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PM Orbán attends traditional pig slaughter

January 24th, 2022

One of the leading left-wing weeklies mocks the Prime Minister’s Facebook video showing him attending a traditional pig slaughter. A moderate conservative analyst thinks that Prime Minister Orbán started a postmodern political campaign.

168 Óra in a first page editorial mocks Prime Minister Orbán for posting a footage of himself attending a traditional rural pig slaughter. The left-wing weekly sees the video as a pathetic symbolic campaign stunt. 168 Óra finds it absurd for Prime Minister Orbán to suggest that he is an everyday regular guy. The left-wing daily also lambasts the Prime Minister for apparently refusing to engage in a public debate with the opposition frontrunner Péter Marki-Zay (see BudaPost January 20). 168 Óra claims that the Prime Minister is unwilling to participate in a televised debate because he fears that he would lose the election again – as he did in 2006 after the last public debate with then Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány.

In Azonnali, Gábor Balogh cautions the Left against downplaying the success of Prime Minister Orbán’s public performances including his video on pig slaughtering. The moderate conservative analyst points out that Mr Orbán simply did what any other politician does before elections: launched a campaign to mobilize his supporters. As he wants to underscore his rural origins and his image as a ‘man of the people’, participation in such a rite of rural Hungary seems an obvious choice, Balogh writes. Urban progressives who accuse the Prime Minister of redneck provincialism play into the hands of Fidesz, he suggests, as such rhetoric is likely to alienate most rural voters. Balogh argues that Mr Orbán follows a postmodern strategy, presenting himself as a down-to-earth person who follows common sense thinking and looks like a savvy and smart cousin who can take care of things. Balogh thinks that politics in the 21st century is more about creating attractive postmodern alternative universes than convincing voters through more traditional persuasion.

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