In late 2017, I arrived in an icy Budapest to give a journalism workshop at the Central European University. One of the first things I noticed when I disembarked from the airport bus in the centre of the Hungarian capital was the posters. They seemed to be everywhere. From billboards and bus shelters a craggy, ageing face framed by a thin smile and an aquiline nose looked down. I recognised it instantly as the CEU’s Hungarian-born founder George Soros. Next to the image was a line of text: “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.”
This propaganda drive cost the Hungarian government almost €20 million. For Viktor Orbán, it was small change in his almost decade-long campaign to portray George Soros as the number one enemy of the Hungarian people. Its success has inspired far-right leaders and activists around the world.
Orbán, a well-built man with the broad shoulders of a weightlifter, has revelled in his status as Europe’s most successful nationalist demagogue. As Brussels looks askance, Orbán has built barbed wire fences to repel immigrants. Laws have been introduced to protect ‘family values’: marriage is defined as solely between a man and a woman; human life begins at the moment of conception; large families get mortgage breaks; there are tax incentives for stay-at-home mums. Hungary’s media and civil society are tightly controlled. Many of the institutions that Soros funded – including the Central European University – have effectively been forced out of the country. (Soros’s philanthropic organisations are also among openDemocracy’s funders.)
