Echoes of the 1930s in Contemporary Hungarian Populism

As the lingering effects of the global crisis have sunk in amidst evidence of increased structural inequality, de-legitimation of traditional politicians, a growing gap between cosmopolitan elites and the populations they live among, the rise of new and feared media and the distant drumbeat of global conflict, memories of the 1930s are casting an ever darker shadow over the present.  

Nowhere has the sense of interwar illiberalism been more deliberately stoked than in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party came to power with a constitutional majority in 2010.   Flying the banner of anti-communism, Orbán promised to return Hungary to its Hungarian roots, which meant returning to “true Hungary” as it had existed before WWII. In the last half-dozen years, Viktor Orbán has accompanied his relentless consolidation of power with the revivals from the interwar era to stir up nationalism.    His government has been busily erecting statues to major cultural figures of the 1930s, bringing back the uniforms of the period, flying the flags and reciting the poetry of the period and – perhaps most significantly – restoring the Holy Crown of St. Stephen to its “rightful” place as the true constitution of Hungary.   In this paper, I explore the efforts of the Orbán government to restore the cultural markers of the 1930s as a device for identifying Orbán with the nation.