NATIONS AND J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N AS

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NATIONALISM
FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY
A N D N AT I O N A L I S M

Nations and Nationalism 22 (1), 2016, 165–185.

DOI: 10.1111/nana.12126

Civil society, radicalism and the

rediscovery of mythic nationalism
VIRÁG MOLNÁR
Department of Sociology, The New School for Social Research,
New York, USA

ABSTRACT. The article argues that contrary to the widely held view that traces the
recent rise of illiberalism in Hungary and Eastern Europe to a weak civil society, the
past decade has witnessed a surge of civil society activism. But rather than working
exclusively towards strengthening and complementing liberal political institutions, civil
society has also provided fertile soil to the spread of right-wing populism, radicalism
and xenophobia. The analysis suggests that civil society organisations have in fact
played an important role in the right-wing radicalisation of contemporary Hungarian
politics. Conservative civic groups have been instrumental in reinvigorating the sym-
bolic vocabulary of a mythic nationalism that was widespread at the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth century as well as in the 1930s. The resurrection of nationalist,
irredentist and anti-Semitic symbols and paraphernalia (e.g. greater Hungary car stick-
ers) has been a major vehicle for increasing the public visibility and political impact of
these groups. The article shows through case studies of specific organisations how this
seemingly anachronistic symbolic repertoire has found new resonance in contemporary
Hungarian public life.

KEYWORDS: civil society, Hungary, radical nationalism, right-wing populism

Introduction

The rise of the radical right in Hungary first became evident during the June
2009 European parliamentary elections in which the far-right political party,
Jobbik (‘Movement for a Better Hungary’), captured nearly fifteen per cent of
the country’s vote. The results sent shockwaves across the chattering classes of
Hungary as well as Europe. In general, voters in 2009 steered to the right
throughout Europe, backing center-right ruling parties and showing consid-
erable support for far-right and anti-immigrant groups in Austria, Denmark,
Hungary, the Netherlands, the UK and Slovakia. These developments might
even strike us as somewhat counterintuitive in the aftermath of a global
financial crisis that arguably should have pushed voters to the left. But the
Hungarian results seemed particularly troubling. Jobbik, which has been reg-
istered as a political party only since 2003 and at the time of the elections had
no seats in the Hungarian national parliament, emerged as the third largest
political force in Hungary, receiving a mere 2.5 per cent fewer votes than the

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166 Virág Molnár

then governing Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP).1 Even with the historically
low turnout and general lack of voter interest in European elections, this was
an outcome that had to be taken seriously. Moreover, this trend has been
reinforced in the Hungarian general elections of 2010 and 2014 and the 2014
European parliamentary elections.2
Hungary had virtually disappeared from Western media and academic
discourse after its entry into the European Union (EU) in 2004 but was
suddenly back with a vengeance following the 2009 European elections.
Western news media were in no way sparing in their sensationalist coverage of
the unexpected shift to the right. British sources talked about long-suppressed
racial prejudices unleashed by the collapse of communism (Orszag-Land 2009)
while the prestigious German weekly, Die Zeit, depicted Hungary as a country
where right-wing extremists march around in uniforms under neo-Nazi flags,
attacking Gypsies, Jews and immigrants on a regular basis (Schmidt-Häuer
2009). Academic commentators were no less heavy-handed in their assessment
of the rise of political populism in the region. The well-known French historian
and political theorist, Jacques Rupnik, accused Central and Eastern European
(CEE) countries of ‘backsliding’ from the liberal democratic project. Rupnik
argues that even though CEE countries’ achievement of EU membership was
meant to signal the conclusion of the post-authoritarian transition process, it
has actually revealed that institutional convergence has proved insufficient in
re-democratising the post-socialist world. He offers a culturalist explanation,
tracing the setbacks to the failure of the democratic consolidation to capture
the ‘habits of the heart’ and thus transform civic culture – ‘without which’, he
argues, ‘the legitimacy and stability of democratic institutions will always
remain doubtful’ (Rupnik 2007: 19).
The growing influence of the radical right in Central and Eastern Europe is
indeed truly alarming. Within this context, it is especially puzzling how
Hungary, initially probably the most staunchly liberal of all the post-socialist
transition countries, has come to spearhead a right-wing populist backlash. I
suggest that by shifting the focus from political parties and formal democratic
institutions to broader patterns of political participation in the realm of soci-
etal self-organisation, the so-called ‘third domain’, or civil society, we can gain
important sociological insights into these developments. In the case of post-
socialist Eastern Europe, political scientists and analysts have often pointed to
the existence of a weak civil society – a legacy of nearly half a century of
communist rule – as an important reason for the continuing democracy deficit
of these countries, as evidenced also by Rupnik’s diagnosis cited earlier. This
article argues against this conventional wisdom, demonstrating that civil
society has been quite vibrant in the post-1989 period. But rather than working
exclusively towards strengthening and complementing liberal political institu-
tions, it has also provided fertile soil to the spread of right-wing populism,
radicalism and xenophobia. In fact, I contend that civil society organisations
have been instrumental in turning right-wing radicalism into a significant
political force. The following analysis draws primarily on the Hungarian

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Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 167

experience because the populist backlash has been especially deep-seated in

this country, producing the most successful far-right parliamentary party in
the region. But the paper also carries general implications for understanding
the recent rise of radical populism across Central and Eastern Europe, under-
scoring that 20 years after the fall of communism, post-socialist countries have
reached yet another turning point that few would have anticipated at the time
of the Velvet Revolutions.

