James Downes  0:07  
Welcome to the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right the right rising podcast. Today's episode features an episode from our CARR Populism Research Unit. The CARR PRU has previously had episodes in examining the populist radical right in countries such as Italy and most recently, Germany. Today we head out to Eastern Europe for our episode. We're delighted to have on our show today a special guest. Dr. Katherine Kondor is a research associate on the illiberal Turn Project at Loughborough University. With an interdisciplinary background in anthropology, Katherine completed a PhD in criminology, from the University of Huddersfield.

Her thesis examined pathways to radicalization for a comparative analysis of radical right organisations in Hungary and Great Britain, which use mixed methods to explore questions of recruitment, radicalization and identity formation. Katherine's thesis was awarded the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right's inaugural Cass Mudde early career scholarship award. So, Kathy, welcome to Right Rising. 

Katherine Kondor  1:10  
Thanks so much for having me. 

James Downes  1:12  
So Kathy, could you please walk us through some of your current academic research relating to radicalization, political activism, and the radical right, it's also really interesting to see your interdisciplinary research background. Yeah, so one of the great things about the study of the far right, or sort of the field that we're in, is that it it really attracts people from all sorts of different different backgrounds. And it really is a completely interdisciplinary field, which obviously brings a lot of advantages. And, you know, we approach sort of the same goal, the same sort of family of questions for a lot of different perspectives. 

Katherine Kondor  1:48  
My background actually is fairly unique, in that I was an anthropologist, so I'm studying as an anthropologist, I'm actually a skeletal biologist. So I was doing bio archaeology. And it's from there that I kind of got into the questions of race, and sort of race theory. And then from there into the study of the far right, so it was sort of a long path, very, very long path for me. And my PhD is actually now in criminology. So I really do take a lot of different disciplines and combine them. And within the study of the far right, which obviously, is a fairly large field, I'm really interested in social movements. So this idea of social movement organisations, the street level organisations that we see. And ultimately the question of why, why what what's the interest? What's the draw to people with organisations? Why do people? Why do people join them? Why are people interested in them?

And also, when they do join them? Why do they stay there? So what is it? What is the attraction of these organisations? And I think, I think these questions are fundamentally very important, because we're seeing a rise of the far right across the world. I mean, especially anyone that's been on the Internet at all, seen the issues happening in United States, and across Europe as well, we're seeing a huge rise. So that's my question because I, I sort of approach life with the idea that nobody is born evil. Nobody is born like this.

So there has to be a reason for why people think this way. So yeah, that's that's essentially it. At the moment, however, I'm working on a project really exciting project out of out of luck. Looking at the connection between political attitudes and media use in Central and Eastern Europe. So we're actually looking at four different central Eastern European countries, one of which is Hungary, of course. 

James Downes  3:44  
Well, I mean, fantastic Kathy, it's really interesting to see, you know, such a diverse background, like you mentioning about social movements, you know, your background in, in the biology side, as well as the skeletal biology side. I think this is really fascinating for our listeners, as well, and also your location in criminology. So I think this is really unique, you know, from from a diverse background like myself, as we were discussing this before, we kind of recorded this episode from a more kind of Political Science II party politics background. So the way that we would probably design our research questions and even analyse our findings will be very different from one another. So this is really fantastic. And great to hear. So Kathy, I think our listeners who may not know a great deal about Hungary and Hungarian politics, because you just mentioned a little bit about your project in central Eastern Europe, kind of the media project, looking at hungry. I was wondering, for our listeners who may not know a great deal about Hungary in Hungarian politics. Could you please introduce us to the political landscape in Hungary, for example, what's so unique about the modern Hungarian political landscape, for example? 

Katherine Kondor  4:48  
Yeah, so this is, I mean, this is a fairly big question.

