Six opposition activists who defaced the Orbán government’s rabidly xenophobic billboards were arrested at dawn, two of whom were kept at the Zugló police station for several hours. The three men and three women are all in their twenties and thirties. According to the activists who have since been released, police officers are being used to keep the growing number of racist government billboards under constant surveillance and authorities are on the hunt for activists who are planning to deface them. The activists who defaced the first of the series of billboards in Budapest are affiliated with a group called Y-GEN, which is the youth wing of the small Együtt opposition party, originally associated with former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai.
The government, however, is going ahead with the printing of 333 billboard-size posters which read: “If you come to Hungary, you can’t take away the jobs of Hungarians.” Additionally, the government is printing twice this number of billboards with other slogans, all of them aimed to rile up xenophobia and racism within Hungarian society against immigrants and foreigners, and to stop the flow of Fidesz supporters leaving the governing party to the far-right Jobbik.
“If these billboards are put up, we will tear them apart,” exclaimed Y-GEN’s activists. Viktor Szigetvári, the leader of the Együtt party, posted a series of photos on Facebook showing numerous defaced government billboards. The centre-left party also confirmed that they plan to launch a nation-wide movement that will aim to destroy the government’s billboards anywhere they spring up.
Another example of the Orbán government’s defaced racist billboard. Here, they are telling immigrants that if they come to Hungary, they have to respect Hungarian culture.
In this racist government billboard, the regime tells immigrants that if they come to Hungary, they have to respect Hungarian laws.
The Orbán government’s billboards are insidious: they are meant to fill the heads of Hungarians with three falsehoods:
- Immigrants and foreigners are trying to destroy Hungarian culture;
- Immigrants and foreigners are taking their jobs;
- Immigrants and foreigners are criminals and don’t abide by Hungarian laws;
Fidesz has accused the left-wing opposition of “aggression” and “violence,” when it came to light that Együtt was behind the defaced billboards.
This paper commends all activists for taking matters into their own hands. Civil disobedience is the only way to respond to the activities of Hungary’s repulsive, far-right regime. Government campaigns such as this one use threat perception to create a tidal wave of hatred against minorities in Hungary.
