Society of the Hungarian spectacle

Okay, this is the list of things you cannot bring into the splendid new Pancho Arena. Erected in the home town of our great prime minister (right under the garden of his family cottage), this ornate secessionist structure is able to accomodate almost 4000 people - more than twice the village's population. Yes, the hilariously ungrammatical last-but-not-least item after

• Toilet paper
• Wrenches and screw-drivers
• Flags and banners (in a stadium!)
• Magic wands
• Lipstics, eyeliners, facial cream and deodorant spray
• "Socialism, both national and international" (as they like put it)
• Capitalism (i.e. The grabbing hands - Any better suggestions?)

is the reason why this image showed up on Index.hu, together with a long-winded and painfully bureaucratic explanation from a PR dude representing the stadium. I wonder what he thinks about fake (i.e. not "actual") politics...

As you may already know, the Hungarian government is in a football frenzy for which it is routinely accused by its opponents and even more routinely defended by its friends. The investor for this particular edifice is some "foundation" established by Mr Orban and some of his friends while the money is also collected from big corporations - both Hungarian and foreign - willing to buy the sympathy of Fidesz and the government, but there is of course some weird accounting scheme through which a large amount of tax money is channeled into the project. Other stadiums are also being built: Debrecen and Ferencváros - two well established and popular clubs unlike Felcsut SE in which Mr Orban has even played himself, and Puskas Akademia SE which he created allegedly to resurrect Hungarian football, also on Felcsut - have both managed to get new buildings, plus there are many many smaller projects on the countryside.

This new mecca of the (allegedly) resurrected Hungarian football is not just a metaphor of the great post-democratic Hungarian spectacle but the spectacle itself. The whole shit is indeed so painfully shallow and hysterically spurious that it makes you think there is some real thing it is supposed to represent, but no: this is the real thing. This is the new Hungary! Okay, I know that the inspiration for this particular agenda (apart from Mr Orban's personal love of football) is obviously the famous Golden Team, i.e. the way it was used to quell discontent by a brutal stalinist regime, but the sublime essence of cruelty is not there behind the curtains anymore. The logic of oppression is so mind-blowingly trivial and banal that it is actually contained within the verbosity of the kitsch itself, together with the long-winded pedantry of the make-believe admiration it commands. The spectacle is deliberately crafted in such a painfully stupid way that the acceptance of its painful stupidity may always become a well-formed political statement of patriotic defiance. I think the way they trivialize the issue of totalitarianism with all its horror into those ominous visual shapes (which should therefore be banned) and the very concrete personas of their original users (who should therefore be demonized in a childish fashion, preventing any deeper analysis of their ideas especially in their current form) is also showing how this trivial logic is actually within that grotesquely narcissistic spectacle otherwise known as the Orban administration. It's a very good example of what Zizek has described as the new form of authoritarianism and it is hardly an accident that the only Western politician still on good terms with Hungary's leader is that Silvio Berlosconi whom Zizek himself has often named as the best example of this new phenomenon.