So I'll try to break it down a little bit. So I'm going to wager to assume that many of our listeners are probably

Not from Central and Eastern Europe and probably have a sort of a Western perspective of politics. So what's important to know is that in, in Hungary, so in this entire region, there's sort of a unique history with politics, because of the history of the 20th century in the region.

So of course, in the second half of the 20th century, we had, we had communism in Hungary, and in 1989, began to transition out of communism. And that with itself brought a lot of challenges for the political landscape sort of finding its legs again, in politics, so to speak.

And in Hungary, specifically,

at the current currently, currently, the Hungarian political landscape is made up largely by one political party. This is the Fidesz Party, which I know we'll probably talk quite a bit about today. They're led by Viktor Orban, as people may have heard about in the news as well. They currently have two thirds majority in the parliament. So our European Parliament has 199 seats, of which they hold two thirds, and they have for for quite a few years now. So

the rest of the Parliament is ultimately made up of both the so called opposition parties, of which there's currently I believe, six more major opposition parties. So part of the issue we see here is we have one party that's managed to sort of take over the political landscape and essentially decimated the opposition, because the way that they've gained the two thirds power, is what law states is that for, I believe, 43% of the votes gains two thirds majority in parliament. And Fidesz always gains this 43%. Or at least they have for the past few elections. We have another one coming up next year, next spring in 2022. So because of this, Hungary has fundamentally become a one party. 

James Downes  7:11  
And that that's really fascinating, you know, for myself and our viewers, Kathy, to hear about this one party state, you know, the evolution hungry, that arguably, you know, we hear some political commentators scholars saying that Hungary is no longer a four level democracy that is seen this democratic backsliding, we've seen this, I think from the BDM Institute at the University of Gothenburg where they've classified it as you know, as a big democratic backsliding event. And for our listeners listening in now know the Fidesz party, as Kathy spoke about, they've got this two thirds majority in the parliament. So they can pretty much it seems, passes, you know, any type of, of, you know, policy into law. So it brings me on really nicely into my next question about Oh, Kathy, what do you think is so unique about the far right, in terms of the political landscape in Hungary? 

Katherine Kondor  7:59  
Again, it's a kind of a big, broad question. But I think our listeners would be great for them to kind of hear more about the uniqueness as well about the four rights in the modern Hungarian political landscape. Sure, yeah, of course. And just to go back to what you were saying, which is a very breaking point, is this, this idea of a liberalism that's been been happening in Hungary, where, you know, what Ben years ago famously decreed that Hungary is now an illiberal democracy, so to speak. And that's what we see, this is a liberal turn in the, in the region, because he's been influenced other political leaders as well. And yeah, as you said, you know, the freedom outside of the US also concluded that Hungary and actually Serbia are no longer democracies. But, uh, but it's sort of a grey zone between democracy and autocracy. So that, yeah, doesn't doesn't bode well, for the region. Absolutely. But when it comes when it comes to the far right, in Hungary, so that's, again, this is a very sort of

complicated question, because we need to separate out electoral politics from from sort of street level for right movements. So that's what we see here we have the far right, that's in our electoral politics. We see parties like Fidesz, and as many people probably heard of the big party that we had, and that we have a newer, more extreme party called

our homeland, new Mosaic,

our homeland movement, but we also have quite a strong bar, right, in terms of social movement organisations, and hungry, so hungry has kind of a turbulent history as a nation, let's say, and in order to understand a lot of the far right and what they believe that we do need to understand something about the history of hungry and part of the things that led to sort of the uniqueness in the Hungarian far right, is the fact that Hungarian sort of entered the area of Europe like if we look at the history of Hungary in the 10th century, and

If you look at the history of Hungarians as a people, you know, a lot of people hang on to this idea of Hungarians actually being from East, and not being dramatic, or Slavic, or one of the more, one of the people who have been in Europe longer. And so this is one of the things that's really held onto by the far right, this sort of othering of Hungarians, and somehow, you know, saying that we don't belong, necessarily to the rest of Europe. And we see this in electoral politics, as well with the anti EU pulling towards east towards China towards Russia. So we do see that in sort of all levels.

