Readers’ Letters: Media Wars – The Empire Strikes Back?

Recently one of my friends visited me here in Budapest from the Netherlands. Whilst I was showing her around in the city, I was describing some of the main chapters of our history. No wonder, she was amazed when hearing about the gory centuries that were full of struggles for power over here. Ottomans, Habsburgs, Germans, Russians – all these huge influential empires with their local collaborators and us, Hungarians on the other side. Constantly revolting and rising up against their rule.

We were walking right in front of the Parliament when suddenly she turned to me and said: „Tell me rather about that what’s been going on in Hungary recently. Is it true that the whole country is more and more corrupted? Is that right that your second most popular party is the Nazi party? Do you really want to quit the EU and NATO, so you can join Putin just to get gas?”

I was astonished how misinformed she was. Yet, being familiar with the titles of the articles that are recently published in international newspapers, I had nothing really to be surprised about.
Hungary is based in a region where there has always been some tension present due to its geopolitical position. Empires with different interests have been fighting above our heads for their interests and of course always managed to convince some of the locals for their causes too. In our times in the 21st century, this ’war’ still hasn’t stopped, but changed in a way: it is being fought behind the courtains hidden from everyone and yet at the same time, in front of the public too, namely in the mass media. This warfare’s main weapon is the knowledge of information or the provision of misinformation.

If one looks at recent years’ articles written about Hungary abroad, several main topics are being continously misinterpreted or communicated in a negative way to the public. Examples include Viktor Orban’s thoughts on ’illiberalism’ and his views on the changing structure of world politics, the continously growing popularity of the alleged ’Nazi party’ called Jobbik amongst young educated intellectuals, or the sensible situation of unemployed Roma people and those everyday cultural clashes derived from their lifestyle… etc. There is such a huge misinterpretation present between what international media shows and what those who are living here see day by day, that it has to be due to something else than simple mistranslation. Hungarians and foreigners who live here exactly know that most of the articles which can be read in the international media about Hungary is ridiculously overexaggerated and likely to be purposely deceived.

This point of view was supported just this week in an interview with Udo Ulfkotte, the ex-editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well in a recent interview in HírTV, Hungary’s most popular news channel. According to him, journalists that write these articles are only pretending that they know much about the country without any actual knowledge, meanwhile the ones that are actually familiar with the local happenings are simply not allowed to publish in this topic. He also mentions that German public is deceived based on political requests.

However, not only Ulfkotte suggests that deceiving is being done as a part of a well-planned process. Petr Hajek, the spokesman of the Czech ex-president Vaclav Klaus, mentioned recently that looking at the alleged corruption case of NAV, those events that are happening just now in Budapest are very similar to what was going on in Prague last year. Based on his opinion, in 2013 the government of Petr Necas was overthrown by a similar blury corruption case that was plotted by the US secret services as a revenge for that the Temerin nuclear reactor’s tender for expansion was won by the Russians and not the Americans. According to Hajek, this is a well-planned model by which foreign intelligence services make tension in society, creating government-opposing groups that sooner or later lead to the fall of the government. What is more, due to the current Ukrainian situation, Hungary has a growingly important role in the Central-European region and therefore is in the center of attention, since soon it might become the following conflict zone where East and West would clash for their interests.

„Wow, this is all interesting. Looking at the question on a global scale it actually totally makes sense” said my friend while we were standing in front of Imre Nagy’s statue after passing the Kossuth tér. She looked further and asked „Tell me what else is that way?”
„Well, that place is called Szabadság tér, in English it’s translated as Liberty Square.”
„Liberty? So I guess there’s some more nice statues that all remind people of your other heroes that were fighting against oppression, just like this person here”
„No, not really. There is a statue commemorating the Soviets who occupied Hungary, there’s another statue that commemorates those who died during the Nazi occupation of Hungary and well then… there’s the US embassy.”

by Adam

Source: http://dailynewshungary.com/