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This photo of the Hungarian Parliament is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s national‑conservative ruling party, has over more than fifteen years established a political order in which culture, media and education form a single system. This system does more than support Hungarian artists or preserve heritage. Its primary task is to fix the meaning of “Hungarian” and to turn that meaning into a tool of governance. The image promoted is Christian, heteronormative and patriarchal, with a clear distinction between loyal citizens and those depicted as internal adversaries.
In practical terms, theatres, museums, film funds and universities are drawn into a national storyline with little space for doubt or dissent. Leaderships are replaced, repertoires rewritten and funding redirected so that familiar themes and figures keep returning. The historical record is smoothed out. Liberal traditions and critical currents are recast as alien intrusions. Artists who question national heroes or centre marginalised groups do not always face formal censorship, but they lose stages, grants and attention. Over time, their distance from mainstream audiences grows, and caution becomes routine.
The media are woven into the same design. State broadcasters and major private outlets are folded into networks that act in concert. The boundaries between news, political communication and cultural coverage become less distinct. Cultural journalism is pulled towards confirmation of the government’s narrative. A premiere is presented as evidence of strength and continuity; a controversial work is framed as a sign of moral decay. Cultural policy acquires a function that goes far beyond budgeting. Through the way institutions are structured and presented, the authorities mark out who has the practical ability to shape public understanding.
Fidesz’s cultural model
Three features stand out in Fidesz’s cultural model. The first is the link between culture, religion and history. Public funding is expected to secure a particular account of Hungary as both vulnerable and chosen. A good citizen is someone who knows and affirms this account. Art that introduces doubt, foregrounds wrongdoing or gives space to minorities rapidly encounters accusations of being “anti‑Hungarian”, even when it grows directly from Hungarian experience.
The second feature is the instrumental use of institutions. Directors and board members are selected with political reliability in mind alongside formal qualifications. When loyalty governs careers, institutions begin to see themselves differently. A museum becomes a showcase for an approved canon rather than a space for open inquiry. A theatre company has less room for experiment when every new production must be weighed against the current political climate.
The third feature concerns women and queer communities. Family policy and child protection serve as the language used to justify laws and campaigns that narrow rights and visibility. Pride marches are depicted as provocations from abroad, not as expressions of lives already present in Hungarian towns and neighbourhoods. Art that portrays queer experience or works with feminist analysis occupies a double position. It challenges accepted morals and official hierarchies at the same time. Fidesz has turned that double position into a resource. Queer lives and feminist language are presented as emblematic threats whenever the government wishes to dramatise a civilisational struggle.
TISZA’s challenge to the system of control
TISZA, the centrist‑conservative party that won the recent election in Hungary, formally called the Respect and Freedom Party and led by lawyer and former Fidesz insider Péter Magyar, approaches the problem from a different angle. Rather than proposing a new national canon, it focuses on the system of control that gives Fidesz’s cultural policy its reach. It raises questions about media ownership and regulation, about the state of the judiciary and about how institutions are governed and financed. Aesthetic disputes recede. The central issues become who commissions and cancels work, who sets the terms of public visibility and who decides which leaderships are secure.
The media occupy a central place in this critique. TISZA describes the current media landscape as a deliberately constructed structure in which state and private outlets operate under the same political horizon. Channels with the largest audiences carry a narrow range of voices. Critical cultural journalism struggles to find room. A play that never appears in reviews or discussions has little impact beyond the walls of the theatre. A book that receives no attention on air risks disappearing from public memory. When TISZA promises to address media concentration and reinforce editorial independence, these realities form part of the backdrop.
Relations with the European Union and with rule‑of‑law standards form another line of argument. TISZA points to frozen funds and court cases as evidence of a course that has taken Hungary away from common norms. Cultural and academic institutions are part of this picture. A renewed commitment to European standards would alter the way universities, academies, museums and art schools can argue for their autonomy. Reference to external legal obligations can carry a different weight from appeals to domestic preference.