But the other thing that really defines the far right, politics and far right, just ideology, in essence, is this idea of irredentism. And so what happened is in the earlier 20th century,

Hungary was, of course, part of the austro Hungarian Empire, or rather, in the, you know, 19th 20th centuries.

And in 1920, after the end of World War, one Hungary Republican, and

at that point in 1920, was the signing of what's called the train on treaty. And Hungary lost a lot of its land something like two thirds of its lands and in the Hungarian lands were then given to the surrounding countries. So the Principality of the province of Transylvania was given to Romania, and also other areas were lost to Slovakia to Ukraine to Croatia, and surrounding and Serbia, surrounding areas. So there's a lot of heartache about this. understandably so in some respects, because, you know, families were split across borders, there was you know, it was trauma to a lot of families in this trauma remained in a lot of Hungarians, but the far right really hangs on to this idea. And this is also something that the Fidesz party, for example, has really latched on to also because this is a good, you know, it's also part of this idea of ethno nationalism, of the pure Hungarians of Hungarian ethnicity, as opposed to Hungary nationality. And you know, what the Fidesz party has done, for example, is they've given Hungarian citizenship to anybody who can prove Hungarian roots.

And so a lot of people in Transylvania and Ukraine and other places have now sought their Hungarian citizenship as well.

So this is this is a big, another big thing. So this this sort of historical aspect, the historical aspect, we can call it, and tourism is pulling to the east. There's also the the or adventism of the train on treaty. Any other thing that's that's fairly large is anti tieghan ism or anti anti Roma sentiments in Hungary that's extremely strong. We'll find that across most of the region here. So if we, if we look at the far right landscape, that social movement organisation landscape, we sort of see these things we also see ethno nationalism, of course, anti EU, and what's newer is fairly strong anti LGBTQ sentiments,

which is fairly new to the landscape and also to the unfortunate into the political landscape as well. And what's interesting in the group, so we have several of larger, larger, far right organisations, as each one sort of emphasises one of these things a little bit more. So we have, for example, the 64 counties youth movement, they very much 64 counties refers to the 64 counties before Trayvon. So they very much emphasise, irredentism. We have other groups like,

like the Hungarian defence movement, for example, who are very, very strongly anti Roma. So there's different so they all believe sort of the same things, but perhaps emphasise one ideology or one attitude over another, and hence can draw in different people, depending on what they find sort of the most important. So I suppose that's in a nutshell.

James Downes  14:08  
Thank you very much, Kathy. I think once again, I found this really fascinating, your responses, because it made me think a little bit about, you know, some of the foreign parties that we see in Western Europe saying countries like France, Germany, even the UK, of course, that have a very different set of history to say, the countries such as Hungary and Eastern Europe, and I think, no, you kind of really delve into the historical factors there. And I think, again, this is really important for our listeners. And what also struck me was you kind of mentioning about these different types of foreign parties in Hungary. And I think we're seeing this in other countries where, you know, perhaps 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and a lot of the European countries, we will perhaps see just one main foreign party, not dominating a country because they were much more on the periphery back then. But we've got cases of course in Hungary now with, you know, kind of multiple for a party.

And as you were expertly saying Kathy, what was really interesting was that they each seem to represent a different a different ideological strands. And you mentioned this about irredentist irredentism as well. And then it also made me think a little bit about countries like the Netherlands, even Italy, which of course, completely different to the more Eastern European context, but they've actually seen, you know, in Italy, the two foreign parties for Teddy, the Italia, brothers of Italy, Liga, the league, which is the more established story party, and then it made me think about the Netherlands as well. So I think we can really see in Hungary that, you know, there's a big debate also to be had about the very nature, you know, how do we define far right parties? Do we even need to update some of our terminology? I think this is a debate to be had as well, because we've seen in some of the other episodes we've had with the calibrate rising populism Research Unit episode where we've been discussing about some of the misconceptions about populism and nativism, and that when we look at populism, we shouldn't obviously complete it with nativism, which does seem to happen even amongst scholars in the scholarly literature. So I was again thinking for my next question that this leads really well into the next question about about the question on,

