By Tomasz Kitlinski, September 17th, 2012 
The Pussy Riot trial will go down in the history of injustices as the Oscar Wilde trial of the 21st century. Against the evil powers that be, the Moscow artists acknowledged their inspirers, fellow outcasts: Socrates (this connection to the martyr of philosophy has been noticed by David Remnick in The New Yorker), early feminist, transgender George Sand, and banished by Stalin, carnival researcher, Mikhail Bakhtin. Pussy Riot performs human rights. These women artists attack authoritarianism, misogyny, homophobia In their punk prayer, they protested Putin, the system, discrimination against the second sex, and as they sang, “gay pride exiled in chains to Siberia.” And still many hate them — and because of that they hate them. Why? In Eastern Europe the political class is anti-woman, anti-minority, anti-secular, because our countries have transitioned from false Communism to false Christianity: women, minorities, gays, artists to hell!
A formidable oppositionist movement is gaining strength: the supporters of Pussy Riot who don’t want prejudices to rule their life, demonstrations and shows of solidarity in the region and glocally, indignation of PEN Russia, PEN International, rock stars and the media, petitions (spearheaded in Poland’s leading broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza by art critic Dorota Jarecka and signed by filmmakers Andrzej Wajda and Agnieszka Holland, curator Anda Rottenberg, Ethical Art professor Krzysztof Wodiczko ). Slovenian and cosmopolitan Slavoj Zizek wrote a letter to Pussy Riot with his characteristic wit: “It may sound crazy, but although I am an atheist, you are in my prayers.”
The brutal sentence on Pussy Riot encapsulates — beyond the headlines — the predicament which women face in Eastern Europe. Women curators in Hungary have been fired, and the world-renowned New School philosopher, Agnes Heller, has also been subject to a witch-hunt. Female artists and cultural operators in Poland have been humiliated. These prejudices are a major stumbling block in the democratic transition — in fact, phobias are destroying our societies. In Russia, women rebels . . .
Read more: Performing Human Rights: Pussy Riot vs. the Pseudo Religious, Homophobic, Misogynists of Eastern Europe
By Andras Bozoki, February 3rd, 2012 The Hungarian political system for twenty years was a liberal democracy, characterized by a multiparty system, free elections, representational government, strong opposition, free media, strong, independent courts and credible institutions that protected the rule of law (i.e., the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman Office). With a few striking exceptions, human rights and religious freedoms were respected. During the two decades after 1989, the incumbent governments had always lost the elections (except for 2006). The media criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and in 2004, Hungary joined the European Union. Hungary remained until relatively recently (until the eve of 2006), a success story of democratic achievement. But more recently, Hungary took a serious autocratic turn, as I explored in my post last year. Here, I explore the problem of the transition from democracy more closely, as this transition has since escalated. Is it possible for my country to return to an authoritarian system as a fully-fledged member of the European Union?
Conceptual underpinnings of the regime
The policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party are based on the pillars of “national unification,” the “central arena of power,” the change of the elites, power politics and the era of “revolutionary circumstances.” This is more than just empty rhetoric. Prime Minister Orbán genuinely believes them to be true.
First: almost all of Orbán’s important messages are based on the notion of “national unification,” which has both symbolic and literal importance. He expressly criticizes the Trianon Peace Treaty that concluded World War I as well as the legacy of the Communist system and the forces of globalization, which he sees as the most important political issues of the day. Orbán suggests that the “nation” serves as the bastion to offer protection against these forces. The idea of national unification furthermore maintains that Hungarians living outside of Hungary are not minorities, but full members of the Hungarian nation with corresponding rights and privileges. As such, these Hungarians are now granted Hungarian citizenship upon request, regardless of where they live, and thus they are also automatically granted voting rights. Orbán believes that the civic rights to freedom, membership to the European Union, belonging to the political allies of the . . .
Read more: The Crisis of Democracy in Hungary, 2012
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