The civil society and democracy link

Civil society is a widely used but analytically somewhat slippery term (see
Emirbayer and Sheller 1999; Mayr 2013). Most broadly defined, it denotes
processes of societal self-organisation (Hall 1998). It is seen as constitutive of
democracy, and its health is considered vital to ensuring the legitimacy of
democratic political institutions (Habermas 1989; Putnam et al. 1993). Civic
associations, popular movements and various other organised publics are
understood to make up a relatively autonomous public sphere that mediates
modern social life between the state and the market as well as between the
state and individuals. Civil society is thus conceptualised as a social and
communicative space in which democratic practices and values evolve in the
context of reasoned deliberation (Berezin 1997a; Calhoun 1992; Habermas
1989). In the case of political transitions from authoritarianism to democ-
racy, civil society has been identified as essential both in mounting an initial
challenge to authoritarian rule (e.g. in Eastern Europe or South Africa)
as well as in ensuring that formal democracy is fully translated into substan-
tive democracy in the post-authoritarian democratisation process (Heller
2007).
But precisely how civil society contributes to democracy has been the
subject of ongoing debate with some positions more dominant than others but
with no signs of an emerging consensus. In an essay on post-transition South
Africa, the political sociologist Patrick Heller (2007) distinguished three theo-
retical strands that conceptualise the nature of the link between civil society
and democracy, especially in a post-transition context. In the following, I use
this basic classification scheme as a starting point but rework and extend its
categories in my analysis.
The first, liberal perspective sees civic associations as intrinsically benefi-
cial for democracy and society (Cohen and Arato 1992; Hall 1998; Putnam
et al. 1993). According to this view, societal self-organisation ‘allows for
co-operation with the state whilst enabling individuation’ (Hall 1998: 32).
Civil society organisations generally pursue progressive causes and constitute
a field of voluntary collective action and civic associationalism, providing
a healthy balance to social life between state and market control. In
many ways, and despite some gradually growing criticism, the liberal per-
spective remains the dominant understanding of the impact of civil society
on democracy.

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168 Virág Molnár

The second perspective grows out of the social movement literature, arguing
that in the post-authoritarian period, civil society contracts in response to the
emergence of formal democratic institutions and the ‘professionalisation’ of
political activity (Hipsher 1998). This perspective underscores the importance
of pre-transition civil society in effectively mobilising support in service of the
regime change. But it contends that as the transition to democracy opens up new
incentives and formal channels to engage the state, grassroots civic participa-
tion progressively wanes. This position in fact perfectly dovetails with Jacques
Rupnik’s diagnosis of the reasons behind the populist backlash in Central and
Eastern Europe, as he states that the democratic setbacks arise from the fact that
constitutionalism (and economic liberalisation) took precedence over citizen-
ship and participation (Rupnik 2007: 19). At the same time, this argument
closely resonates with the more general Gramscian interpretation that sees civil
society as organised implicitly by the state and ruled by consent through
hegemony (Gramsci 1971). Namely, political power in post-transition countries
becomes consolidated and centralised not only in the state apparatus but is also
diffused more broadly across society through the media, religious and cultural
organisations, trade unions and kinship networks, narrowing the gap between
‘political society’ and ‘civil society’.
The third perspective includes a group of scholars who voice scepticism
about the liberal view that associational life is, by default, beneficial for
democracy (Armony 2004). Key proponents of this minority approach focus
primarily on inter-war Europe and show through a series of detailed historical
case studies how a vibrant associational life contributed decisively to the rise of
fascism in Germany, Hungary and Italy. Sheri Berman (1997), for instance,
argues that a strong civil society in Weimar, Germany, which arose from
Germans’ frustrations with the repeated breakdowns of political parties and
the national government, facilitated Hitler’s ascent to power. Similarly, Dylan
Riley (2005, 2010) compares Italy with Spain and Romania to show that
strong civic associations in north-central Italy provided crucial organisational
resources to the fascist movement. His work extends earlier research that
shows how pre-existing civic associations were co-opted by Mussolini’s fascist
regime (Berezin 1997b). For Hungary, the historian Mária Kovács (1994)
describes how the professional and civic associations of the classic liberal free
professions (doctors, engineers, lawyers) became a hotbed for illiberal ideas
during the 1930s, revealing that the right-wing radicalism of civil society
actually surpassed the democratic deficit of inter-war parliamentary politics.
These studies all critique neo-Tocquevillean theories and Robert Putnam’s
social capital thesis by demonstrating that under conditions of weak political
institutionalisation, high levels of associationalism can actually lead to social
fragmentation, political radicalisation and the triumph of illiberal politics.
Unsurprisingly, my research falls in line with the sceptical approach. But I
also argue that the weakness of political institutions is not the only condition
under which civil society can contribute to undermining the democratic
qualities of a political regime. The case of right-wing radical populism3 in

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Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 169

contemporary Hungary and Eastern Europe is interesting because its emer-

gence takes place in a period of highly stable democratic political institutions.
Europe in the 1930s still suffered from the devastation of the war, from the
effects of sweeping peace treaties that radically redrew national borders and
triggered the migration of large populations, not to mention the botched
communist revolutions, and from the Great Depression that together
accounted for a feeble and volatile political situation across the continent. But
the political transitions of 1989 were unique in their peacefulness and their
meticulous attention to democratic constitutionalism. Moreover, the nearly
unconditional commitment to EU membership created an external monitoring
process that was meant to ensure the deepening of post-authoritarian democ-
ratisation while reintegrating the CEE region into a prosperous and stable
Europe. In other words, the post-1989 political context could not have been
more markedly different from that of the 1930s with respect to the solidity of
democratic political institutions.
The growing appeal of right-wing populism and its diffusion via civil society
have to do with a more nuanced crisis of political legitimacy in post-socialist
CEE that began to transpire around the turn of the millennium and has been
growing in vigor ever since, gaining fresh impetus in the aftermath of the 2008
financial crisis. This political legitimacy crisis feeds on a re-evaluation of the
transition as inherently flawed, reflecting merely a political compromise
between the pre-1989 democratic opposition and the ex-communist elite. The
former was allowed to implement the political project of democratic liberali-
sation while the latter was allowed to benefit from radical economic liberali-
sation, convert its political privileges into economic capital and be spared from
lustration.4 This largely explains why contemporary right-wing populist rheto-
ric revolves around three leitmotifs: anti-communism, anti-corruption and
anti-capitalism.5

Civil society and everyday nationalism

Broadening the definition of civil society to include ‘uncivil’ publics that can
promote non-democratic and illiberal politics helps to open up conceptual
space in the civil society literature in two important ways. First, it allows for a
better understanding of the intricate connections between nationalism and the
public sphere (Stamatov 2000). There is growing empirical research in a variety
of geopolitical contexts that spotlights the importance of this relationship.
Peter Stamatov (2000), for instance, draws attention to the significance of
ethnonational mobilisation in reconstituting the public sphere in post-
communist Bulgaria through the emerging coalition of local elites and popular
groups and the creation of a new political language. In a related vein, Chris
Hann (1998) has demonstrated how ideas of democracy and civil society were
exploited by nationalist organisations during the post-1989 transition. But
national mobilisation in the public sphere is not confined to Eastern Europe.