On Fidesz. How do you classify Fidesz and how far-right are Fidesz? Do you see Fidesz as a populist radical right party or as an extreme right wing party? And of course, when I was researching

Hungary a couple of years ago, I would often kind of speak to country experts. And they would say to me, Well, you know, Fidesz started off as traditional conservative, centre right party, but now perhaps, can even be seen not as a populist radical, right. But as an extreme right wing party, so myself as a researcher, more of a comparative researcher, rather than a researcher See that's dealing with, or comparative party politics, research are not dealing so much with the social movements side, it often makes me think about how do we classify parties such as Fidesz, for example, ideologically speaking? Yeah, I mean, that is, that's a really great question. It's honestly, I'll be honest, it's something I struggle with because I am not a political analyst, nor a political scientist. Um, but I think okay, so I think maybe the way to start this then is to tell our listeners a little bit about Fidesz, because maybe aren't as familiar with what they're doing or why on earth people are even considering pulling them apart, right party or a political radical or political populist, radical right party. Um, so Fidesz in itself. What's interesting about this actually, is that at the end of the 1980s, so in 1988, when Hungary was starting to move out of communism,

Katherine Kondor  17:40  
they actually reformed as an anti Communist Party. They were actually Sophie dust actually stands for pure thought democrat acts about Sega, which means the alliance of young Democrats. So the Fidesz party actually stands for alliance of young democrats and they've kept the name. And since then, since the late 80s, they've been led by what Ben?

There, it's, it's difficult to categorise them because they have been redefined, especially in the last five years, or in the last 10 years, they've gone through this. Yeah, absolute redefinition in the scholarly world, in 2015 that actually refer to them as a mainstream conservative party with radical right policies. Now I knew since then, you know, minds have obviously been changed because it has changed quite a lot even since 2015. But they were slow to redefine them. I remember a few years ago, I started calling them a far right party and I, I got I got last

time calling them a far right party. But, but now it seems that, you know, there is a little bit more agreement there. Um, so some of the things that they've done just to Yeah, just to just to clarify this a little bit.

There's a there's a large question in my mind about do we call a party a far right party? Like that doesn't matter if the people in the party actually believe these far right attitudes that they're pushing for? Is it enough that they pull these emotions and attitudes and feelings out of the citizens or out of out of the people of their country? And I i tend towards the latter. So do I necessarily believe that that Fidesz believes everything that they do and everything they say, No, but do they draw those sorts of feelings from the people? Yes, very much so. So in the last few years, we've seen a pull towards more anti so called anti migrant or Zena phobic attitudes. We started huge migrant campaign around 2015 migrant crisis or refugee crisis in Europe. They had a huge bill.

More campaign around the country. So very strong xenophobia when relatively speaking, Hungary has very, very low levels of immigration.

And especially asylum seeking, we look at it that way.

They recently I'd say Finally, the newest thing is very, very strong anti LGBTQ attitudes and very strong anti trans attitudes. And what's interesting there and which was quite shocking for me, doing my own sort of research on on alright organisations and not the political parties, but the organisations is seeing that they're also adopting much more of these anti LGBTQ attitudes are less than, say, being more vocal about them. I think they were always there, but they're being more vocal about them. Because Fidesz is almost giving these groups legitimacy to be even more vocal than they already have been. And we see these strong irredentist attitudes, you know,

they they've been, let's say, involved quite a bit with the Hungarian minority in Transylvania,

