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Victor Orbán and Football in Hungary

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    Victor Orbán and Football in Hungary

    great piece by David Goldblatt and Daniel Nolan

    For Hungarian oligarchs and foreign journalists alike, the best chance of an audience with Orbán is a visit to the Pancho Arena, which is why the car park outside the ground fills up with expensive vehicles whose owners are seeking proximity to power. “Even if you hate football, you have to go to these matches,” said Gyula Mucsi of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. “It is the only place that the elite are willing to socialise with anyone outside of their small circle. Big construction and infrastructure development projects and plans which require a lot of money are basically decided in the skybox.”
    the Fidesz leaders who currently occupy Hungary’s three most powerful posts – Orbán, President János Áder, and László Kövér, the speaker of the national assembly – all played together on the same five-a-side team.

    #2
    It is good. Actually though the Puskás Akademi "brand" has already gone beyond Hungary. We have a huge new stadium in my town too funded (as far as I can tell) by FIDESZ).

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      #3
      Great long article on Orban in the FT
      https://www.ft.com/content/dda50a3e-...0-9c0ad2d7c5b5

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        #4
        And one on Mészáros Lőrinc, the man widely assumed to be the way that Orban extracts money from the state to feather his own nest

        http://hungarianspectrum.org/2018/01...rinc-meszaros/

        (Hungarian Spectrum, that website, and its author Balogh Eva, is the very best place to find any independent news about Hungary)

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          #5
          Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
          Great long article on Orban in the FT
          https://www.ft.com/content/dda50a3e-...0-9c0ad2d7c5b5
          Any chance of a copy paste job of that as it's behind a paywall?

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            #6
            Hmm. Wasn't when I read it this morning. Seems to be now

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              #7
              Does this work?

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                #8
                No (not for me, can't speak for AE)

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                  No (not for me, can't speak for AE)
                  Sadly it's not working for me. Ho hum.

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                    #10
                    I can post some extracts:


                    Among those who gave the group [of friends around Orban] early backing was, ironically, George Soros, who had already launched his philanthropic and democracy-promotion activities. He visited Bibo College in 1985, donating a much-needed photocopier — the machines were regulated by the state because of their potential to spread subversive material — and funding a college journal that later became a Fidesz paper. “A copier was fantastic,” says Fodor. “To make copies, to write freely what you think — that was very dangerous to the regime.”

                    The problem is that Orban has no scruples. He has no moral limits

                    Former senior Hungarian official
                    Orban and his friends took other risks, making underground visits to leaders of the then-banned Solidarity in Poland. Orban’s 1986 master’s thesis on the Polish trade union, which Keri calls a “Himalayan” intellectual achievement, quoted Solidarity leaders first-hand. By 1988, the friends felt ready to launch their own pro-democracy movement. Keri argued it was too dangerous, warning Orban to wait until the departure of Janos Kadar, Hungary’s ageing communist leader.

                    “Viktor [said], ‘No, this is the time to take the risk. Later on it will be in vain,’” recalls Keri. Orban prevailed, and Fiatal Demokratak Szovetsege, or Fidesz, was launched in March.

                    Orban’s instincts proved right. The authorities tolerated Fidesz. As Hungary’s first independent youth political movement, it secured an invitation, after Kadar retired in May 1988, to round-table talks the following year and was granted a speaker at the Heroes’ Square event at which Orban would make his stunning breakthrough. When elections were called for March 1990, he cut short a period studying — on a Soros scholarship at Pembroke College, Oxford — to campaign. Fidesz won almost 9 per cent of the vote. Aged 26, the student radical found himself leading a group of 22 MPs.



                    his has opened opportunities for others, including Lorinc Meszaros, an Orban school friend and mayor of his home village of Felcsut, who built a football stadium across the road from the*football-mad Orban’s childhood home. At the end of the premier’s street, he also rebuilt a narrow-gauge tourist train, with the help of €2m in EU funding. In a Hungarian rich list published last May, Meszaros’s wealth was estimated to have jumped more than fivefold in a year, to €383m.

                    Orban and Meszaros have publicly denied allegations from Jobbik, the far-right opposition party, that Meszaros is a*stroman, or frontman, for the PM. Answering a question in parliament in 2016, Orban said: “I am not a wealthy man, and I will never be a wealthy man”. Zoltan Kovacs, Hungary’s government spokesman, says if any businesspeople close to Fidesz have prospered, they have won contracts entirely on merit and done a good job.

                    My fear is the longer he is in this position, the deeper he believes in these populist ideas

                    A senior Hungarian banker
                    Yet some of Fidesz’s most outspoken critics suggest the premier’s nationalist-conservative ideology is essentially an artificial construct designed to deliver power and its privileges. An ideologically driven party, says Balint Magyar, “can be anti-Semitic or racist. But Orban and his people just cynically use these things. At the same time, of course, they legitimise the presence of such notions in society, which poisons society.”

                    By contrast, the senior banker who has known Orban since the 1990s suggests that the premier has, over time, convinced himself of his own patter. “[At first] he didn’t take seriously more than 20 or 30 per cent [of his conservative rhetoric],” the banker says. “My fear is the longer he is in this position, the deeper he believes in these populist ideas.”


                    Critics worry that the negative messages of the government’s anti-Soros and anti-migrant campaigns are seeping into society. Last month, at a time of year when Hungarians traditionally slaughter pigs, a Fidesz MP posted a Facebook photograph of a dead pig, its skin seared black and inscribed in yellow with the words “This was Soros!!”

                    A few weeks earlier, in Ocseny in south-west Hungary, villagers made death threats to a local guesthouse owner after he offered a free holiday to a group of refugees who had already been granted asylum. Zoltan Fenyesi, the hotelier, later told the FT he thought he could talk the villagers round. “But it was impossible — most were spilling over with rage.” Orban spoke out in support of the villagers.

                    Last edited by Nefertiti2; 26-01-2018, 19:55.

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                      #11
                      http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/P...22765&LangID=E

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                        #12
                        Latest from Orban - this is very scary

                        https://twitter.com/panyiszabolcs/status/972175994919403520

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                          #13
                          They (FIDESZ) suffered a startling defeat in a local election recently and since then have been doubling down on the racism

                          See here for example
                          http://hungarianspectrum.org/2018/03...tiable-vienna/

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                            #14
                            BTW Snake any chance we could move this thread into world? It had a football aspect to it when it started but now it's the catch all thread for the Orbán regime

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                              It really is.

                              Yesterday saw Bratislava's biggest demonstration since 1989, with an estimated 50,000 gathering in SNP Square to back the movement for a 'decent Slovakia', pay tribute to Kuciak and Kusnirova and call for Robert Fico and his bunch of bandits to resign. Fico says these people, and the further 50,000+ who demonstrated all over the country at the same time, were being 'manipulated by Soros and his allies'. He also said that to participate in such demonstrations is to 'put one's health at risk'. It is truly scary.

                              But hopefully, Slovakia won't let this rest. There's an open-air concert here in Zilina on Sunday, in which a few Czech/Slovak bands who were part of the pre-89 underground are going to take part. I'm looking forward to that. Other comparisons between 89 and this are being tentatively made too. For example, the SME* daily published an elevated view of yesterday's demo alongside one of the November 89 demo, with the numbers looking very comparable.

                              Perhaps I should start a separate Slovakia thread, rather than hijack an Orban one, but since Jan Kuciak has been referenced...

                              *Definitely not to be confused with Smer (Fico's party).

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