On Destructiveness

In April 2022, Hungary is going to elect a new parliament. Lacy Kornitzer takes this as an opportunity to reckon with Viktor Orbán’s politics. The picture he paints of the increasingly autocratic conditions in the country is bleak – there is no more room for the colours of the rainbow.

Knowledgeable and polemical, Lacy Kornitzer outlines the appalling developments of recent years in 49 vignettes: the rapid decline of democratic culture and the impoverishment of public discourse, the dramatic undermining of the freedom of press, the corruption of the government, rampant anti-Semitism and the stigmatisation of minorities.

»›The Hungarian understanding of culture does not distinguish between history, which is subject to political responsibility, and fate, over which man has no influence.‹ That this distinction is possible ... is most impressively demonstrated by Kornitzer’s ›interference‹.« Mladen Gladic, DIE WELT

»On Destructiveness isn’t an instance of ›Westsplaining‹, nor polemics or political analysis, it would have been impossible for … anyone on the ›outside‹ to write it like this. These are snapshots. The author has been observing Orbán’s politics for nine years … We can see that in this book. And we suffer with Hungary, as a European, as a human.« Katharina Schmitz, der Freitag

»With his sharp essay On Destructiveness, [Lacy Kornitzer] not only exposes bad state of affairs of the Orbán regime, but also puts his finger on numerous derailments and wounds of Hungarian history.« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung