Look to Eastern Europe to see your future?

[Tamas]

A thought I read from a very smart (although hopelessly stuck in 50s rhetoric) publicist has been stuck in mind.

Namely, that Hungary has been on the forefront of political changes of the last 100 years, particularly the nasty ones.

In 1919 Hungary was second only to the Soviets to adopt a communist regime, even if shortlived.

By the start of the 1920s it was already on the road to fascism from very shaky conservative grounds, IIRC beating Germany to the punch in delivering some anti-Jew laws.

And now I can't shake the feeling Orban leads the way in the post-truth world.

He shocked everyone (internally, nobody outside the country cared of course) on the moderate side when he started departing first from the democratic consensus following his electoral defeat in 2002, when he declared "the nation cannot be in opposition!".

This launched a series of actions and events that saw him building a far-right following that has cut any links/loyalties they had to the democratic institutions (these were very shaky to begin with, of course). A gradual process that became quicker once he managed to quell internal uprising in the party following his second defeat in 2006.

This has created a very stable following, a group held together by the feeling of being under siege, and in a state of war ("war", "fight" "struggle" are very common words in his vocabulary).

Political discourse and life became extremely polarised over the years, the non-compromising asshatery of his followers, who seemed happy that Orban's party would obstruct the normal working of the state in order to grab power, forced the left to adopt a similar non-compromising stance, trenchlines were dug and the country became a nastier place to live in.

The apparent deadlock between the two sides first received a hit with the giant political scandal for the left on the end of 2006, and every faint hope of recovering from it were shattered with the near-bankrupcy following the financial crisis of 2008.

The left lost motivation to vote on their side, and Orban marched to power.

After that victory in 2010, with a bit of cautious start, they got into full swing by 2011, most notably by coercing people to consent to the nationalisation of their private pensions, and by introducing a media regulation bill that would had propelled Hungarian press conditions to that of Russia at the time.

The latter was severely watered down luckily, thanks to vehement EU opposition.

But the gradual dismantling of the democratic system continued, one step at a time. All the while they got bolder and bolder in building a new class of oligarchs who owed everything to Orban.

Opposition grew of course, there were demonstrations, which kept growing in size.
Until Orban's party found the remedy, organsied a mass pro-government protest, transporting literally everyone willing, to Budapest for a march that dwarfed the opposition demonstrations. A lot of people gave up after that.

The insane amount of money they were able to channel off, mostly from EU grants, offered them a very new way to control the press: they have just bought it all.
There is very little actual censorship in the country. There is no need for it. Apart from one national TV station in private hands (RTL), everything else non-subservient is a marginal medium. As a journalist, you compile, or starve.


For years now I have had the feeling that the polarisation of US politics seems like they are just a few years behind Hungary's internal processes in this regard, and now with the grandiose victory of the mob, with Trump and the party behind him having an absolute majority, it's hard not to draw parallels with 2010.

Of course, the opposition is not destroyed by scandals and economic collapse like in Hungary, so it's not so hopeless. But it does seem scarily familiar.

[alfred russel]

Trump is way more ridiculous than Orban.

[Valmy]

Our size and language makes it hard to do something similar with the press. Even if the Feds somehow bought the media, if that is even possible, there are thousands of English speaking outlets abroad who would scramble to get all the clicks from anti-government types.

[Grinning_Colossus]

I always do.

[Eddie Teach]

Every night the men would come around and lay their money down.

[viper37]

there are thousands of English speaking outlets abroad who would scramble to get all the clicks from anti-government types.

the anti-government types are in the government now...

[Berkut]

Our size and language makes it hard to do something similar with the press. Even if the Feds somehow bought the media, if that is even possible, there are thousands of English speaking outlets abroad who would scramble to get all the clicks from anti-government types.

I don't think it is possible to do the same thing, but there is zero doubt in my mind that they are moving towards the same ends with different means.

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers. The term "mainstream media" is now part of our lexicon, and has a definite tone that says "biased, lying media" amongst the radical followers, and even otherwise moderates have started to buy into the idea that the media itself is at least incompetent and deceiving.

The US is too big to simply buy all the media up, but it isn't too big to setup a completely biased, no-credibility media, have it grab massive market share appealing to its own echo chamber, and then marginalize the rest of the media by chanting a mantra that the non-biased media is just as bad as their creation, and hence destroying the ability to see the media as a credible source of information.


And at that point, you don't need to buy them up anymore.

[Josquius]

In the UK the right love moaning about mainstream media too.  Which is Ironic considering it is on their side.

[Ancient Demon]

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers.

I would suggest the media mostly did this to themselves.

[alfred russel]

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers.

I would suggest the media mostly did this to themselves.

It started with 24 hour news and the need to have a sensational story every day to get eyeballs. That only accelerated with clickbait journalism.

[Berkut]

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers.

I would suggest the media mostly did this to themselves.

That is exactly what the right has been selling us.

Personally, I am not buying it.

I think the right simply didn't like objective news, because when your message is objectively terrible, objective reporting is to be feared.

This has been going on for as long as there has been media. This is not new.

The demonization of objective media is a necessary condition to normalizing objectionable stances.

The right has convinced their followers that Fox News is objective, and CNN is radical. They've been so good at it, that even plenty of people not in the crazy right are starting to believe it...

[Berkut]

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers.

I would suggest the media mostly did this to themselves.

It started with 24 hour news and the need to have a sensational story every day to get eyeballs. That only accelerated with clickbait journalism.

Nah, I don't think that is really true.

There has always been marginal media. Tabloids, "clickbait" journalism in the form of non-credible sensationalism has always been around.

And the strategy of accusing credible journalism of being incredible journalism to insulate yourself from criticism isn't new either.

CNN is a rather crappy source of news from the standpoint of the quality they put out. But it is very objective.

Trump's response of "FAKE NEWS" to every article he doesn't like is served nicely by this myth of journalism somehow being fundamentally different (and hence less credible).

[Valmy]

The right has done a scarily masterful job of discrediting the media among their own followers.

I would suggest the media mostly did this to themselves.

I do have to question anybody who lived through the 80s when CNN was driving the phony 'satanists' hysteria and didn't have a healthy skepticism of cable news.

[alfred russel]

CNN is a rather crappy source of news from the standpoint of the quality they put out. But it is very objective.

I don't know where to go with that. An assessment of "objectivity" is itself highly subjective and depends on your perspective. Someone from a communist perspective would see rife pro-capitalist biases in CNN--and justifiably so, imo.

In an event, poor quality discredits the news source in many ways more than political bias.

[Eddie Teach]

A more objective news source will be one that strictly reports facts and doesn't comment upon them.