The Art of Insight

Chapter 14The Public Intellectual

with Attila Bátorfy

Figure 14.1: Screenshots from “Names and Spaces: Street Names of Budapest”

by Attila Bátorfy and Krisztián Szabó / http://adatvizualizacio.bparchiv.hu/budapestiutcanevek/ / last accessed under April 19, 2023

Liberty is a tunnel that must be dug by hand.

—Paul B. Preciado

“I notice that many streets in Budapest were renamed during the second prime ministership of Viktor Orbán,” I told data journalist, visualization designer and professor Attila Bátorfy. We were talking about his “Names and Spaces: Street Names of Budapest” (Figure 14.1). In it, a bar graph quantifies streets that were renamed after the fall of communism. Orbán's three terms—out of four; he was reelected in 2022—are colored orange. I asked Attila, “who were those streets renamed after?” He replied: “Some named after fascists, antisemites—it was a big scandal.”

Countries where authoritarian ideologies are growing deep roots fascinate me. Hungary is among them. Since 2010, Viktor Orbán, his political allies, and the cronies and oligarchs he's cultivated have transformed the country into a postmodern kleptocractic autocracy or, as they prefer to call it, an “illiberal Christian democracy.”

In a 2016 paper, political scientist András Bozóki listed the key strategies of this type of regime. First, gaining hegemonic power by manipulating the electoral system ...