Left: 2 government posters below and one extreme right Jobbik poster above, Upper Middle: A government poster, Lower middle: a government poster partly torn down, Right: A sticker by the satirical “two-tailed dog party”, mocking the government campaign.To this day, Hungarian parents in the countryside tell their children the cruel tale that in every well there waits an evil frog that will lure any child into darkness that dares to look down. The idea behind the story is simple: children should be frightened in order to stay away from wells and not fall in.
For centuries, everywhere, dark fairy-tales have been used to condition kids not to get lost in the dark, talk to strangers or disobey their parents. They usually follow the same logic by constructing a dark and evil world outside the confines of one’s own home so children behave and accept the conditions of their community, especially the ones of their parents, not daring to question them.
These days, scaring children to belief in a dark and dangerous world may be regarded as bad parenting. This does not stop the Hungarian government to use the same logic into scaring its own citizens of a dangerous and evil world to make them accept the more than problematic domestic status quo.
