Telex is serving foreign interests according to the head of the Sovereignty Protection Office, who spoke of zealous agents
July 27. 2024. – 10:20 AM
updated
A roundtable discussion on defending sovereignty was held in Baile Tusnad, where Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson and MP Lajos Kósa were joined by Tamás Lánczi, head of the Sovereignty Protection Office, which was set up six months ago. We were able to conduct a brief interview with Lánczi following the discussion, where one of the things he talked about was what he would like to see NGOs called in the future. Among others, we asked him whether having press that is critical of the government, for example of PM Orbán's peace mission is a good thing.
A brief background on some of the terms mentioned in the video:
- The Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp (more commonly known as Tusványos) has been organised in Baile Tusnad, Transylvania since 1990. It has become a large-scale intellectual workshop of the Carpathian Basin, with tens of thousands in attendance. It was originally intended to promote cross-border cooperation, Romanian-Hungarian dialogue and a cultured Hungarian-Hungarian political exchange. According to critics, in recent years it has become a place where members of the Budapest government and representatives of the intellectual establishment close to them express their ideas without substantive debate. It was here that Viktor Orbán first spoke about building an “illiberal democracy’ in 2014.
- KESMA or the Central European Press and Media Foudation (KESMA) has a portfolio of nearly 500 media products. The news outlets owned by the foundation were acquired or founded by allies of PM Viktor Orbán in the years prior to the establishment of the foundation, and were then donated to the foundation in 2018. A media holding of such proportions has not been seen in Hungary since it was a socialist republic, and there is no other example in Europe that even comes close to such a quantity of publications wielded by a single entity. As to what extent the formation of KESMA is in line with the government’s intentions was perhaps most candidly revealed by Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations, in 2019 at Tusványos when he stated that with the help of a Fidesz media holding they managed to get “nearly 50 percent of the Hungarian press to convey the government’s position.”
- MEGAFON – The Megafon centre was launched with the mission to train “professional Facebook warriors” to help them amplify the “suppressed voices of the right” on social media. In practice, this has turned into considerable financial support for the posts of eight to 10 people. They call themselves opinion leaders, however, their messaging overlaps with the government’s communication.
- Our portrait of Tamás Lánczi and our article on the authority given to the Sovereignty Protection office can be found here and here.
The subtitles for this video were created as part of a paid cooperation, using the Alrite speech-to-text software.