By now Hungary has a 12 years long history of building illiberalism in Europe. Previous articles and volumes have explored the transformations in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the country (e.g. Bozóki and Heged?s, 2018; Sata and Karolewski, 2020), trying to unravel the durability of the Orbán regime. It was found that the populist rhetoric is essential in maintaining the regime, in which the appropriation of memory politics plays a crucial role (Palonen 2018; Pet?, 2021; Csigó and Zombory, 2021). Nevertheless, so far limited attention has been paid to the analysis of spatial aspects of the Fidesz’s memory politics, albeit symbolic politics and the appropriation of symbolic landscape has been an equally important element in the political toolkit of the Fidesz party. Drawing on the literature of symbolic space appropriation in general and memory politics of the Fidesz in particular, present paper focuses on the transformation of two emblematic, centrally located squares in the capital of Hungary: the Liberty and the Kossuth Square. The analysis of the rearrangement of statues and other architectural elements illustrates how the past is employed in the present to rephrase the nation and reinstall its boundaries by designating who belongs to the nation and who is purged from the national pantheon. I argue that the interventions to/transformations of these squares inscribe the re-evaluated and distorted “official” narratives of national history into the landscape, turning these places into a hallmark of the populist rhetoric and illiberal character of Fidesz’ rule.
Mots clés : symbolic landscape|Hungary|memory politics|illiberalism|nationalism
A103881?E