Hungary: power, punishment and the ‘Christian-national idea’

Abstract

The spectacle of exhausted refugees being tear-gassed and held in metal pens in the summer of 2015 drew international attention to the nature of the Hungarian state. Under prime minister Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz, Hungary’s southern borders have been militarised, the Constitution rewritten, the Constitutional Court weakened, welfare turned to forced workfare. This article examines how, despite being part of the EU, substantive democracy is being undermined in Hungary. Under Orbán’s utilisation of the ’Christian-national idea’, with its anti-Semitic undertones, Christianity is hitched to the nativist cause, rallying popular views against refugees, the Roma and the ‘indolent’ poor.