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170 Virág Molnár

In Spain, civic associations contributed significantly to the spread of Basque

terrorism (Laitin 1995).
There is mounting evidence though that since the turn of the millennium, in
many post-socialist countries and in Hungary in particular, civil society has
emerged as the main arena in which the symbolic repertoire of a new nation-
alism is articulated (Feischmidt et al. 2014; Trencsényi 2014). As the cultural
anthropologist Margit Feischmidt (2014) suggests, it is not the state that plays
the decisive role in recasting Hungarian nationalism but civic actors, far-right
political groups and their media outlets backed by a vigorous industry that has
turned nationalist identity politics into a profitable business. In the case of
Hungary, this is actually not a historical singularity because in the Reform era
and in the second half of the nineteenth century, civic associations (reading
clubs, ballroom societies, private literary salons, etc.) also played a crucial part
in Hungarian independence efforts and the nation-state building project
(Nemes 2001, 2005).
Second, the more expansive definition draws attention to civil society as an
important domain in which the construction of everyday nationhood (Brubaker
et al. 2006; Edensor 2002; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008) can be empirically
captured. Civil society offers key insights into the formation of political cul-
ture(s) understood as ‘the matrix of meanings embodied in expressive symbols,
practices, and beliefs that constitute ordinary politics in a bounded collectivity’
(Berezin 1997a: 364, see also Goldfarb 2012). Thereby, the empirically
grounded study of civil society can serve as an analytical strategy to address the
conceptual shift in nationalism research that increasingly locates the national in
everyday practices and in the realm of popular culture rather than exclusively in
elite and official discourses (Brubaker et al. 2006; Edensor 2004; Feischmidt
et al. 2014; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Kalb and Halmai 2011). The research
agenda of everyday nationhood focuses especially on four ways through which
the nation is produced and reproduced in everyday life: ‘talking the nation’ (i.e.
understanding the discursive construction of the nation through routine talk in
interaction); ‘choosing the nation’; ‘performing the nation’; and ‘consuming the
nation’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 537). In this paper, I show that civic
associations provide an excellent organisational context where these processes
and practices can be empirically explored.
Moreover, by triangulating civil society, everyday nationalism and politi-
cal culture, I will approach contemporary right-wing radicalism not as a
codified political ideology but as a more fluid subculture where expressive
symbols, material objects, rituals, everyday consumption and lifestyle pat-
terns are essential carriers of political convictions and group membership.
But before turning to a closer examination of the landscape of radical
nationalist civic associations, I would like to offer some historical back-
ground to how the boundaries between political and civil society – or, in
other words, the state and the public sphere – have been reconfigured in the
wake of a mounting political legitimacy crisis around the reassessment of the
transition.

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Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 171

Civil society and the crisis of political legitimacy in post-millennium Hungary

There are two important turning points in capturing the role of civil society in
the rise of right-wing radicalism in Hungary, which coincided with the general
parliamentary elections of 2002 and 2006. While many commentators attribute
the soaring popularity of illiberal politics to the most recent economic crisis
and the near complete financial meltdown of the Hungarian state in the fall of
2009, the re-emergence of right-wing radicalism in fact goes back as far as the
turn of the millennium. While the economic crisis has clearly contributed to
the appeal of political radicalism, it was not its main trigger. By the arrival of
the Great Recession, right-wing radicalism was already in full swing; it was a
significant, though not yet a parliamentary, political force.
In 2002, the conservative Fidesz (Young Democrats) lost the parliamentary
elections to the Socialists while also failing to force the resignation of the new
Socialist prime minister who became embroiled in a political scandal about his
past as a communist informant shortly after his inauguration. Confronted
with these electoral defeats, Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz, decided to
return politics to the masses. He founded the so-called Civic Circles (Polgári
Körök) movement, encouraging his political supporters to set up local chap-
ters to continue regular informal discussions about the future of Hungary,
claiming that such honest dialogue premised on true political representation
will become obsolete in the parliament, now that the ex-communists had
returned to power.
Civic Circles quickly cropped up across the country and were set up even
among the Hungarian diaspora in the United States. While vigorous at the
beginning, the activism of Civic Circles faded over the next couple of years.
Orbán’s initiative, nevertheless, reminded Hungarians of one of the important
lessons of 1989, namely that political activity does not have to be confined
to the parliament. Jobbik, which was founded in 1999 as a youth organisation
of right-wing Christian university students, also became solidified in this
process of ‘rediscovering’ civic associationalism sparked by the Civic Circles
movement.
Fidesz’s attempt to start the Civic Circles network to extend the reach of
politics beyond the parliament offers two important lessons for understanding
the changing relationship between parliamentary politics and civil society in
post-1989 Hungary. First, despite gradually fizzling out, the initiative was a
reminder of the potential of civil society as a domain of political and social
activism. Second, it showed that civic associations that are used merely as
fodder for political parties and treated instrumentally to extend their political
influence would not be viable over the long run. Civic Circles quickly became
empty vessels for Fidesz’s political propaganda and dwindled. However, many
civic organisations that were founded as a result of this effort to redraw the
boundaries of the political but were not the product of Fidesz’s post-election
astroturfing strategy have actually continued to grow in earnest (see also
Trencsényi 2014). It is therefore important to underscore that Jobbik emerged

