The midterm elections in the US, the Yellow Vests in France and the widespread demonstrations across Hungaria, from the vantage point of a citizen of Orbánistan.
Following the events in the US from the vantage point of a citizen of Orbánistan astonishing parallels are to be noticed in the mentality and doings of both of these gentleman, the Hungarian if possible more intelligent and more wicked than the dumb Trump.
By the way, both are part and parcel of a global phenomenon born from the inter-connectedness of the world’s crises (climate, refugees, concentration of wealth, undoing of the welfare state, digitalization of the production system, the betrayal of representative democracy by the political class, etc) provoking anguish, insecurity even fear, concluding in a “logical” psychological state of clinging to prerogatives, clannish, nationalistic, paternalistic, racist attitudes, the eternal building blocks of alienation.
If the objective is to turn back to the nice games of representative democracy we’ll achieve more of the same. I believe that the Yellow Vests in France are indicating, actually demanding, a sort of modern version of direct democracy (after the failed experiences of the original Soviets, workers councils in ex-Yugoslavia and during the Hungarian ’56) is appearing in its embryonic stage for the moment. French society apparently caries in its historical genes an innovative capacity (1789, 1848, 1871, 1968) indicating paths for radical change.
The female factor
The growing political presence of women as well seem to show that more of the same has become passé. We have to see if and how their role (Freud: women embody the reality principle) in the future will become as determinant as it looks.
The midterm elections in the US has brought a plethora (36) of new woman members in the benches of the House, most of them replacing men who held these seats before reaching the historic peak of 162. Significantly several among them come from minority communities: two Native Americans, two Muslims, three Latinos, plus two Black and one Latino in the Congress.
In Hungary the women MPs of all the opposition parties were at the roots, and continue to be, of the developing civil resistance in a society where conformism and existential fear have dominated the last eight years, they were the ones who initiated a big fuss during a parliamentary session in December peacefully occupying the speaker’s chair.
Since common demonstrations (trade unions, civil organizations and political figures from all the oppositional parties have started even in many small towns. A novum indicating the lessening of fear among people. The participants are not too many, but a crowd of one thousand in a town of twenty-thousand, where everybody knows everyone, we witness demonstrations occurring for the first time for 30 years, and in a repetitive mode despite cold winter evenings.
Whatever the outcome of this growing resistance, we face a new state of consciousness in a growing part of society where young people seem to become the avant-garde. Among them Kata Nagy, an eight-teen year old female college student who lately became the number one public enemy of the government media to have bluntly outspoken against president of the republic and the whole Fidesz establishment at a demonstration.
I’m in a better mood than ever before, so I stop here not to get carried away.