The outsourcing of dirty tricks is becoming standard practice for our political parties. The PR experts within the campaigning teams seem to thing that Hungarians are so dim-witted that they will fail to guess the origins of a dirty-tricks campaign if there is no party slogan.
This was how Magyar Vizsla, a fantasy civil society organisation, came into being. The print quality of their publications is so low, their targets - Gyurcsány and Kóka - so impossibly concentrated, their bias so fierce, that the overall effect is damaging to Fidesz. Let's ignore the question of precisely why corrected copies of Magyar Vizsla were faxed from the party's headquarters to the Post Office, or how it is that an almost unknown civil society organisation managed to accumulate the cash for huge advertising hordings, millions of copies of Vizsla and a professional advertising campaign - the total sum must run into nine digits.
The president of the organisation distributing Vizsla gives most bizarre answers when asked about party affiliation. "We examine the activities of any government in power. What can we do if it happens to be this one?" said Éva Horváth, a former district chair of the largest opposition party. It would be good if the people behind Madam President would notice that the man on the street (the famous "undecided voter") does not like to be taken for a complete idiot, by, for example, claiming that Orbán's shock troops are an independent civil organisation. Were I a local Fidesz acitivist, I'd start to worry. "Are they so hopeless up in HQ that they can't even find an unaffiliated shill?"
But to be fair, we should point out that the Socialists are using similar approaches. They are playing the role of the Christian knight, intoxicated with moral outrage. In opposition, however, they too came up with printed works of the dirtiest kind.
Who would believe, for example, that The Victor, Péter Kende's 'biography' of Orbán, had nothing to do with the Socialists? We know very well that the Socialists played the lead role in promoting and distributing the book. The author - said to be working on The Victor II - appeared as guest of honour at the party's congress, doubtless improving the sales figures. Ron Werber's scandalous, civil war-style tactics certainly prepared the soil for Magyar Vizsla. Fidesz concluded from the Left's victory in 2002 that there is no boomerang effect in opposition - the techniques work, the links just need to be hidden.
There is a need for genuinely independent groups that would assess the parties' manifestos objectively in advance of the elections. But these manoeuvres by the party campaign teams discredit the work even of genuinely impartial, neutral organisations. For a long time now, the civil sector has been becoming more politicised.
But there's no need for hypocrisy. Negative campaigning and black propaganda are integral to the politics of our time. We can't combat it with legal means, only by rejecting it as a society. (The last vote has been cast long before a court can hand down a ruling). We can do one thing: rather than trusting in political propaganda dressed up in civilian clothes, we should believe our own eyes, and listen to our reason.
This was how Magyar Vizsla, a fantasy civil society organisation, came into being. The print quality of their publications is so low, their targets - Gyurcsány and Kóka - so impossibly concentrated, their bias so fierce, that the overall effect is damaging to Fidesz. Let's ignore the question of precisely why corrected copies of Magyar Vizsla were faxed from the party's headquarters to the Post Office, or how it is that an almost unknown civil society organisation managed to accumulate the cash for huge advertising hordings, millions of copies of Vizsla and a professional advertising campaign - the total sum must run into nine digits.
The president of the organisation distributing Vizsla gives most bizarre answers when asked about party affiliation. "We examine the activities of any government in power. What can we do if it happens to be this one?" said Éva Horváth, a former district chair of the largest opposition party. It would be good if the people behind Madam President would notice that the man on the street (the famous "undecided voter") does not like to be taken for a complete idiot, by, for example, claiming that Orbán's shock troops are an independent civil organisation. Were I a local Fidesz acitivist, I'd start to worry. "Are they so hopeless up in HQ that they can't even find an unaffiliated shill?"
But to be fair, we should point out that the Socialists are using similar approaches. They are playing the role of the Christian knight, intoxicated with moral outrage. In opposition, however, they too came up with printed works of the dirtiest kind.
Who would believe, for example, that The Victor, Péter Kende's 'biography' of Orbán, had nothing to do with the Socialists? We know very well that the Socialists played the lead role in promoting and distributing the book. The author - said to be working on The Victor II - appeared as guest of honour at the party's congress, doubtless improving the sales figures. Ron Werber's scandalous, civil war-style tactics certainly prepared the soil for Magyar Vizsla. Fidesz concluded from the Left's victory in 2002 that there is no boomerang effect in opposition - the techniques work, the links just need to be hidden.
There is a need for genuinely independent groups that would assess the parties' manifestos objectively in advance of the elections. But these manoeuvres by the party campaign teams discredit the work even of genuinely impartial, neutral organisations. For a long time now, the civil sector has been becoming more politicised.
But there's no need for hypocrisy. Negative campaigning and black propaganda are integral to the politics of our time. We can't combat it with legal means, only by rejecting it as a society. (The last vote has been cast long before a court can hand down a ruling). We can do one thing: rather than trusting in political propaganda dressed up in civilian clothes, we should believe our own eyes, and listen to our reason.