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172 Virág Molnár

separately from and remained independent of the Fidesz-led Civic Circles

movement, becoming a political party in 2003.
The second, and even more decisive, turning point came in 2006 after the
infamous speech of the re-elected Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány,
delivered at an internal Socialist Party event, was leaked to the media. The
speech revealed that the Socialists consistently lied about the state of the
Hungarian economy (most crucially, about the level of the budget deficit)
during the 2006 parliamentary election campaign.
The incident and the public’s reaction, which led to street riots in Budapest
during the fall of 2006, turned Hungary into a laughing stock of international
news media despite the severity of the situation. This was also probably the
first time that Hungary had made it into Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.
Foreign press coverage ruthlessly mocked the naiveté of Hungarians who were
seemingly unaware that politicians in parliamentary democracies also lied
through their teeth in order to get re-elected. But despite the obvious pathetic
overtones of the situation, the incident generated grave and irreversible con-
sequences for Hungarian political democracy. The Socialists’ desperate efforts
to repair the damage and the opposition’s counter-efforts to exploit it turned
political populism and demagoguery into the dominant language of politics on
the left as much as on the right, setting the tone of Hungarian political culture
at large (Palonen 2009). As a result, Hungary was increasingly morphing into
a ‘populist democracy’; namely, a pluralist political system in which both the
party in office as well as the major opposition party are characterised by strong
populism (Pappas 2014).
The ensuing street riots in the fall of 2006, besides representing the all-time
nadir of post-1989 politics, proved to be crucial in facilitating the rise of the
radical right. On the one hand, the sheer incompetence of the police in handling
the riots as well as real and alleged incidents of police brutality against the
rioters further eroded the legitimacy of the Socialist government. It also
immediately revived the image of the police, all too familiar from the communist
era, as an instrument of political repression rather than as a guarantor of law
and order. On the other hand, and more importantly, the riots brought together
a number of disconnected radical civic groups that were hitherto largely
unaware of each other’s existence. The riots brought them visibility as well as
opportunity to connect with other like-minded loose groupings and organisa-
tions. Simultaneously, the riots revealed to Hungarians the existence of a wide
range of alternative publics openly embracing radical political ideas and inhab-
iting pockets of civil society that have been hidden from the reach of mainstream
media. In the following section, I try to introduce some of these organisations
and shed light on how they are linked to the radical right-wing party, Jobbik.

Civic associations: vehicles for radical nationalism

In Figure 1, I created a map that aims to visually summarise the field of radical
nationalist civic associations by the type of activity that determines the

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Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 173

Bookstores
Paraphernalia stores
Na!onal rock bands

Cultural heritage
Tourism organisa!ons
Product brands
Economic Media Cultural

Foreign currency Educa!onal

debtor groups organisa!ons

Women’s organisa!ons
Legal
Poli!cal organisa!ons Sports and recrea!onal Social
organisa!ons
Trade unions Youth organisa!ons
Internet gaming
communi!es

Paramilitary groups

Figure 1. Map of radical nationalist civic associations by type of activity.

dominant character of these organisations. Table A1 in the Appendix contains

a comprehensive list of radical right-wing civic associations recently active in
Hungary that provided the raw data for the diagram in Figure 1. Undoubt-
edly, most examined organisations mix economic,6 social, cultural and politi-
cal concerns in their activities, but the relative weight of these dimensions
varies across organisations. The diagram tries to classify them according their
most salient trait.
As several scholars (Feischmidt 2014; Trencsényi 2014) have suggested,
radical nationalist groups have been very adept at using online and social
media to create an alternative public sphere to share and disseminate their
ideas and activities. I used this insight in my empirical research to reconstruct
the landscape of radical civic activism and compile the list in Table A1. I
started with some well-known groups (Goyim riders, Kuruc.info, national
rock bands) and quickly discovered that their websites nearly always include a
collection of links to other like-minded organisations. These are often desig-
nated as ‘links to our friends’ websites’ or ‘links to our supporters’, and it was

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174 Virág Molnár

chiefly by tracing these links that I assembled Table A1.7 I do not claim the list
to be exhaustive, but it provides a comprehensive sampling of existing organi-
sations to illustrate the wide range of social and cultural activities they pursue.
They include cultural associations that promote the preservation and cultiva-
tion of Hungarian ‘traditions’ such as the learning of the Hungarian Runic
alphabet that is said to be a rune-like script used in Transylvania in the ninth
century; baranta, a Hungarian martial arts; pre-Christian pagan religious
practices (Hubbes 2011); or the historic preservation of traditional Transylva-
nian village and religious architecture. There are also several sports organisa-
tions, among them a women’s handball team, a motorcycle association and the
fan club of one of the oldest and most iconic Hungarian soccer teams
(Ferencváros). The rock bands listed in the table represent a peculiar genre of
political rock labeled ‘national rock’.
These diverse groups draw on the symbolic imagery of Hungarians’ historic
independence struggles against Ottoman occupation in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth century and later against Habsburg rule; the loss of Transylvania
(and parts of Northern and Southern Hungary) after World War I; as well as
Hungarian popular legends about Hungarian settlers from the time of the
Hungarian Conquest at the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries. They blend
this medley of historical motifs into a contemporary anti-capitalist rhetoric in
which Hungarian independence is lost, for instance, to foreign multinational
corporations and the EU.
There are numerous bookstores that sell nationalist and chauvinist litera-
ture, CDs of ‘national rock’ bands and radical paraphernalia such as car
stickers in the shape of pre-Trianon (i.e. pre-1920) Hungary, considered an
obvious irredentist symbol, or pins and statutes of the turul, a huge falcon-like
bird that serves as the messenger of god in Hungarian origin myths. Similarly,
nearly every tattoo salon in Hungary today has a special category for these
mythic nationalist motifs that can include images of Greater Hungary, the
Holy Crown of St. Stephen, Runic calligraphy or flags with the controversial
red–white Árpád stripes (Sőrés 2011).8
While these material objects might seem simultaneously trivial and tacky,
they turn these symbols into props of everyday life, thereby domesticating and
gradually legitimating them. Materiality and ready visibility render these
symbols conspicuous signs that play a central role in the everyday performance
of group membership and cultural kinship both to insiders and outsiders
(Tavory 2010). Even a few years ago, it was rare and disturbing to see Greater
Hungary stickers on cars in lieu of the non-descript letter H stickers used to
designate Hungary, but by now they have become so widespread that everyone
just takes them for granted.
The book and paraphernalia stores also function as focal points in organ-
ising right-wing radical groups, as they regularly host readings and various
other events bringing together related civic associations and independent sym-
pathisers who might stumble on the right organisation for them. Right-wing
media sources, most of which are online news portals, are particularly

