Far-Right Cultural Politics in a Changing Global Order: The Case of Hungary

Talk by Kristóf Nagy (Central European University) in the SNAKLAB series, organized by the seeFField project in cooperation with IOS Regensburg.

This talk explores contemporary culture wars in Eastern and Southeastern Europe amid the global rise of far-right hegemonies. Focusing on cultural infrastructure—the mental and material foundations of cultural production—it examines how state-backed cultural institutions are mobilized in ideological conflicts. While much of the discourse emphasizes media and rhetoric, this talk reorients attention to the institutional and material dimensions of culture wars. At the center of the discussion is the Hungarian Academy of Arts—an emblematic institution of Hungary’s national capitalist regime—where the speaker conducted historical and ethnographic research. By integrating global political economy, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, I argue for a comparative and global framework to understand contemporary culture wars.

The talk outlines a research agenda that includes not only Eastern and Southeastern Europe (e.g., Poland, Serbia, Slovakia), but also countries like Turkey, India, and Russia, where regimes have restructured cultural institutions to support national capitalist agendas and co-opt intellectuals and artists. The talk proposes that national culture wars are shaped by global shifts—especially the decline of the US-led transatlantic order and the rise of state-centered capitalisms. Viewed through this lens, culture wars in the arts appear as responses to deglobalization and new forms of imperialism.