Hegemony in Action: Crafting New Common Sense at Orbán's Hungarian Academy of Arts (2011-2023)

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction of a right-wing hegemony through the lens of its intellectuals. I examine the Hungarian Academy of Arts (HAA) [Magyar Művészeti Akadémia], a flagship institution in Orbán's Hungary that has not been previously researched. To understand the Academy's mental and material processes in tandem, I mobilize Antonio Gramsci's concept of common sense. With this concept, I approach the Academy's "popular conception of the world". With the help of ethnographic methods, I aim to study the heart of the state and analyze its power relations. The article argues that as much as the political economy of the regime, its ideas are full of paradoxes. These controversies do not stem from incompetence but from the contradictions of capitalism. Therefore, the article points out that the ideas of right-wing intellectuals are far from a coherent ideology. Institutions such as HAA consolidate these ideas into a messy mixture of common sense. In the case of HAA, the organizing principle of common sense is the feeling that right-wing artists were oppressed before Orbán returned to power in 2010, but they can now fulfill their vocation. By emphasizing how the beliefs and ideas of right-wing actors fuel an authoritarian capitalist regime, I bring three contributions to the literature. First, I demonstrate how the worldview of HAA is rooted in the past inequalities of post-socialism. Second, I go beyond the image of top-down propaganda and stress that the incoherence of common sense emerges from the regime's internalized contradictions. Third, I draw attention to the role of the state and its intellectuals in orchestrating the common sense to normalize the local regime of capital accumulation. As a result, the article claims that right-wing intellectuals should be neither demonized nor idealized, but their ideas must be considered along with their pasts and the regime they craft.