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Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 175

important because they play a similar role in unifying, modernising and dif-
fusing radical cultural and political discourse.
Dominant themes shared by these organisations echo the subjects of mythi-
cal nationalism that was invented and loosely codified in the process of
nineteenth-century nation-state formation, and then complemented with
motifs derived from the national trauma of the Treaty of Trianon rather than
any explicit Nazi or neo-Nazi ideology (for a critical summary, see Lőrincz
2010). These shared themes are essential because they connect these organisa-
tions into a larger and fairly cohesive network while offering anchors of
commonality that strengthen the cultural bond among members. The rel-
evance of mythical nationalism is also emphasised in the case of other CEE
countries, especially in Poland (Zubrzycki 2011, 2013).
Some of these civic organisations have direct links to Jobbik, the right-wing
radical party. For instance, the largest bookstore is owned by a prominent
member of the party. Similarly, the Hungarian Guard, the most profiled and
demonised organisation on the list, is a uniformed paramilitary formation that
was founded by Jobbik’s president. Some associations (e.g. an ‘independent’
police trade union) have formed official alliances with Jobbik while most
remain completely independent, beyond sharing intellectual kinship and fre-
quenting each other’s events. National rock bands, for instance, often perform
at Jobbik gatherings (Feischmidt and Pulay 2014).
In the following sections, I zoom in on three examples from the list of
organisations in Table A1, presenting them as case studies that show how
these civic associations are both the source and collective product of contem-
porary right-wing radicalism. In general, there is little empirical research on
these right-wing civic organisations. The handful of existing studies usually
focus on single cases, principally on national rock bands, online news media
and tourism (Feischmidt and Pulay 2014; Glózer 2014; Ilyés 2014; Zsuppán
2006). Therefore, I selected cases that reflect the range and diversity of the
organisations in this field including social, economic, political and cultural
associations.

Goyim riders
The first organisation is called the Gój Motoros Egyesület, the ‘Goyim Motor-
cycle Association’, and its members are known as the ‘Goyim riders’. This
organisation aptly reflects the complex, often perplexing and counterintuitive
symbolic imagery that characterises these radical associations. It also high-
lights the covert and highly coded nature of the racist and chauvinist rhetoric
they embrace. The group was officially registered as a non-profit civic asso-
ciation in 2006 but has existed informally at least since 2000. The association’s
stated goal is ‘to protect Hungarian national and Christian ideas and values,
cultivate national traditions, and organise motorcycle tours to visit historical
landmarks and commemorate key figures of Hungarian history’ (http://
www.gojmotorosok.hu/index.php?page=about).

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176 Virág Molnár

The very name of the organisation has been the subject of significant
controversy. It spawned, for instance, a series of philological essays in the
premier weekly of the Hungarian liberal literati, Élet és Irodalom [Life and
Literature], in which distinguished linguists debated whether the name implies
social and racial exclusion (Cifra 2008; Gecső 2008; Kálmán 2007). Goyim,
namely, is a Yiddish and Hebrew word, which denotes a non-Jewish person
and was commonly used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Hungar-
ian Jews to describe non-Jews. The linguistic debate revolved around trying to
decide whether this term that has been used to describe an out-group is neutral
or pejorative, especially in a context when a group turns the out-group defi-
nition into an in-group definition. Although the semantic incoherence of the
label is confusing even for linguistic experts, the use of the term goyim does
assume a high level of familiarity with Jewish culture in the Hungarian popu-
lation at large; otherwise, the intricate double entendre would not work.
In addition to igniting heated semantic disputes, Goyim riders have also
been involved in libel suits against journalists in the liberal media who openly
called them fascists in radio and TV interviews. They actually won the most
high-profile libel case, and the journalist was ordered to pay a fine for insulting
the Goyim riders.
Members of the association do not fit well the lumpenproletariat image of
right-wing radicals propagated by mainstream media. The motors and the
corresponding elaborate gear worn by members are costly and assume that
most of them are financially well-endowed. The honorary president of the
association is a relatively well-known sportsman, a former carriage driving
world champion and the owner (with his brother) of one of the largest super-
market chains in Hungary (CBA), which is the only Hungarian-owned
national grocery chain. The current editor-in-chief of Hungary’s second
largest public radio channel, MR2 Petőfi Rádió, was also a long-time member
of the organisation (some claim he actually still is). Other high-profile
members and supporters include famous rock singers of highly popular and
established rock bands as well as actors.
The group always denies accusations that it advocates anti-Semitism and
fascism, but it embraces racist and chauvinist views in more subtle ways.
Their logo (see http://www.gojmotorosok.hu) depicts a figure on a stylised
motorcycle against the backdrop of Greater Hungary (i.e. pre-World War I,
pre-Trianon Hungary), which is a ‘traditional’ marker of irredentism despite
the riders’ claim that they only use it as a token of solidarity with ethnic
Hungarians who live (and often suffer from cultural and social discrimina-
tion) in the regions that were taken away from Hungary in 1920. More
disturbingly, Goyim riders have organised motorcycle convoys to demon-
stratively cruise in small towns that have been the scene of high-profile
violent crimes and where rumours sprang up that the perpetrators might
have been Roma citizens. They have not attacked anybody but their pres-
ence unmistakably is meant to be a signal of intimidation to local Roma
populations. Goyim riders have thus been quite active in lending tangible

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 177

support to the ‘Gypsy-crime’ theory that has been invented and marketed by
radical right-wing media.

