Against fake news

A very intelligent and well read friend of mine argued over dinner that it is a good thing that anyone can publish now anything online. He thought this is great because public opinion can be shaped freely, and the big tv channels and newspapers don't have too much influence on the view of people.

I heartily disagree with this. I have seen so far very few good and interesting free sources online which really pointed out anything substantial and interesting that one could not find in professional publications.
At the same time there are tens of thousands of blogs, pages, youtube channels, etc. which push conteo, horrible fake news, racism, white supremacy, scapegoating of different public figures, and so on, and so on. A lot of these people take the very simplicistic view that the government always lies and is against them, and that scientist are hacks. This is disastrous.
Most fake news propagators tread on the lack of knowledge of the average person about credible sources. Most people don't read a wide range of newspapers. They just parrot a few idiots who talk about 'the media'. As if all opinions would be the same. Anyone who reads the financial times, the nyt, the washington post, the japan times, al jazira, the russian times, RT, the times, the guardian, the süddeutche, xinghua agency releases, etc. will see very quickly that there are many-many different views and positions on almost any issue. Professional newspapers even publish confronting opinions of experts, exactly for the purposes to be fair. There is no media conspiracy, and there is no single message 'the media' is trying to get across.

Furthermore, average people imagine that what a scientist or a journalist does is just to think about something for a few minutes and then write it down. This is not how things work. Scientists do experiments, measurements, make observations, consult the work of others, double check everything. They don't question 'everything'. That's something that silly people do. Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, political analysts, physicists, biologists, etc. don't question everything: they have cooperative, big projects to which many-many well trained and honest people who make a genuine effort contribute to. Anything that gets pubished is scrutinized by a lot of other people.

There are also many confusions about professional newspapers. Proper journalists don't just write down their opinions, and they don't simply consult other newspapers. They go and talk with experts, listen to politians, read documents published by the government, institutions, judges, the army, independent researchers, universities, and so on. They interview several people who know what they are talking about. Non of the internet pundits do anything like this. Most of them don't even have an idea about what they are writing on. This is causing horrible damage. People who are spreading fake news about rising radiation levels in Fukushima, the peacefulness of Russia, the brilliance of Erdogan, the harm of vaccines, the evil nature of feminism, and so on are doing great harm to our communities. They are not spreading opinions, they are spreading base and vile falsehoods.

How to beat the FIDESZ media-machine

A very interesting thing I realized while at home in Hungary is that the currently ruling party, FIDESZ, rules simply by selling people stories. (I treat FIDESZ as the ruling party. Let's be honest, the Christian Democratic People's Party, KDNP, is just in it for the fun and does not contribute much.)

I'm not saying that the government isn't doing anything in the interest of the country. They did enact many policies and laws and they have good professional teams working on particular issues of economics, sociology, etc. There are also plenty of talented, professional people working for the Hungarian government, and in the different ministries and offices. This entry says nothing about their work. This entry is simply about how FIDESZ is securing its popularity.
And as you can guess the fact that the way the ruling party is securing its popularity is 100% disconnected from the way it is running the country - and I do not mean a few sensationalist issues, like how it deals with producing schnaps at home - is scary. I'd bet a good bottle of wine that most people who are currently voters of FIDESZ have no idea and don't care at all about FIDESZ's work on economy, on how and whether it is doing anything for the education or the health sectors, on whether it has an energy strategy, and so on. What people buy are two things: i) the image of a strong leader, and ii) the image generated that the party is perpetually in action, non-stop working for "the Hungarian people".
If we look at both of these images it is easy to see that there isn't much content behind them. Orban is an average politician who gives good speeches but hasn't managed to carry out reform in any of the significantly problematic sectors of Hungarian life - he has no idea or policy to deal with poverty, he has no clue on how to deal with the segregation of the Roma population, no view on the increasing difference between incomes in other EU countries and incomes in Hungary, no initiative on strengthening new areas of the economy, no intent of reforming the old system of healthcare that is still at work in Hungary. And he is quite insignificant at a European level. What is sold at home is an image: an image of a man who cares, who loves his country and people, who is passionate about popular issues like soccer and the strength and security of the nation. Whether Orban is really like this, we don't know of course. As with actors and TV personalities we cannot assume that politicians profess their honest opinions when they appear in public.
The image that the party is in constant action is at least true. But the image sold of the actions of the party is an image of the party as being super-effective in governing the country. Now, this is not really true. Debt is roughly at the same level as it was 5 or 7 years ago. Employment rates are better but only because masses of people have left the country and work abroad, and simultaneously the government is employing throngs of people through local councils. Meanwhile we see Janos Lazar talking 3-4-5 times a day about all they have achieved, all they are doing. And what they are doing and selling doesn't make much sense. Think of our Foreign Minister Szijjarto's rampage of insulting politicians in neighboring countries in September and October.

