Meeting someone online can hardly be considered unusual these days. Almost every age group has some presence in the digital world, and while a love story once needed a workplace, a circle of friends, a night out, a chance encounter or at least a shared geographical location, today it can sometimes begin with a single message.
A mother’s personal testimony about how political rhetoric can become everyday fear — and why changing laws is not enough if the wounds within society remain.
Beyond political slogans, the real question is whether children receive the knowledge, trust and institutional support that can actually keep them safe. While public debate is often dominated by myths about “gender-changing preschoolers” and a vague, threatening “gender lobby”, far too little is said about what truly matters: the actual protection of children. Yet this is not primarily an ideological question. It is a deeply practical one. Are we able to prepare children in a way that helps them stay safe in an increasingly complex world?
As the collapsing Orban era gradually shuts down one pro-government media outlet after another, and Hungary edges closer to becoming a country without a single national printed daily newspaper, something new is arriving.
It appears that Viktor Orbán may soon withdraw from the front line of politics. It is therefore time for us, too, to reflect on what renewal means for us.
On April 12, Hungary voted, and since then young people, many of whom were voting for the first time, have been blamed. Based on earlier turnout rates, young people had not seemed interested in politics, yet this time a significant wave of mobilization took place. I found two possible reasons that may explain this shift, and in this article I examine the social, economic, and other conditions that produced this remarkable level of participation, as well as what shaped young people’s new political consciousness.
There can be no meaningful reconciliation in Hungary while Viktor Orbán remains untouched by legal and political accountability.
Historical vulnerability does not return in the same form, but regulatory uncertainty, fragile trust, and the erosion of long-term predictability can once again become a familiar social experience.
Post-transition compensation was not merely an economic issue, but also a test of trust, self-determination, and the promise of historical redress. In Hungary, however, the gap between legal settlement and the social sense of justice quickly gave way to disillusionment.
It is just natural that time to time we tend to think about the quality of our Western democracies, especially in a period when several crisis hit our social structures. As democracy is a system that indeed needs constant work to be maintained, it is not surprising that we are evaluating regularly if it is functioning properly.
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