Double Ressentiment. The So-Called Kulturkampf in Hungary Since 2018

The metaphor Kulturkampf has been popular in the everyday Hungarian political discourse since 1990 but become especially recurrent since the last parliamentary elections in 2018. For the past two years, cultural policy has been a much hotter topic than before: the right wing government and parliamentary majority led by Viktor Orbán, and, particularly, the so-called new-right, that is, the ideologists and intellectuals who support Orbán’s governance, seems to have reached the conclusion that having reshaped political system and the economy, it is high time they refashioned culture, that is, artistic and scientific activities, and moved it towards the values and Weltanschauung of the right. On the other side, the artists and people active in culture and politically close to the opposition have been trying to protect their positions also by underrating the scientific and artistic performance and the performers of the right. That political debate is called Kulturkampf in the Hungarian public discourse. Gradually, the Orbán government has changed the legal and institutional frameworks of cultural life in the country since 2010 triggering each time fierce online and offline media debates and, from time to time, even mass demonstrations as parts of the Kulturkampf. The paper presents the main issues, points, arguments and behaviours, the main discourses, textual as well as visual metaphors on both sides in order to show the way they express and supress frustration, envy and hatred, that is, ressentiment. The paper argues that both side is overwhelmed by ressentiment. The cultural right feels that, with the recurrent political failures of the left and the continuous success of the political right at the elections and in the governance, it is unacceptable that the public discourse and the cultural evaluation criteria are still basically influenced, even determined by the liberal intellectuals and the latter occupy the leading cultural positions in the country, particularly in the theatres, the film industry and literature. The cultural left, in turn, feels just the opposite: only they deserve the leading positions in the fields of culture because the Hungarian cultural elite consists of no one else but them, the rest is still to prove itself gifted. For the left, a great frustration is, however, that culturally inferior people rule in politics, in some spheres of the economy and, moreover, want to get the upper hand of the authentic elite in culture too. Both ressentiment is, therefore, based on frustration: failure in the political competition on the left and failure on the artistic, professional field on the right.