidesz has assumed a more extreme right position expressed, primarily, by its fervently anti-immigration policies.

9. In order to mitigate international allegations of antisemitism, the Orbán government granted the Order of St Stephen of Hungary to Imre Kertész, twelve years after he had won the Literary Nobel Prize. Likewise, the makers of the Holocaust-themed Son of Saul received three Kossuth prizes (the highest national award) following the film’s winning top awards at film festivals including Cannes, Toronto, and Hollywood’s Academy Awards.

10. ‘US joins Hungary protest over pro-Nazi Homan statue’, BBC, 14 December 2015.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35091071.

11. https://www.youtube.com/user/huszas.

12. Numerous Hungarian-language Facebook groups are dedicated to railing against Orbán, such as: ‘I’m ashamed that Viktor Orbán is Hungary’s prime minister’; ‘My Message to Viktor Orbán!’; ‘Viktor Orbán shouldn’t be Hungary’s prime minister!’ ‘Does Viktor Orbán Lie?’, ‘Orbán! Hungary is not yours!’ and others.

13. For a depiction of wedding rock, see Lange (1996).

14. At the time of submitting the last version of this paper, I found that the video ‘Orbania’ had been remade, satirising more recent news stories with fitting imagery.

15. Felcsút is Orbán’s native village.

16. Ridiculing dictators by likening them to babies is not uncommon as exemplified by a caricature of Kim Jong-un with his nuclear ‘toys’ by Anita Kunz on the New Yorker’s cover, 18 January 2016. The metaphor recalls the adage attributed to Mark Twain: ‘Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.’

17. Drawing on Freud’s theory of jokes (2003), I consider the pleasures of humour as an effect of satisfying unconscious desires. In a repressive environment, therefore, sharing jokes constitutes a small act of subversion.

18. After the 2018 re-election, Orbán added one token woman, Andrea Bártfai-Mager to his previously all-male cabinet. Of the 199 active representatives of the unicameral Parliament, only 13% are women (up from 7%). The dismal gender distribution is most incriminating for the ruling party: of the 117 member Fidesz faction less than 10% are women. In the same year the government, taking advantage of its newly instituted control over academia, cracked on feminism by shutting down the country’s two degree programmes in gender studies. For a discussion on the relationship between populism and the conservative assault on gender as ‘ideology’, see Kováts (2018).

19. A former shop owner sued Hungary at the European Court of Human Rights for losing his livelihood as a result of the government’s taking away his concession. The Court ruled in favour of him. For details, see http://www.freehungary.hu/index.php/56-hirek/3528-the-european-court-of-human-rights-rules-against-hungary-in-tobacco-gate [Accessed: 16 October 2016].

20. Similarly, months prior to the ‘quota referendum’ in the offline world of street art, numerous dissident billboards appeared. Using the same template as the official ones, starting with the ubiquitous question ‘Did you know?’ (‘Tudta?’), these signs put out by the Kétfarkú Kutyapárt (Two-Tailed Dog Party) dedicating its activity to public political satire, ridiculed the official anti-migration signs by overt antigovernment propaganda (such as ‘Did You Know? Most crimes of corruption are committed by politicians.’) or covert one by undermining an official statement with nonsensical humour (‘Did you know? 70 weasels can clog an average size drain.’).

21. See Antonia Rádi’s investigative article where the entire network of ‘politicians, godfathers, widows’ is mapped. Available from: https://atlatszo.hu/2015/01/09/belvarosi-ingatlanmutyi-a-rogan-habony-pinter-tengely/[Accessed 2 September 2016].

22. In commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, the Prime Minister’s speech in front of the Parliament building was obstructed by dissident noise makers, a few of whom continued their activity even after being physically attacked by individuals in the crowd (Bayer 2016).

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Anna Szemere

Anna Szemere studied at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and the University of California, San Diego where she obtained her PhD in Sociology. Her research and teaching interests include popular culture, the sociology of music, youth, gender, and communist/postcommunist societies. Along with numerous articles and book chapters in English, Hungarian and German, she has authored the book Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (2001). She has taught university courses in the United States, Canada, and Hungary. She is editor of the multimedia journal Bloomsbury Popular Music. Currently she divides her time between Portland, Oregon (USA) and Budapest.