which has caused tensions there, of course. And, yes, it's very strong irredentist add to sort of the importance of training on things like that. They've pushed the importance of Christianity, so to speak in the country, they've changed the education system to reflect this. So there's, there's a, the elementary education system now includes aspects of, you know, having to push this Christian ideology on students. The history, history books now includes Bible study, essentially. And that's in the framework of history. And pushing sort of these Hungarian so called Hungarian cultural values. We see strong nativism, strong authoritarianism, of course, so all of these things are there, that really, really, you know, point towards them being far right party. Absolutely, absolutely. But the question of populism is a question that I really do struggle with, I have to tell you the absolute truth. You know, it's not necessarily my area. And I know there's been a lot of discussion around populism when it comes to Fidesz, and especially around central Eastern Europe, because populism is going to look different in Eastern Europe than it does in the West. Absolutely does. So populism has this sort of idea at the heart of it of the people versus the corrupt elite. That's, that's essentially at the heart, I think, of a definition of populism. And, and this idea of our people are poor people, and you know, the evil other or the evil, corrupt. No, we talk specifically about populist radical right parties, of course, they have a tendency to sit as sort of this intersection between between a party and a movement. But that's something that we don't have with us. So it's a little bit different. But if we talk about in a minute, maybe about your beak, or about one of the other ones, they they do. So you know, there are differences even within what we would call populist, radical right parties, even in one country, so to speak. But what Fidesz has done, and the way that they what they've done is they've created a corrupt. So if we look fundamentally at the political sphere in Hungary,

I mean, I'm sorry to say, but the corrupt elite would hate us. But that is them. I mean, they're rife with corruption. And since since the transition in 1989, that corruption is something that is absolutely defined popular populism politics, in the region, and especially in Hungary. And the corruption that we see I mean, it's not even hidden anymore. It's It's, it's, it's open. It's blatant. It's in everyone's face, and people see it. So it's there. So can we say that a party led by the so called corrupt elite, populist? So what they have is, but but yes, so the truth? Yes, because of the creation of another corrupt elite, which is not really a corrupt to eat, but it's sort of this fake scapegoat. And we see this especially, for example, in the last few years, we've seen a campaign against George Soros which has then now extended itself to essentially the rest of the world. I mean, we see this in the United States, we've seen it in Western Europe. We see it everywhere, there's talk of it everywhere. And George Soros has been made into this evil, capitalistic nightmare for, you know, for us or for Fidesz followers, essentially. And I mean, there has been also talk about sort of the the

Yeah, sort of why, you know, why they've started this campaign. And, you know, there's been suggestions of anti semitism as well and other things, but but, you know, I would tend to point more towards a sort of populist ideology, this sort of populist motivation. And of course, this brought with it the closing of

So yeah, so this in essence, I think just point towards them being a populist, radical right party, I think the radical right part is sort of, you know, yes, I would absolutely agree that their radical right or far right, I know that there's other podcast episodes dealing with the definitions of those. So I encourage listeners to check those out. We don't have time to go into those now.

But But I would say so and, and some of the other things they've done, for example, is, is, whenever there's a new question that comes up with one of these campaigns that they start, so the campaign against George Soros or a campaign against Brussels, because Brussels has sort of become the key word to represent the EU and the EU here.

What they do is they send out what's called the National consultation, and they send out questionnaires and surveys, to ask the people how they actually feel about these things. And they get the survey results back and say, well, there's a resounding agreement with everything we're doing. So the people agree. But for anyone that's ever worked in survey design, or in social sciences, looking at the surveys, it's very clear, the person that designed them knows exactly what they're doing, because there's literally no other result that could come out of the surveys. There is, I mean, they're almost, they're laughable, to be honest. You know, I've kept them as mementos to tell you because they're just

incredible. You know, I mean, I can't off the top of my head, give an example, maybe something like, you know, I'm George Soros,

wants to eat all of your children. Do you think it's good that George chodosh will eat your children? Yes or no? And I mean, these are the types of questions I mean, that's, obviously an exaggeration. But, but that's that's sort of the things that we see. So, so we do see this, you know, again, the creation of the corrupt elite, and the asking the people how they feel about, you know, different policies. That in itself points towards populism

and also the authoritarianism and the nativism, which is obviously characteristic of populist radical right parties. So yeah, that's, again, if it's not clear, I'm struggling with the answer to that. But But yeah, I think so. Thanks. 

