On February 17, an important event took place in domestic Hungarian politics, its long-term consequences still being difficult to estimate. The Momentum Movement [Momentum Mozgalom] collected over 266,000 signatures under a motion to hold a referendum on the Olympic Games. The signatories proposed that inhabitants of Budapest should decide if they wanted their city to host the Olympic Games in 2024. As a result, Victor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government\u2014not wanting to risk a referendum campaign on such a problematic issue less than a year before parliamentary elections\u2014withdrew the candidacy of Budapest.<\/p>\n
The Momentum initiative will go down in political memory as one of the few successful political actions against Orb\u00e1n\u2019s rule since its beginning in 2010. During these seven years the prime minister has found himself in such an uncomfortable situation only twice. The first time was in the winter of 2012, when students took to the streets in protest against a dramatic reduction of access to free university education. And then in the last months of 2014 in Budapest and other major cities, mass protests were organized against the proposed tax on the Internet.<\/p>\n
What these initiatives had in common, besides being successful, is that their organizers were almost exclusively young people below 30, and also the participants (demonstrators and those collecting signatures) generally represented the young generation.<\/p>\n
Young Hungarians regularly face two charges: that they are too politically-minded and that they are hardly interested in politics. The explanation of this apparent contradiction is to be found in the nature of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s system created after 2010. The semi-autocratic rule invades not only the economy but also other areas of the citizens\u2019 life: having children has become a political question alongside with patriotism, but day-to-day political discussions now revolve also around such issues as the curriculum or textbooks. At the same time, Orb\u00e1n tries to act as if governing did not mean making political decisions, representing instead the only correct truth\u2014\u201cthe national interest.\u201d Hence the name he has given to what he is doing: the System of National Cooperation [Nemzeti Egy\u00fcttm\u0171k\u00f6d\u00e9s Rendszere].<\/p>\n
This ideology explains why Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government qualifies social protests against his actions as \u201cpolitically motivated.\u201d One example of that was the campaign against the Momentum Movement\u2014the government media allegedly spotted participants of the left-liberal governments from before 2010 in the midst of this movement. A similar media offensive had been launched against the organizers of the student movements from 2012, and since 2010 the government propaganda accuses every \u201ccivil\u201d movement of being manipulated by fallen left-wing politicians. Another recurring charge is that the activists are financed by Gy\u00f6rgy Soros, the American stock-market guru of Hungarian origin, or by foreign secret services in order to overthrow the democratically elected government of Hungary. \u201cThe opposition: bad politician\u2014good civilian is very harmful, because it hampers the movement between these two spheres and supports the cynical communication used by the government,\u201d says Anett B\u0151sz (30), spokeswoman of the Hungarian Liberal Party [Magyar Liber\u00e1lis P\u00e1rt]. Young movements often acknowledge this opposition themselves and deny having any political aspirations. The reason is that a very negative image of politics and politicians lingers among the younger generation; according to the survey Hungarian Youth 2016 [Magyar Ifj\u00fas\u00e1g 2016],\u00a0for the age-group 15\u201329 politicians are the least trusted group\u2014and also the level of trust for the parliament and government is extremely low.<\/p>\n
Young people gained their political experiences mainly in the period when the condition of the Hungarian democracy demonstrated a downward trend. Viktor Gyetvai (19), who in 2012, while still a secondary school student, gained recognition as one of the organizers of student movements, says that his first political memories are connected with the street riots in the autumn of 2006. Rich\u00e1rd Barab\u00e1s (30), a politician from Dialogue for Hungary [P\u00e1rbesz\u00e9d Magyarorsz\u00e1g\u00e9rt], believes that young Hungarians are not interested in structural questions of party politics and that the traditional image of a politician has become \u201cwacky.\u201d To reach young people, politicians have to function as a kind of social hubs. Members of the new generation do not like to hear commonplaces, because they can check everything on the Internet in two minutes, believes Barab\u00e1s.<\/p>\n
D\u00e1niel Mikecz, expert of the Republikon Institute [Republikon Int\u00e9zet], believes that this slightly far-fetched self-definition as civilians may easily turn into a trap. If a movement initiated as a single-issue group also spoke about other areas, it would risk being labelled as \u201csham civilians\u201d by the government.<\/p>\n
In this respect, the Momentum Movement differs from its predecessors, because it entered the scene with 145 members and professional organization. Momentum Movement declared from the start that it intended to turn into a political party at a later stage. On the one hand, they based their arguments against the Olympics on the threat of corruption, but they also said that the funds reserved for the Olympics should be spent on other areas, for example on the ailing education, healthcare, or infrastructure in the countryside. \u201cMomentum can serve as a model in the future, it shows that a grassroots initiative does not have to fall into the anti-politics trap, that people can and even should take part in the political game. For many young activists of the movement the month of collecting signatures was also a kind of political socialization,\u201d says Mikecz.<\/p>\n
The referendum on Brexit and the American presidential elections have clearly shown that particular groups of voters significantly differ from each other not only in terms of education or place of residence but also in terms of generational belonging. The millennial generation could have prevented Britain\u2019s leaving the EU or the election of Donald Trump, but too few of its members even went to the polls.<\/p>\n