The opposition parties struggle to do anything against this communication. Since FIDESZ is in charge of all the state owned TV and radio channels and their supporters are running several of the main newspapers it is very easy for them to get their message through to people. I'm not suggesting that they would repress others. (At least I don't know of any particular cases.) And to be honest, the opposition still has plenty of chances to communicate. But it does not have nearly anything as powerful as the government-communication mojo. No well-selling trademark faces, no outstanding speakers (except maybe for one or two in LMP and Jobbik), and no catchy, simple and easy-to-understand message-package.

What could be done in this situation to undermine the self-generated and self-promoted credibility of FIDESZ? Well, simply ignore them. Nobody should take Orban seriously. (We shouldn't do so anyway, so even better if ignoring him is a means to a good end.) We should simply not get into the debates as the government is framing them. There have been good attempts at this. When other parties pose uncomfortable questions the government does not do anything but talks down all accusations aggressively and people who already support them like this. But what if they are ignored?
What if others can offer imaginative, serious, interesting political options? I think that part of why Jobbik is currently the second most popular party in Hungary has less to do with their far-right, nationalistic, xenophobic and militant messages, and more with the fact that they present an easy to remember and clear line that isn't hard to imagine. Most voters won't think very hard about what they hear. They won't check whether the claims of a party add up. If it is easy to believe that they do, many voters will believe that party. Of course if one thinks through what Jobbik says one is horrified and at the same time realizes that it has no basis in reality, and doesn't work. (Just think of their laughable ideas about being a 'self-reliant' economy, or their fiasco in first supporting Syria, then the rebels against Assad, and now standing firmly against supporting Syrian refugees). But their (ridiculous) fantasies are still grasping for many people.

Now, let us believe that there are better grasping and motivating, touching and interesting political pictures which we can offer. And most importantly that there are pictures which are worth offering because they are closer to the truth, to a workable economic policy and international foreign policy. The task should be to craft political scenarios that can be formed into a likeable narrative, a story voters can identify with, that we can offer instead of Jobbik's nightmare and the products of FIDESZ's illusion factory. As such a task cannot be done by the old agents and the old parties - MSZP, DK, Együtt, etc. - clearly only LMP and Jobbik stand a chance from the currently existing parties to shift towards such a story. LMP has the better chances because they haven't already ruined their reputation amongst more careful reasoners in the way Jobbik did. But a new party's rise would also be welcome - provided it has nothing to do with any of the oldies (Gyurcsány and Bajnai also count as oldies with no credibility).

The Hungarian government and the war on refugees and migrants

I have spent the last few months back at home in good old Hungary. Most Hungarians I know think that this country is the center of the universe and they are blatantly ignorant of world politics, economics, the history and culture of Hungary itself, and in general about sociological facts. In fact, most people don't give a damn about Hungary. Which is fair enough: it is insignificant on the global stage.

