And all this is happening while the EU does nothing. As the author notes:
Hungary has committed suicide in plain sight, and it has done so with the inept assistance of the European Union – while the rest of the member states stand by and watch helplessly. The death dance of democracy has begun again, just like in the 20th century, by painting human rights, freedom of the press, judicial independence, science and art to be political questions. By portraying facts and reality as a matter of threatened identity. And by depicting hate and violations of the law as moral obligations. This is not just taking place within the EU, this is the EU itself, living up to the delirious nightmares of the far right. What right-wing nationalists call "bureaucrats taking away national identities" means, in practice, that Brussels continues to provide full financial support even as mentally ill rulers dictate the destruction of entire countries – their art, literature and science – in the name of resisting interference in domestic affairs, and by keeping borders open for those chased away. The mass moral hysteria of Hungarian political conservativism is the driving force of the cold civil war that has been battering Hungary since 2002.
The irony (albeit a dangerous one) here in the U.S. is that it's precisely those who imagine themselves to be "progressives" (and not fascists) who treat "science and art" as "political questions," and specialize in pleading "threatened [or vulnerable] identity" as the justification for just about anything. (Recall the discussion of the academic lunatics on Twitter asserting that all scholarly citations are "political.")
Regarding the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the author writes:
The most recent victim was Central European University, but now, it is the turn of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Orbán's attacks usually start with a hateful press campaign against un-Hungarianness; in the case of the Academy, the prelude was an attack on "degenerate" gender studies as a representation of lazy humanities and therefore superfluous. It is followed by an extremely rapid legal and/or financial trick, rendering the victim dysfunctional – withholding the budget of the Academy, for example. Next, prominent Fidesz politicians reinforce the fabricated narrative by focusing on complex, incomprehensible and meaningless technical details. It is enough to confuse outsiders, but for those familiar with the matter, it is based on blatant lies to such a degree that it precludes any discussion....
Then, under the pretext of negotiations (which never actually took place in the case of the CEU), the whole matter is stalled until what's left of the opposition press loses interest and the public gets used to the underlying arguments of the government narrative (basic research is unnecessary, humanities are for liberals on the leftist fringe, gender studies spread homosexuality and the government's intervention isn't really much of a shift at all). After a few months, the original plan is carried out under the guise of a compromise solution: Every conciliatory step from the victim is used against her, the noise from the tired press and the confused public grows ever quieter and the government presents itself as being the solution to the conflict it generated in the first place. The fate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the country's beholder of intellectual capital, appears to be sealed, because in the coming EU fiscal period support will primarily be available for innovation and research, and a directly controlled structure is necessary for Orbán to appropriate the funds.
(Thanks to Balazs Gyenis for the pointer.)
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