Similar tendencies can be observed in Hungary. The popularity of the Fidesz\u2013KDNP government among the young is much lower than for the general population. The survey on the youth from 2016 showed an increase of young people defining themselves as liberal or moderately liberal. A growing number of young people positively assesses our membership in the EU, despite the \u201cfight for freedom\u201d against Brussels waged by the government for almost seven years. Nevertheless, the political activity of the young is low: according to opinion polls, 44% of them are not interested in politics at all and 20% show a very low level of interest.<\/p>\n
According to Rich\u00e1rd Barab\u00e1s, although these tendencies are similar in Hungary and Western Europe, different processes are behind them. \u201cIn the West young people got used to democracy, they take the democratic system for granted and they notice the threats to democracy to a lesser extent or later. In Hungary the problem seems to be that although 25 years have passed since the change of the political system, we have still not learned democracy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
According to D\u00e1niel R\u00f3na, lecturer at the Corvinus University of Budapest [Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem], \u201cpolitics\u201d in Hungary has become a dirty word. When in the same survey young people were asked if they spoke with friends and families about public issues or social problems, most of them said that they did. The initial distancing themselves from politics also regarded the Momentum Movement. When in an interview for the Magyar Narancs weekly I asked about turning the movement into a party, Andr\u00e1s Gy\u0151r\u2013Fekete (27), the leader of Momentum, answered: \u201cI have long remained cautious in my attitude towards political institutions and political parties, for I regarded them as outdated and unappealing. But the problem is not in the institutions themselves, it lies in their content.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viktor Gyetvai believes that the aversion of young people to politics has two fundamental reasons. \u201cOne of them is that their parents, raised in the times of K\u00e1d\u00e1r\u2019s socialism, transmitted an attitude of distrust towards\u00a0power and perceived every public activity as potentially dangerous. Another reason is that the Hungarian system of education does not prepare children for democratic participation. First, students\u2019 self-government in most schools is perceived at best as a necessary evil. And second, the curriculum does not really contain civic education and in history lessons there is often not enough time to discuss events from immediate past, which are crucial for understanding the present,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The situation in the universities is similar. Political parties are banned on the campuses and students often encounter difficulties when trying to organize discussions on issues connected with current political questions. The competition in students\u2019 self-government is usually weak, the leaders often occupy the same positions for years, and the level of democratic participation is low. \u201cStudents themselves are astonished when a representative of students\u2019 self-government shows a willingness to listen to their problems and treat them seriously,\u201d recalls Anett B\u0151sz, who used to be the leader of students\u2019 self-government in one of the departments of the Corvinus University.<\/p>\n
The survey the Active Young [Akt\u00edv Fiatalok] conducted among university students in 2015 shows that party preferences of the young are dramatically different from the preferences of the general population. A full 35% of young Hungarians would vote for the extreme right party Jobbik (which never reached 20% in the general population), while the LMP (Politics Can Be Different!) [Lehet M\u00e1s a Politika!], which in the last elections barely crossed the 5% mark, enjoys a 25% support of the young. At the same time the support for the right-wing ruling parties and for the traditional left is low and steadily declining.<\/p>\n
According to D\u00e1niel R\u00f3na, the author of a book on the Jobbik phenomenon, the remarkable success of the extreme right parties among the young can be noticed also in other European countries (Austria, Slovakia), but the general trend seems to be that young people vote for anti-elitist parties. This may explain the success of the LMP, which tries to stay away not only from Fidesz\u2013KDNP, but also from traditional left-wing parties, and during the 2014 elections it did not participate in the liberal-left coalition. In other countries it can be seen that anti-establishment parties are capable of reaching young people even from the left, Podemos in Spain being one example. The Momentum Movement took its position in the center, but outside the traditional political elite. \u201cWhat is needed is a change of political culture, and the political elite should be send to the tropics,\u201d said Andr\u00e1s Fekete\u2013Gy\u0151r in the interview I already quoted.<\/p>\n
The good news for the new initiatives is that a significant part of young people joined Jobbik not for ideological reasons (opposition to the EU, and earlier anti-Semitism and hostility to the Roma), more important was a rebellion against the economic and political elites and the sense of community offered by the extreme right subculture. \u201cThese young people could be won over also by someone else, not only by Jobbik. Jobbik simply existed and offered answers to questions they were haunted with,\u201d says R\u00f3na. The presence of Jobbik may be taken in a quite literal sense, for there are places, mainly in the eastern Hungary, where only Fidesz and Jobbik have institutional structures. So these young people from the countryside may express their opposition to the current government only through supporting Jobbik.<\/p>\n
D\u00e1niel Mikecz believes that the countryside will play a crucial role when it comes to the future of Momentum. So far, this organization is centered on Budapest and its members are educated and mobile people, most of them with some experience in European educational institutions. This new initiative announced that during the 45 days of counting anti-Olympics signatures it would visit all regional centers. They want to create local groups and with the emergence of new problems they plan to launch other local referendum initiatives. It could be the right direction\u2014according to Viktor Gyetvai, young people can be drawn into politics mainly through issues which directly involve them. The government\u2019s plans to limit access to higher education from 2012 would affect both older siblings of Gyetvai and himself. \u201cIt was not that I entered public life, public life came to me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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