Virág Molnár

In her Academy project, Molnár will explore the right-wing radicalization of Hungarian politics since the early 2000s, with the emergence of the Jobbik movement as the country’s third largest political force. In the resurgence of radical nationalism in Europe, Hungary is a critical case: the most liberal country of the former Eastern Bloc in the 1990s, today Hungary is the most right-wing populist regime in the European Union. What, Molnár asks, is the role of radical nationalist civil society organizations in the reconstitution of national identity in postsocialist Hungary? She argues that civic groups have been instrumental in reinvigorating the lexicon of radical nationalism that was widespread in the late nineteenth century and in the 1930s. Through ethnographic case studies of specific organizations—including media, heritage tourism, national rock bands, and foreign-currency mortgage debtor groups—Molnár shows how this seemingly anachronistic symbolic repertoire has found new resonance in Hungarian public life. Her work reveals that Hungarian civil society, once the center of attention for its potential to democratize Eastern Europe, can also be the site of mobilizing radical nationalism at the grassroots.