Local Opinion: Politics Dominated By Hatred

  • 17 Aug 2018 8:18 AM
  • BudaPost
Local Opinion: Politics Dominated By Hatred
A political scientist describes the past three decades of Hungarian politics as an incessant struggle between enemies. His main problem is that the struggle is fuelled by hatred.

On Mozgástér, political scientist Béla Galló quotes classical political philosopher Carl Schmidt who famously said that in politics there are only friends and enemies – nothing else. In Hungary, at the outset of democracy in 1990, the MSZP was the enemy of the new parties.

Very soon, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats switched sides – the MSZP became its friend and everybody else became the enemy. FIDESZ stood in the middle, wondering where the ‘Belgians’ should stand (in a field dominated by the feuding ‘Walloons’ and ‘Flemish’).

By now, Galló writes, there are no more ‘Belgians’, except a few ‘rambling specimens’.

There is only one dividing issue in politics – whether you are an enemy or a friend of Prime Minister Orbán. Meanwhile, he continues, the enemies’ hearts have been filled with hatred, especially on the opposition side, which has become insensitive to the need for ruse and power in politics, because they have been blinded by hate.

The government side, on the other hand, makes use of all the tools of Machiavellian political warfare.

That difference explains, why Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has won one election after another for the past eight years, Galló concludes.

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