Not to Carry Report, But to Kneel
Europe’s Project 2025
The first thing I noticed was the candelabra. Cylinders of frosted glass that appeared to float asymmetrically around a vertical bronze bar from which thin metal tendrils stretched out, carrying the lightbulb into the tubes while holding the latter fast as they „hovered“ above the ground. Specimens of this fine exemplar of modern design had been placed along the cream walls of the grand ballroom at intervals of about a metre each, providing the chamber — its windows blocked off by the technician’s elaborate setup and the interpreter’s booth — with its main source of illumination. The effect thereby created was like light breaking through a wall of ice.
Spring had arrived in Budapest: not even the light tapestry of mist hanging over the city that morning could dampen the atmosphere in the grand ballroom at the Hotel Corvinus. There was a swing in the air and a palpable buzz among the various think tankers, minor government officials, and odd hangers-on from the quieter embassies (scanning the crowd, my eye picked out lapel pins bearing the flags of Greece, Turkey, and, somewhat perplexingly, Madagascar) assembled for the first day of the Budapest Balkans Forum, billed as the „flagship event“ of the storied and prestigious Hungarian Institute for International Affairs. After a brief address by the Institute’s director and a panel discussion featuring the Bulgarian Interior Minister (who spoke a passable facsimile of received pronunciation, leaving me wondering what Galkovsky would make of the fellow), the man everyone was waiting for took the stage — Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, under whose patronage the day’s gathering stood. The by wont casually dressed veteran of a decade at the helm of Orbán’s foreign policy had even donned a suit for the occasion, and those gathered in the foyer intuited that plans were afoot, and patriots in control.
Hungary is a wordcel nation; what happens in its politics — to paraphrase the writer and erstwhile politician Sándor Csoóri — is usually prefigured by what takes place in its literature. It is also a Protestant nation, its national consciousness is shaped by an unusually acute sense of fate that begets a suicidal pessimism and a Bourbon stubbornness. The spirit of que será será pervades all things: „It is not the poet who shapes the language,“ summarised the literary scholar Antal Szerb, „but the language that shapes the poet. Every language bears certain poetic possibilities within itself and simply waits for the man who will one day write them down.“ „Cool“, said the minister, coming to a part in his speech about the EU’s attempts to wean itself off Russian gas, „What a brave move.“I looked around me and wondered who, of the bemused public seated in the grand ballroom, could possibly be aware of the phrase’s provenance. PT Carlo, Kantbot, where were they to witness the thunderous victory of the ideas of 2017? No matter: this is the sign of a self-confident government, ready to cock a snook at its largest and largest trading partner and address itself directly to… well, I can’t think of anyone but perhaps Konstantin Kisin who still talks like this. The minister had even set up a twitter account that very day to share his remarks far and wide amongst the anti-woke cognoscenti.
Whence this fresh confidence; this newfound spunk? It couldn’t have anything to do with the performance of the Hungarian economy, plagued by continuous inflation and gas transit issues caused by Ukrainian mischief. Nor do the opinion polls offer much ground for optimism, with Fidesz defector Péter Magyar’s renegade party either neck-and-neck with or soaring high above the government, depending on which pollster one believes. What trump card lies up Mr. Orbán’s sleeve?