Kuruc.info : ‘Hungarian without bounds – a national radical news source’

The second example is Kuruc.info (https://kuruc.info/), an online news portal
that has been instrumental in creating an alternative public sphere
(Öffentlichkeit), a kind of right-wing radical subaltern sphere in virtual space.
Conventionally, such an organisation may not be considered a civic associa-
tion. By including this and similar online news groups in my list, I want to
emphasise not only the immense importance of the internet in providing
radical groups with an organisational platform, but also the fact that in a
digital age dominated by social networking, even news sources tend to func-
tion as communities. Kuruc.info, in particular, has seen and presented itself as
a ‘kind of resistance movement’. The past couple of years have seen a prolif-
eration of radical nationalist news portals, but Kuruc.info is one of the oldest
of such sites and remains among the most radical. It positions itself ‘right’ of
Jobbik though originally it had strong ties to the party, while another well-
known portal, Barikád, is increasingly considered the semi-official online news
organ of Jobbik (Glózer 2014).
The name, again, carries strong symbolic markers, as the word kuruc
denotes the rebels who fought an armed independence struggle against the
Habsburgs between 1671 and 1711. The kuruc have attained iconic status in
Hungarian collective memory and popular culture, emblematising the power
of small-scale guerrilla warfare against foreign oppressors. The news site was
registered on 30 December 2005 in the United States in Scottsdale, Arizona
and started operating in February 2006. The Hungarian diaspora is most
likely involved in the operation of the site, but the editors are Hungarians
based in Hungary. The content and style of reporting on the site are fla-
grantly racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist and anti-communist,
and often just simply primitive. The first time I had visited the site, I was
speechless at the fact that the views the site is replete with can be seen in
‘print’, enjoying a level of accessibility and exposure that was inconceivable
before. The main topical section headings include categories such as ‘anti-
Hungarianism’, ‘Gypsy-crime’, ‘Jewish crime’, ‘Economic news’ (where there
is more discussion of the economic crimes of ‘Jews’ and ‘communists’) and a
‘Humor’ section that regularly entertains the readers with racist Jewish and
Gypsy jokes.
But this is how the creators of the site see their peculiar brand of
communication:
The characteristic style, lingo, and ideas of the unboundedly Hungarian online news
portal, which has been emulated even by untalented imitators, constitute an integral
part of the Kuruc.info brand. This style is straightforward, yet not primitive; it is as
‘we speak at home in the kitchen’, yet elegant. And if necessary, we will not spare
a few stronger but fitting remarks. In particular, however, we operate with original

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
178 Virág Molnár

expressions, synonyms, small neologisms, and irony. We respect no taboos and no

censorship: we provide our readers with the naked truth (Juhász 2010).

They argue, for instance, that the reason they always emphasise the race of
people in the news is to compensate for the ‘hypocrisy’ of mainstream media
that never includes this information, not even in cases when it carries impor-
tant information: for instance, when certain types of crimes, as Kuruc.info
claims, are ‘clearly’ committed by the Roma.
The popularity of the site has grown exponentially since the 2006 fall riots
when the website identified with the rioters, calling them ‘revolutionaries’. In
2009, according to the web information company Alexa, Kuruc.info was the
fifty-first most visited Hungarian website and the third most visited Hungarian
news site. Kuruc.info and similar online news sources that have mushroomed
since 2006 have been principally responsible for inventing and diffusing the
idea of ‘Gypsy crime’, which blames the Roma minority for the deterioration
of public safety. This is not backed, however, by statistics, as Hungary remains
a country where violent crime is as low as in most Western European countries
(Glózer 2014; Stewart 2012). It was in large part due to the successful intro-
duction of the ‘Gypsy crime’ theme that the radical right has managed to
reinvigorate the increasingly old-fashioned and anachronistic radical right-
wing doctrine. Framing the effects of the increasing social and economic
marginalisation of the Roma as a public safety threat has helped to create a
vilified stereotype of the undeserving poor that has not really existed in
Hungary before (Feischmidt 2014). The media of the radical right realised that
the racialisation and criminalisation of poverty could function as a safety valve
for the profound and growing anomie that has plagued Hungarian society for
at least the past 10 years.
The Hungarian government and independent private individuals have made
repeated attempts to shut down the Kuruc.info site. They have lobbied the
internet service provider as well as the US government to remove the website
from cyberspace. There have been a few outages and the news site has switched
service providers a couple of times (sticking with US providers though), but in
general, the United States has been reluctant to intervene in the case, evoking
free speech rights protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Foreign-currency debtor organisations

In the wake of the global financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis, a
new set of civic organisations emerged on the Hungarian scene that have
attempted to mobilise and organise large segments of the Hungarian popula-
tion that fell victim to the rapid expansion of foreign-currency loans and the
sharp devaluation of the Hungarian local currency after 2008. The most visible
and active of these organisations listed in Table A1 also embrace a radical
populist rhetoric and symbolic imagery. This element draws attention to the
importance of the anti-capitalist theme in the repertoire of radical populism in

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 179

Hungary. It also highlights that the right-wing radical populist version of

anti-capitalist rhetoric, which mixes anti-austerity, anti-globalisation, anti-
colonialisation and anti-EU motifs, seems to have resonated more closely with
various Hungarian publics than a leftist, liberal, or even anarchist critique of
capitalism.
Foreign-currency loans are one of the chief causes behind Hungary’s sky-
rocketing external debt. Immediately prior to EU accession, Central and East
European countries embarked on liberalising capital movements. Rapid pri-
vatisation in the corporate and banking sector led to a large presence of
multinationals in Hungary that had easy access to international capital
markets. Local subsidiaries of Western European banks, funded at low costs
by their parent banks, began to aggressively market cheap mortgage loans to
Hungarian households denominated in foreign currency, primarily in Swiss
francs.
Cash-strapped Hungarian households, grossly underestimating the
exchange rate risk, began to indulge in foreign-currency loans, especially
mortgages, and quickly built up a large unhedged foreign-currency debt. The
foreign-currency debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio reached thirty
per cent by 2008 and foreign-currency debt amounted to nearly seventy per
cent of total household debt in Hungary (EEAG 2012). While other CEE
countries also introduced foreign-currency loans in the same period, the level
of indebtedness never reached the alarmingly high levels of Hungary and has
remained steadily around ten per cent of the GDP.9
The rude awakening of Hungarian households from this foreign-currency
binge came in 2008 as the global financial crises engulfed Hungary as well.
Between September 2008 and November 2011, Hungary’s local currency, the
forint, depreciated against the Swiss franc by sixty-six per cent (EEAG 2012).
As a result of the drastic devaluation of the local currency, monthly mortgage
payments and the total value of mortgages skyrocketed, pushing more and
more families to default on their payments and risk losing their homes to
foreclosures. After 2010, the new Fidesz government introduced a series of
measures that were meant to ease the burden of foreign-currency loans for
Hungarian households. But many argue that these were half-hearted attempts
that mostly served the government’s populist propaganda instead of bringing
actual relief to the indebted. Banks, nevertheless, remain one of the main
targets of popular ire in the country given that in 2011, forty-one per cent of
Hungarian households held some form of debt, typically a mortgage in Swiss
francs.
Seeing the government’s reluctance to resolve the foreign-currency loan
crisis, a loose set of debtor organisations has cropped up to bring together
indebted households, organise demonstrations against banks, provide legal aid
to affected families and lobby the government for more effective relief meas-
ures. Many of these debtor organisations criticise the government from the
right, and although their symbolic vocabulary shows close affinities with that
of Jobbik, they claim to have no direct links to Jobbik. One of the most

