Ghosts of history

The 1848-49 conflict gifted both party leaders powerful motifs with which to frame their own – and each other’s – participation in today’s political struggle. As Hungary’s 1849 independence bid was crushed only with Russian help, however, March 15 potentially presented a particular challenge for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has maintained close ties with Moscow following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The date also carries personal baggage for the incumbent premier. In 2002 Orban, unpopular towards the end of his first term in office, famously made the holiday’s enhanced celebration – focused on an extended wearing of the traditional Kokarda (commemorative rosette) – the leitmotif of his campaign in that year’s election. It was an election he lost.

This year’s peace marchers walked through Budapest under the slogan “We don’t want to be a Ukrainian colony!”, making Ukraine the contemporary successor to 19th-century Austria as a neighbouring power seeking to dominate Hungary. The messaging chimed with Fidesz’s campaign efforts to present Magyar as the puppet of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and/or European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen (with the EU also being represented as an imperial power).

This complex interweaving of themes was picked up in Orban’s own speech to the crowd. Referencing the “Twelve Points” of reform demanded by the 1848 revolutionaries, he argued that the EU’s “points are the 12 points of servitude… We Hungarians will never accept them turning the 12 points of the Hungarians into Brussels’ own!” Later, he asserted that, “Now, I am saying no to the Ukrainians. We must choose who will form the government, me or Zelensky. I would like to humbly recommend myself.”

Subsequently, in a colourful turn of phrase, Orban remarked: “Today, even if they drop hundreds of Brusselite paratroopers on us, we’ll pick them up, smack their bottoms, and send them back,” before asking rhetorically, “Do you see this, Ukrainians? Do you see this, Zelensky?”

Magyar’s supporters, meanwhile, quite literally marched under the revolutionary “Twelve Points” (strung above them across the span of Andrassy Avenue) as they proceeded towards Heroes Square.

Demonstrating a more assured used of national symbols and spectacle than Hungary’s older, left-liberal opposition parties, Tisza’s rally took place with a giant Kokarda suspended above the crowd from a crane.

Tisza supporters carried placards bearing the words “Most vagy soha” (Now or Never), the motto of the 1848 revolutionaries, but with the second two words struck out. Magyar himself wore a traditional Bocskai jacket.

Addressing the crowd, he told them that in 1848 the struggle for freedom necessitated an uprising against the Habsburg monarchy, but that today it is bound up with maintaining Hungary’s place within the protective alliances offered by the EU and NATO.

Referencing the recent reports of the arrival of Russian information warfare experts in Budapest working under diplomatic cover to assist Orban’s re-election prospects, Magyar said: “Our victory will be so great that even the Russian agents sent here will hear that it is over. Tovarishi konyetz, tovarishi konyetz! [in Russian, “Comrades, it’s over!].” The crowd responded enthusiastically with chants of “Ruszkik Haza” [in Hungarian: “Russians go home!”].