Illiberal Democracy? - Different “Islands of Meanings” on the Hungarian Radical Right

In times when liberal democracies are challenged on several fronts and populist radical right-wing parties and movements are on the rise, it is more important than ever to pay particular attention to the democratic and citizenship understandings of individuals who join radical-right political groups as activists. Scholarship on the far-right has produced numerous quantitative studies with special attention to electoral and comparative cross-national studies. In contrast, we lack qualitative studies and knowledge about radical right-wing activists’ subjective understandings of their social and political environment. This knowledge is however crucial if we want to grasp the mechanisms that are behind the processes of commitment and the sustainment of the latter in the ranks of radical-right political groups. I argue that if we want to gain a better understanding about the present shape of Hungarian ‘illiberal democracy’, and the evolution of this political system, we should focus on civil society, and the various way(s) radical right-wing activists - who form the base of the country’s leading political parties - conceive of political citizenship and democracy. That is because activists’ specific visions on democracy and political citizenship contribute to the continuous processes of (de-)democratization, given that these activists constitute spaces where (un-)democratic cultures are constructed, practiced, and modified (Passy and Monsch 2020). Hence, those grassroots activists are actors of the continuous processes of (de-)democratization. Relying on an interpretative approach where networks are seen as cultural settings, in this paper I present a network analysis of the Hungarian radical-right field, based on interviews conducted with leaders of different radical-right political groups. Mapping this field is of paramount importance considering that the vivid networks of several right-wing communities played a major role in the emergence and resilience of today’s right-wing hegemony in Hungary. Those networks still appear to provide substantial resources for the country’s leading radical-right parties, Fidesz, Jobbik and Our Homeland [Mi Hazánk]. Along these lines, this paper provides most recent data on the mapping of Hungarian (radical) right-wing activist networks. In a second step, I demonstrate that this field is far less homogenous than what the literature implies. Indeed, I plead against a homogenous view on the radical right - widespread in the literature - and suggest exploring the plurality of minds on the Hungarian Radical Right. I argue that there is not one radical right, but numerous radical-right communities that co-exist within the radical right field of Hungarian civil society, each displaying a specific cognitive world, and each possessing specific repertoires of action. On the basis of 32 in-depth interviews realized with grassroots activists from three political groups - Fidelitas [youth section of Fidesz], Our Homeland’s Youth [Mi Hazánk Ifjai] and Via Nova - I exhibit the specific democratic and citizenship meanings of each group and the specific action forms that stem from those specific cognitive resources. I demonstrate how this field is split into different “islands of meanings” (White 1992), between which democratic meanings may circulate through social interactions - in case they exist between different communities.