A third focus lies on governance within institutions. TISZA articulates frustration with appointments that appear to be rewards for loyalty rather than outcomes of open competition. The party calls for clear criteria, transparent procedures and rules that can be checked and defended. The language is administrative, yet the consequences are felt in concrete choices. A museum that expects to be judged on its professional record will plan exhibitions differently from one that expects judgement based on political usefulness. A theatre that treats its board as a guardian of artistic and financial integrity can take different risks from one that reads the board as an arm of a ministry.
HVG’s reading of TISZA’s cultural programme
HVG, Hungary’s leading independent weekly for politics and economics, identifies the cultural chapter of TISZA’s programme as one of its weakest parts. The document is short and cautious. It looks more like a plan for undoing Fidesz’s most aggressive cultural measures than a coherent vision for a different cultural landscape. Much of the wording could have appeared in the late 2000s; the programme points back towards an earlier normality rather than forward towards a clear project.
The criticism concentrates on the lack of structural proposals. There is little about how institutions should be governed, how arm’s‑length relations should be secured, or how power should be divided between state, municipalities and independent actors. HVG hears an implicit belief that professionals will find a fair balance once the heaviest political pressures are removed. The objection is that the field is already fragmented and marked by years of politicisation. Without clear criteria for legitimacy and representation, old conflicts risk reappearing inside new bodies such as funding councils, programme boards and appointment committees, for example in the National Film Institute or the National Cultural Fund.
HVG thus draws a picture of a party that attacks instruments of control but hesitates to redesign the architecture itself. For the cultural field, the prospect of a looser grip is real, but the shape of a new settlement remains uncertain.
Women, queer lives and participation
Within this structural critique, certain figures and initiatives point towards a broader re‑definition of priorities. Kriszta Bódis, an author and documentary film‑maker who has become one of TISZA’s most prominent candidates on social and equality issues, is one such figure. She has worked for many years in some of the most precarious communities in Hungary, among poor women, Roma families and people living on the edges of formal systems. That experience informs a social policy language that TISZA has adopted.
In Bódis’s account, the state should create conditions for real opportunities, basic security and functioning local communities rather than enforce a single approved pattern of life. Women’s stories become evidence of how the system actually operates. Conferences and public meetings linked to TISZA bring together activists, professionals and women with lived experience to discuss domestic violence, pay gaps, under‑representation and isolation. None of this is labelled as cultural policy, yet these factors determine who has the time, the money and the confidence to take part in cultural life.
On questions relating to queer communities, TISZA’s position is less fully spelled out. The party has not produced a detailed LGBTQI platform. At the same time, both Magyar and Bódis have said that the state should not interfere in identities or intimate life when laws are respected and others are not harmed. That stance keeps a clear distance from Fidesz’s rhetoric, but the practical limits will only become visible through concrete decisions in schools, media and publicly funded institutions. Artists working with themes of gender and sexuality will read those decisions closely.
Implications for artistic freedom
For those concerned with artistic freedom, TISZA’s project suggests a shift in the way power may be exercised over the cultural field. A lighter grip on the media, firmer judicial guarantees and more room for institutional autonomy would alter the balance of risk and possibility for artists, curators and cultural workers. Fidesz has tried to make cultural production mirror and amplify a single vision of the nation. TISZA gestures towards a framework in which cultural institutions can regain some of their own agency, even as HVG reminds readers that the underlying design remains incomplete.
That incompleteness creates a space that other actors can try to occupy. Questions about distance between politics and art, about how leaders are chosen, about who sits on boards and funding bodies and about legal protection for vulnerable groups in the cultural sector belong in that space. Stages, galleries and festivals continue to operate while these questions still stand open. Many artists have learned to read small signals from the authorities as carefully as they read reviews. Whether TISZA ultimately changes the need for such reading will depend on how today’s promises are translated into rules, institutions and everyday practices.
Hungary has entered a new political phase.
After more than a decade of Fidesz shaping culture, media and education into a unified system of control, the newly elected TISZA party is taking a different path. Led by Péter Magyar, TISZA is not proposing a new cultural canon. Instead, it is targeting the mechanisms behind cultural power: media ownership, judicial independence and how institutions are governed and funded.
The key questions are no longer aesthetic but structural:
Who decides what gets produced?
Who controls visibility?
Who secures leadership positions?