But this time around it was all different: for a few brief weeks the attention of the other EU countries was actually directed at Hungary, mainly due to Viktor Orban's and his governments' actions taken to discourage and to prevent refugees and migrants from entering Hungary.
Hungary is just like any other country: our politicians say different things on the international stage and during high profile visits to foreign high ranking officials from what they say at home. The same is true of how they handle the refugee-'crisis'. While in Hungary the government launched a billboard campaign against refugees already early this Spring, when PM Orban gave an interview to German newspaper Bild he talked about how sorry he feels for refugees and how he is looking for constructive solutions.
Well, he obviously hasn't found any because at the moment not a single refugee, asylum seeker, or migrant is allowed into the country through any legal channel. (This is of course technically not true: people can apply for asylum seeker status but the procedure is ridiculously slow and the results so far have been uniformly negative. Refugees might as well put their hopes on a lottery ticket rather than apply to Hungary for shelter.)
Currently the government is running a campaign to collect signatures from civilians to show that people oppose the EU's policy of distributing refugees amongst the member states. Of course a lot of Hungarians - who are either deceived, or stupid, or xenophobic, or lazy to get enough info, etc. - support this and quite a few signatures have already been collected. Furthermore, as PM Orban told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "we" don't want a multicultural society, and "we" feel very well about being patriotic (which he thinks is contrary to being liberal). I guess the PM must have been talking about himself in the royal plural, or about his family and circle of close friends. Me, many friends, and a good number of other Hungarians surely don't feel very excited about not being a multicultural country nor about being very patriotic (if that means not-being liberal).
The current new trend in the rhetoric of our primy and his aids is to suggest connections between the recent attacks in Paris and the influx of refugees and migrants. Whereas the facts are that the attacks were organized by members of a number of loosely connected and internationally established radical Islamist organizations. Organizing them must have taken time. The attackers required guns, explosives, careful planning, etc. What does our primy and his best minds come up with? That letting refugees who are fleeing from wars, and letting migrants fleeing poverty, into our country, and in the EU at all,  should be banned. Why? Because they will become terrorists and shoot more people. Not the most brilliant thinking. But we are used to that by now.
At times like this I really wish that the government should be more accountable, similarly to the way people can be held accountable within a company. If members of the government are speaking such utter rubbish why can't we fire these guys?

Frayn's 'The Tin Men'

Michael Frayn has written a funny and, according to P. G. Woodhouse, 'brilliant' book about the absurd workings of the modern university, where academia and administration are merged into a strange mutant. The Tin Men is a competent, workmanlike novel...Now, enough of this. What was it really like to read The Tin Men?

The book is short and witty, a good easy reading for long and tiring periods. Frayn's humor is great, but the novel becomes at some points monotonous. The plot doesn't propel itself forward, rather it is noticeably driven by the need to make more puns.

Some of the scenes would probably work better on film, being shorter and quicker and aided by mimicry and gestures from a good author. This is surely true of the ending of the novel, which is mostly filled with the running around of high-profile people, who are act like lunatics. Maybe in a movie one would be inclined to laugh all the way through, but during the slower experience of reading through the pages at some point one cannot resists asking the question: is this still funny? I mean, these aren't confused people, these are madman.

The lack of satisfaction I felt after finishing the book might have been caused by too high expectations on my part. I read Frayn's 'Copenhagen' with great pleasure, and that's much more the sort of work I prefer. I thought a book by him, that picks up the topics of ethics and artificial intelligence, would contain a much more sophisticated treatment of some of the main problems in these fields, even if only at the level of mentioning them in jokes.

Some of the passages where Frayn makes fun of the wannabe-writer Rowe are hilarious: Rowe begins by writing the reviews that will appear about his work first, and then goes on to write the novel itself, and subsequently commits all the mistakes typical of ambitious amateurs.

Altogether I would recommend the book, but it's not the sort of classic in humor that Douglas Adams is, nor the vivid painter of still human absurd like Joseph Heller, nor the genius of short grotesque like Istvan Orkeny, or the intellectually very fine-tuned works of Thomas Bernhard.