How Hungary made it to the world map

 "Hungary is a small country." This was the knowledge we grew up with, the awareness that we would never matter in world politics, that our events would not make the headlines, that foreigners could not even situate the country on the map, let alone know its capital, so in the 1980s Cliff Richard started his Budapest concert by saying "I'm happy to be here in Bucharest." All this in spite of the fact, we complained, that Hungary had once been a strong country, one of the leading kingdoms of Europe, although (this is often forgotten) in most of these periods it had been united with either Poland or Austria. (In the former case, Hungarian history books teach that Poland was part of Hungary, whereas Polish ones say Hungary was part of Poland.) And this made it even harder to bear our present unimportance. So we liked bragging about our glorious past, claiming that the church bells tolling at noon is a celebration of a victorious battle of the Hungarians against the Turks in 1456 (it isn't) and readily listing the famous Hungarian Nobel Prize and Oscar winners (who, with a couple of exceptions, were either born abroad of parents of Hungarian origin, or were forced to leave the country during one of the dictatorial regimes and made a career abroad, usually in the US). Nationalism knows no boundaries, and even non-right-wing Hungarians proudly declare that though the country is small, it and its people have played an important part in world history, politics, science and art. All the while, of course, secretly envying Romanians, who have at least one fellow countryman known all over the world: Count Dracula.

(Shutterstock images)

Happily, we no longer need to worry about that. Viktor Orbán's "illiberal democracy" (which is, in fact, a neoliberal autocracy) has created outrage worldwide, political analysts suspecting that "Orbán will make it Europe’s first rightwing dictatorship since the fall of Franco’s Spain in 1975." (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/07/what-is-it-about-orban-that-attracts-so-many-rightwing-sycophants?fbclid=IwAR1BF8gooB7mUY77SC0pBvJHTN7GJmmGttUHTmUMWr0-i9dSkT7Ld3pNMHk). Orbán wished to make Hungary known all over the world, and he did just that - it is widely known as a negative example of corruption, dictatorship, homo- and transphobia, racism and dire poverty. Known, though not popular, but at least we are now on the world map. No wonder our politicians have become so confident they believe they can dictate to the whole EU and pose, like Hungary did so many times in history, as the last defenders of European Christian civilization. (This title is shared with other nations like Romanians or Slovenians, who all believe they were the last frontier of Christianity during the troubled history of this part of Europe.) Now everyone interested in world politics knows where Hungary is, the name of its capital and Prime Minister. Isn't this what we wanted?

(Of course, there might be Romanians who are a bit upset that the only association their country raises in many people is that of a medieval vampire. But hey, at least Dracula is no longer around to suck your blood.)