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
180 Virág Molnár

influential of these debtor organisations is called the Koppány Group

(Koppány Csoport). Koppány is an actual historical figure and a central char-
acter in the story of Hungary’s conquest of the Carpathian Basin and its
incorporation into Europe at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He
was the uncle of St. Stephen, Hungary’s first genuine Christian king, who
should have succeeded his brother on the throne following his death in 997
AD. But Koppány was against Hungary’s converting to Western Christianity,
and a succession struggle ensued between him and Stephen ending in his
defeat.10 Koppány has enjoyed a widespread cult in popular culture, standing
in for the tribal and pagan values of ancient Magyars as well as Hungarians’
defiance to Western European domination.
In a similar vein, another debtor organisation that calls itself ‘The Home-
land Is Not for Sale’ plays on the close linguistic proximity between the
Hungarian words for home (ház) and homeland (haza), drawing parallels
between the fight to keep one’s mortgaged home from multinational banks and
the country’s resistance to EU-sanctioned austerity measures or to global
credit agencies such as the International Monetary Fund. In addition to ral-
lying against the banks they blame for the escalation of the foreign-currency
debt crisis, they also strongly protest the sale of Hungarian agricultural land to
foreigners (Zubor 2013).
Nationalist visual symbols, especially the Holy Crown of St. Stephen or the
red–white striped Árpád flags, routinely appear on their demonstration
posters, websites, T-shirts and printed manifestos to punctuate their critique of
globalisation, market capitalism and EU domination (see, for instance,
the logo of the ‘The Homeland Is Not for Sale’ movement at http://
kaslerarpad.hu). Recently, they have also tried to organise themselves into a
political party during the 2014 national elections and the European parliamen-
tary elections but failed to reach the election threshold. They thus continue to
operate as a civic organisation.

Conclusion

I have argued in this article that contrary to the widely held view that sees the
radical populist backlash as a result of a weak civil society in Eastern Europe,
the growth of illiberal politics has been significantly aided by a new wave of
civil society activism that began at the turn of the millennium. The problem
therefore does not stem from the lack of civic associationalism but rather
from the fact that civil society has also become a hotbed of right-wing
radicalism. These civic associations are at the forefront of reinventing the
symbolic vocabulary of nationalism, re-enchanting cultural membership by
re-anchoring it in mythical (often premodern) traditions, and seeking social
arrangements that are governed by a charismatic type of legitimacy. In other
words, they emphasise particularistic and autochthonous values as a counter-
point to economic globalisation and European integration that are seen as

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 181

root causes of diminishing economic and political sovereignty and the loss of
cultural identity.
There are, of course, additional reasons why the radical right has become
the force it is today, but its firm rooting and support in civil society suggest
that its political success is unlikely to be merely ephemeral. Francis Fukuyama
could not have been proven more wrong by Eastern Europe: the end of history
is nowhere near in sight.

Notes

1 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/archive/elections2009/en/hungary_en.html
(Accessed 15 July 2014).
2 In the 2014 Hungarian general election, Jobbik received twenty-one per cent of the votes while
in the 2014 European election, it captured fifteen per cent just like in 2009 (see http://www.results-
elections2014.eu/en/country-results-hu-2014.html).
3 I use a broad definition of populism understood as ‘democratic illiberalism’ (see Pappas
2014: 2).
4 The Czech and Germany trajectories deviate from this general pattern somewhat, as these two
countries implemented some form of decommunisation in the 1990s.
5 There is variation among CEE countries in the extent to which these three themes are seen as
closely interrelated. In Hungary, for instance, anti-corruption rhetoric is intimately linked with the
need for decommunisation whereas in Poland, the anti-corruption and anti-communist motifs are
not as closely intertwined. Anti-capitalism comes in many guises including anti-austerity, anti-
globalisation, anti-colonisation, anti-EU and even anti-Semitic rhetoric and sentiments.
6 This mixing is best illustrated by economic associations because even seemingly entirely
for-profit businesses, for instance, in the heritage tourism industry in Transylvania have a mission
beyond just making money. The ‘Deáky András Agrotourism Bed and Breakfast’ company is a
case in point, as it offers ‘alternative history lectures’ and plays an important part in local
architectural heritage preservation, in addition to offering a broad range of programmes that aim
at heritage cultivation (e.g. local culinary and folk traditions including music and dance) (Ilyés
2014).
7 The network structure of the links will be explored in a separate article.
8 The flag was originally associated with the House of the Árpád, the founding dynasty of the
Hungarian Kingdom that ruled Hungary from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It is part of
Hungary’s current coat of arms but was also used by the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross
Party, in the 1930s and 1940s.
9 In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it was also mainly firms and not private households that
borrowed in foreign currency. Poland is the only other country where a significant share of private
households also became severely indebted in foreign currency. But even in the Polish case, these
foreign-currency loans peaked around thirty per cent of total household debt (EEAG 2012).
10 According to the widely disseminated legend, upon his defeat, his body was cut into four pieces
and displayed on the walls of the four main strongholds of the Kingdom of Hungary as a warning
to remaining rebels.

