Never before has there been such an attempt to keep the press away from those arriving for Orbán's annual State of the Nation Address as this year. We still managed to ask several members of the inner circle what they think about the clemency case, the resignations and the claims of Péter Magyar criticizing the government.
If you are unsure what the terms NER and Megafon, mentioned in the video stand for, here's a brief explanation of both:
- NER is short for Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere, meaning ’System of National Cooperation.’ The term was coined by the Orbán government after their election victory in 2010 to refer to the changes in government that they were about to introduce. By now, NER has become a word in its own right, and is used in colloquial Hungarian to refer to Fidesz' governing elite, complete with the politicians and the oligarchs profiting from the system.
- The Megafon centre was launched with the mission to train “professional Facebook warriors” to help them amplify their suppressed voices on social media. In practice, this has turned into considerable financial support for the posts of eight to 10 people, typically figures from the pro-government media. Megafon quickly rose to the top of the list of the highest-spending Hungarian political advertisers on Facebook, and by the end of the year of its founding, they had taken the top spot. Find out more here.
The subtitles for this video were created as part of a paid cooperation, using the Alrite speech-to-text software.