This marks a shift from culture wars to institutional reform, but whether this is enough to reshape Hungary’s cultural landscape remains an open question.
#Hungary #Politics #MediaFreedom #CulturalPolicy #Democracy #RuleOfLaw #Europe #TISZA #Fidesz
References:
Fidesz – Wikipedia. Overview of party history, ideological profile and Viktor Orbán’s concept of “illiberal democracy”.
Scenekunst.no, “Hungarian artists under political double pressure”. Analysis of pressures on theatres, independent performing arts and cultural institutions in Hungary.
Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift, “A challenge for the West”. Interview with Péter Inkei on theatre legislation, institutional structures in Budapest and consequences for independent stages.
Samtiden, “A fateful election in Hungary: ‘Orbán has everything to lose’”. Analysis of the Orbán system, erosion of the rule of law and the electoral challenge from Magyar/TISZA.
Civita, “Hungary: The art of undermining democracy”. Discussion of cultural policy as part of an illiberal political project.
Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift, “A challenge for the West”. Péter Inkei on how theatre law reforms removed the 10 per cent guarantee for the independent sector, reduced the number of municipal theatres and transferred power to the state and Fidesz-loyal leadership.
“Tisza Party” – Wikipedia. Overview of party identity, centre-right profile, pro-European stance, rule of law and anti-corruption agenda, and Péter Magyar’s role.
ABC Nyheter, “The man who could break Orbán has an island in the Oslofjord”. Norwegian profile of Péter Magyar and the rise of TISZA.
EUobserver, “Who is Péter Magyar – the ex-regime insider who crushed Orbán?”. International profile covering his background in Fidesz, break with the regime and rule of law agenda.
Cineverse Magazine, “Péter Magyar victory signals reset for Hungary’s EU ties and media reforms”. Coverage of the election outcome, reform agenda, press freedom and broader cultural and media commitments.
ResFutura, “Loud or effective? Fidesz and TISZA in a digital battle for Hungary”. Analysis of TISZA’s communication strategy against Fidesz.
ELTE Politikatudomány, “Polarising transition? Opposition strategies and the rise of Péter Magyar”. Academic analysis of TISZA’s strategy and Magyar’s political role.
TISZA official website (magyartisza.hu). Party programme, including focus on women’s issues and positioning as a rule-of-law reform party.
HVG, “Tisza’s cultural programme: restoration without vision”. Critical analysis describing the programme as defensive and lacking structural innovation.
HVG, “A state that serves rather than rules – key promises of Tisza’s electoral programme”. Overview of the full programme, including media, rule of law and institutional reforms.
“YouTube”, “TISZA Programme 31: Free culture, supported art”. Presentation of the cultural chapter, including commitments to depoliticise funding bodies and introduce professionally based governance structures.
Hungarian Observer (Substack), “Tisza’s plan for a functioning and humane Hungary”. Summary of key elements of TISZA’s programme, including cultural and media policy.
Articles and interviews with Kriszta Bódis in Telex, 24.hu, Népszava and Blogászat. Coverage of her role within TISZA, work with Roma women and marginalised communities, and her emphasis on opportunity, local empowerment and non-interference in identity.
Daily News Hungary, “Tisza party holds first women’s conference”. Report on themes, participants and Péter Magyar’s rhetoric regarding women’s position over the past fifteen years.
QX, “After Tisza’s victory in Hungary: what we know about the party’s position on LGBTQI issues”. Overview of TISZA’s cautious but more inclusive stance compared to Fidesz.
Deutsche Welle (DW News, YouTube interview with Péter Magyar). Discussion of a “live and let live” approach and rejection of state moralising.
NPR and Artnet. Reports on the systematic restriction of artistic freedom under Orbán, particularly affecting queer artists and institutions.
Bruegel, “Hungary’s new beginning – under tight fiscal constraints”. Analysis of rule of law issues, EU funding and institutional implications.
Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, Hungary country profile. Assessment of media concentration, KESMA and press freedom risks.
Civicus Monitor, “NGOs take legal action against the Sovereignty Protection Act”. Examination of legislation targeting NGOs as part of Hungary’s illiberal system.