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184 Virág Molnár

Appendix

Table A1. Radical nationalist civic associations

Type of civic
association Name of organisation

Protecting and Baranta: Baranta Hagyományos Magyar Harcművészetek Országos Szövetsége

promoting cultural herit- (Baranta: The National Association of Traditional Hungarian Martial Arts)
age (hagyományörző Aranyszablya Történelmi Vívóiskola (Golden Saber Historical Fencing School)
egyesületek) Magyar Huszár és Hagyományörző Szövetség (The Association for Cultivating
Hungarian Hussar Traditions)
Forrai Sándor Rovásíró Kör (Sándor Forrai Runic Script Circle)
Lelkiismeret ′88 (Conscience ′88)
Szabó Dezső Színház (Dezső Szabó Theatre)
Magyar Táltos (Hungarian Shaman)
Nemzeti Egyletek (National Guilds)
Nemenyi.net – Amerikai polgári körök lapja (North American Civic Circles)

Sports and recreational Ferencvárosi Szurkolók Szövetsége (Ferencvárosi Soccer Team Fan Club)
clubs Gój Motorosok (Goyim Riders)
Hunnia kézilabdacsapat (Hunnia Handball Team)
Nemzeti Érzelmű Motorosok (National Riders)

Legal organisations Nemzeti Jogvedő Alapítvány (National Rights Advocacy Foundation)

Szent Korona Lovagrend (Holy Crown Chivalric Order)
Szent Korona Országért Alapítvány (Country of the Holy Crown Foundation)

Youth organisations 64 Vármegye Mozgalom (64 Historical Counties Movement)

Internet communities Magyar Klán (Warriors of Hungary)

Bombagyar.hu (Bomb Factory)

Educational organisations Attila Király Népfőiskola (King Attila Community College)

Körösi Csoma Sándor Magyar Egyetem (Körösi Csoma Sándor Hungarian Uni-
versity)
Dobogó Mitikus Magyar Történelem (Dobogó Mythical Hungarian History)
Örökség Népfőiskolai Szövetség (Association of Heritage Community Colleges)
NapÚt: A természetes műveltség honlapja (SunPath: The Site of Natural
Cultivation)

Popular music bands Hungarica (Hungarica)

(‘national rock’ bands) Hunnia (Hunnia – Latin name for Hungary)
Kárpátia (Carpathia – referring to the Carpathian Mountains)
Nemzeti Front (National Front)
Oi-kor (Oi-age)
Romantikus Erőszak (Romantic Violence)
Ismerős Arcok (Familiar Faces)
Egészséges Fejbőr (Healthy Head Skin)
Magozott Cseresznye (Pitted Cherry)
Franka Deli [name of singer]
Titkolt Ellenállás (Secret Resistance)
Vádló Bitófák (Accusing Gallows)

Trade union Tettrekész Magyar Rendőrség Szakszervezete (Ready-for -Action: Hungarian

Police Union)

Women’s organisations Zrínyi Ilona Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége (Ilona Zrínyi National Asso-
ciation of Hungarian Women)
Lórántffy Zsuzsanna Nőegylet (Zsuzsanna Lórántffy Women’s Guild)

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015
Civil Society and Nationalism in Hungary 185

Table A1. Continued

Type of civic
association Name of organisation

Paramilitary organisations Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard)

Betyársereg (Highwaymen’s Army)
Hunnia Mozgalom (Hunnia Movement)
Kárpát Haza Őrei (The Guards of the Carpathian Homeland)
Magyarok Nyilai Nemzeti Felszabadító Hadsereg (Hungarian Arrows National
Liberation Army)
Szebb Jövőért Egyesület (Association For a Better Future)

Bookstores and parapherna- Magyar Menedék Könyvesház (Hungarian Refuge Book House)
lia stores Gyepű Könyvesbolt (Hedge bookstore)
Emese álma (Emese’s Dream bookstore)
Fehérlófia Könyvesbolt (Son of the White Horse bookstore)
Püski Kiadó és Püski-Masszi könyvesház (Püski Publishing House and Püski-
Masszi Bookstore)
Szkítia könyvesboltok (Scythia bookstores)
Turánia Hagyományörző Áruház (Turania Heritage Department Store)
Turul bolt (Turul shop)
Magyaros Termékek online shop (Hungarian Goods Online Store)

Tourism Délvidéki Portyázók Baráti Köre (Friendship Circle of the Adventurers in the
Southern Territories [referring to the northern region of Serbia that used to be
part of Hungary before 1918])
Deáky András Agroturisztikai Panzió (Deáky András Agritourism Motel)
Kárpáteurópa Utazási Iroda (Carpathian-Europe Travel Agency)

Product brands Harcos (Warrior)

Heniem [furniture brand]

Media Kuruc.info (Kuruc.info online news portal)

Magyar Hang nemzeti rock magazine (Hungarian Voice National Rock Maga-
zine)
Nemzeti Bulvár (National Tabloid)
Nemzetőr napilap (National Guard Daily)
Szent Korona rádio and TV (Holy Crown TV and Radio broadcasting)
Hunhir (Hun News)
JobbHírek (The ‘Right’ News)
Alternatív Hírportál: ‘A nemzeti médiafigyelő’ (Alternative news portal – ‘the
national media monitor’)
Barikád: az új erő lapja. Közvédelmi hírportál (Barricade: The [online] Daily of
the New Force. ‘Public Safety’ News Portal)
Echo TV (Echo TV)
Pro Hungaria Nemzeti Portal (Pro-Hungary National Portal)
Pannon Rádió (Rockszerda) (Pannonia Radio Rock Wednesdays)

Foreign-currency mortgage Koppány Csoport (Koppány Group)

debtor organisations Radikális Bankellenes Csoport (Radical Anti-Bank Group)
A haza nem eladó mozgalom (The Homeland Is Not for Sale Movement)
Otthonvédelmi Tanács (Council for the Protection of Homes)

Note: Names of these organisations often contain references to historical figures and events that are
central to the nationalist canon or geographical regions that were part of pre-1918 Hungary (e.g.
Délvidék), or employ turn of phrases (e.g. ‘public safety’) that are closely associated with a right-wing
nationalist vocabulary. It is not possible to elaborate the historical background of each figure and event
in this appendix for lack of space, but feel free to contact the author for further details.

© The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015