About the Lecture: In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán often claims that the state’s political and economic aliments have been engineered by nefarious groups in “Brussels,” a reference to the European Union (the EU – of which Hungary is a member-state). Orbán claims that George Soros, a Hungarian-born American philanthropist and financier, largely controls a clandestine group that has slowly and meticulously changed how Europeans perceive themselves. This group supposedly has, as an ultimate goal, the destruction the “Hungarian nation” and of nation-state ideology altogether. Orbán’s claims are unverifiable; they are not fact-based. Instead, his claims are part of a long-lasting disinformation campaign that is animated, supported, and maintained by various members of the Hungarian government, including the Prime Minister himself. However, the lies Orbán and his supporters tell are not distinctive. They are part of a larger, transnational narrative that often benefits both his party and the Kremlin. This narrative has spread, in various forms, to Western Europe, the United States, South America, and to Central Asia. From the view linguistic anthropology provides, this presentation will address how transnational narratives like Orbán’s thrive. It will investigate how they are maintained (and sometimes rejected) by political actors and citizens alike. It will address what the political and social costs of maintaining such narratives might entail for states like Hungary in the long run.
About the Speaker: Jessica Storey-Nagy (PhD IU Bloomington) is a linguistic and political anthropologist who studies political discourse in Hungary, Eastern Europe, and the European Union. Broadly, she is interested in multimodal political communication, talk about conflict and war, disinformation, semiotics, nationalism, and how political talk affects notions of identity and belonging.
This event is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45.