This is what it looks like when the company that took over and shut down the biggest daily paper in the country is totally not owned by a government-friendly oligarch.

Image: 444.hu Headline reads: “Viktor Orbán: It is worth to work in Hungary” 

These are the front pages of the local papers the day Mediaworks, their owner, was totally not taken over by government interests. They just happen to feature the prime minister and repeat his mantra about the work-based economy – so that eventually we will all believe it. Because we don’t see anything else anymore.

Those who wish to explain away every authoritarian move as innocent are plenty. It is very uncomfortable to admit that they are helpless – so they convince themselves that this is what they wanted anyway. Basic authoritarian mind trick.

For them, the government always offers a straw.

When Népszabadság, Hungary’s oldest and biggest daily paper was shut down overnight with its journalists locked out of their offices, for instance, the government speakers went into parrot mode and kept repeating no less than three excuses for the apologists to kindly gobble up and spit back at dinner conversations or whenever their views might be challenged.

1. That it was for economic reasons – Those who believe themselves to be free marketeers are completely disarmed by this. Doesn’t even matter whether it is true or not.
2. That it is totally not taken over by Orbán’s assigned oligarch to turn the group of papers into another pillar of the parrot media – See picture above and decide
3. That it was a communist relic anyway – This one is for simple minds who can still be spoon fed anything as long it’s “against the nasty commies”. These people even celebrate Putin, Russia or a debilitating deal to install Russian nuclear capacities in Hungary, all in the name of anti-communism.

OK, it quite likely helps that there is hardly any major media outlet anymore that is not owned by one of Orbán’s oligarchs and doesn’t do slimy, spineless propaganda, such as the above.

And I know, you cannot possibly be manipulated by what you hear. And how about what you don’t hear? Last week, a local politician called his own voters nasty old bitches in an open mike incident – and those local voters haven’t even heard of it. The above mentioned local media simply forgot to mention it.

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