James Downes  27:15  
Thanks, Kathy. Again, I think what you really highlight Well, there, again, is this complexity about, you know, the term populism. And of course, when we look at Fidesz,

definitely it seems to be a radical right party. But of course, the populism angle, does it kind of fit the, you know, I think our listeners will kind of see that it's much more complex that perhaps, when they've read, you know, recent articles, or if you just read an article on the BBC about Fidesz or seeing the Guardian, we can see that it's actually extremely complex. And that leads really well on to my next question, and I was just wondering, briefly, Kathy, it's a kind of difficult, perhaps a challenging question that I am sometimes unsure about myself, but about the classification of ubik. How would you classify, you know, do a big party because some commentators, I believe, in the past have kind of referred to as an extreme right, or radical right, sometimes even this kind of Neo fascist party in it. It's made me quite confused about how do we label this party or classified as party? 

Katherine Kondor  29:07  
Hungary has sort of had a relatively strong for right, throughout the 20th century. I mean, obviously, communism sort of muted that throughout. But after the 1980s, we saw a resurgence of the far right. In Hungary, and this started

Which is interesting, but it was started by a person at night in 1983, who's actually a writer, which is interesting, and it was sort of a reaction to this post communist transition

and tended to label

As anti Hungarian and really started the sort of them and us post communist transition, you know, the evil communists and the equating of Jews with liberalism and anti semitism. So this this really huge culture of anti semitism, and

that that revolves around the far right then. And they actually received over 5% of the votes at the end of the 1990s. And started to decline slightly in their popularity in the following elections in 2002. And shortly after that they joined forces with this brand new political party.

And they were actually founded in 2003,

as a political party that came out of social movements. So they actually came out of the far right movement scene

Its shocking to get over 16% of a vote that quickly, which I think speaks to also the political climate at the time and the political climate that's continuing, really. And after that, in 2014, they actually received over 20% of the vote. So even more than that, but after that, they started to decline. So the last elections we had a couple of years ago, in 2018, they declined a little bit to 19%. And at that time, the leader of the party who was still gap would one off, he made, he made a promise that if they didn't win the election, he would step down. And they didn't win the election, because he just won the election, as everyone sort of suspected What happened? There's not much of a question at this point anymore. And so he did step down. And at that point, what we what we had already seen. So it's sort of from

So much has happened in Hungarian politics in the last few years. And it's difficult to think about, you know, how many years ago that was, but several years ago, you'll be started to transition because they were trying to gain more votes. So they started to their image, they weren't as openly anti Roma anymore, they started to reach out to Jewish organisations, you know, they started to try to be less racist, less dentists, less everything. So what they did is they muted their image. 

And what happened there is now we have the your big party, and your big party actually has, I would say joined forces with the rest of the opposition. So they have become much more of a centre right party. In fact, the person who now leads your week who has been in your big since the beginning, so he's not a new member to the party, but the current president is actually the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. So we there, yeah. So we very much you know, that the party has changed its image, let's say,

but because of that has lost voters. But now, you know, has reached out to some of the more typically liberal parties in in Hungary, sort of join join forces. So yeah, what happened after the 2018 election was a fracturing of the big party. So what we had was the more extreme faction of the party, which split off into the newer mosaic was going on where the our homeland movement Party, which was, which is led by last little boy, who is

