SMARTPHONES AND THE EUROPEAN FLAG: THE NEW HUNGARIAN DEMONSTRATIONS FOR DEMOCRACY
SMARTPHONES AND THE EUROPEAN FLAG: THE NEW HUNGARIAN DEMONSTRATIONS FOR DEMOCRACY

Summary/Abstract: The article places Hungarian demonstrations in autumn 2014 within an overview of the construction of the political idea of democracy in post-socialist Hungarian politics, and the changes induced by the Fidesz government after 2010. Instead of a short-term, politically focused analysis, it understands recent changes as part of a long-term history of integration into the history of the capitalist world-system. In that interpretation, I rely on the collective work of the Budapest-based Working Group on Public Sociology “Helyzet”. Based on the national and international press of the events, as well as on my previous knowledge of movement groups, I explore the ideological forms through which mobilizations’ issues are channelled into more politicized vocabularies. Although a full analysis of this complex and hierarchical process falls beyond the purposes of the present paper, it nonetheless points at a major factor within the local dynamics of politicization: that of vertical alliances within a renewed geopolitical tension, framed in the vocabulary of a “New Cold War”.

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