As I mentioned before, the founder of the 64 counties youth movement, I was the group that I had mentioned before the very irredentist movement, and he now heads this political party. So I, I don't think that necessarily their homeland movement is a is a threat to Hungarian politics, because there's such a extreme party, but the fact is that they do have a presence. And if anything, the presence is, is there or let's say, should I put this Fidesz is allowing them to have a presence? Because it's making them seem less extreme? Right, so so they do have a function, at least from the perspective, I think he does have a function in Hungarian politics. And so the rest of your week, has reformed as your week and is more a centre right? Party. So but the traditional your beat that most people talk about that we still see in the literature is the pre 2018, you'll be, which was very much a populist, radical right party in every sense of the word. They were against the corrupt elite, which for them was Fidesz, right, or, you know, I guess, George chodosh, and everything like that, because a lot of people latched on to those things. But it was ultimately good. So they were the traditional populist, radical right party.

And who were openly anti Roma, anti anti semitic, you know, you know phobic, etc, etc, etc, pro Christian, anti EU, anti LGBTQ, etc. So yeah, this is definitely the switch that we've seen in Hungarian politics. And it's quite difficult to wrap our heads around. And and I still find it really interesting that there's a lot of publications, perhaps less now focused on your big and focused on your big as the far right party in her in the Hungarian political landscape. And I don't think that's the case anymore. I think if people are focusing on the far right in Hungary, in politics and electoral politics, it's Fidesz and to a far lesser extent, the our homeland movements from the perspective of them being extreme, a truly extremist party.

But yeah, I think she does is definitely the way to go for people researching the far right and hungry in politics. 

James Downes  37:18  
Thank you. Again, Kathy. I think for our listeners, listening into this podcast episode, we can see how important it is to make a distinction here about you know, we've got these two different types of, of your big parties, and particularly, now we see a more centre right version of this party, we see such a complete, you know, ideological transformation, and arguably, you know, theodosis made the opposite transformation that seems and so this pre 2018 distinction for you, because I find that particularly important, I think, particularly for researchers, comparative researchers who are looking at a third party family, or even looking at the two different variants, the radical right versus the extreme right, this is an incredibly important distinction to make, but by the fact that they give a big is such a different party in 2021, compared to say 2018. So as a party politics or more of a electoral studies researcher, I think this is this is an incredibly important point that, that Kathy raises. And On a similar note, coming to my final question now,

You recently wrote an article Kathy, that was published by Fair Observer, titled, amidst a pandemic, Central and Eastern Europe, witnesses and erosion of democracy, this article got me thinking quite a lot about the overall effects of the covid 19 pandemic, on you know, the far-right, but particularly in terms of the overall European political landscape. So for our listeners listening in, what was your main argument in that piece?

Katherine Kondor  38:56  
 So especially, in regards to Hungary, there is absolutely no freedom of media, which has influenced a lot of things, especially around the covid 19 pandemic. So yeah, the current project that I'm working on, and looking at political attitudes, and looking at how these attitudes have changed, you know, and how people's people's attitudes, for example, towards democracy, I do mention this at the end of the piece, towards democracy and towards, you know, more autocratic forms of government, and how people have become more accepting towards these autocratic forms of government. And I think that was sort of one of my point. So the ultimate point here is how central in Eastern Europe, how politics and Central and Eastern Europe have shifted because of the pandemic. There has been quite a large shift.

in many senses, but also in that politicians in this area, particularly in Hungary have taken advantage of the pandemic. So they've taken the pandemic and rather than trying to, for instance, you know, bring measures that just for the sake of the well being of everyone,

They brought measures that help their own political, political motives. In Hungary, we seen the Enabling Act that was passed the first one that was passed back in April, I believe, and another one that was passed back in November, essentially giving broadband in this case, full power. And the argument here was, you know, in a pandemic, we don't have time to go to the government, we want time to, you know, debate things in Parliament, we need to pass things right away, which in one essence, is understandable. The issue with that is that the first things that they passed, were not anything to do with the pandemic. So this November, when they passed the second Enabling Act, the first things they passed were laws against LGBTQ. So they've now changed the constitution to say that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. And children can only be adopted by men and women.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai