Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), the conservative Hungarian educational institution funded by Viktor Orbán’s rightwing government, has been expanding internationally. It opened a centre in Brussels, bought a university in Vienna and has plans for new branches in other western European cities, including London.
I did a fellowship with MCC in Budapest last year and am concerned about the institution’s expansion. Its views are closely aligned with those of Orbán, and it funds academics who disseminate Orbán’s positions. In a way, it serves to extend his influence across Europe and beyond.
MCC has tremendous financial backing, receiving more than £1.3bn in Hungarian state funding in 2020. Even for those not closely aligned with Orbán’s positions, what MCC offers can be hard to turn down. It provides funding, scholarships, housing, invitations to lavish dinners, open-bar parties, trips abroad and more.
For Hungarians, especially rural Hungarians, social mobility can be difficult, and MCC has the power to pluck you from obscurity and elevate you to the international playing field. That’s what they offered me: the chance to begin a career in journalism, the means to live in a comfortable Budapest apartment. However, the institution expects alignment to its rightwing politics in return.
A large reason I accepted the fellowship was because MCC offers to help publish work through its international contacts, but I found that this assistance appeared conditional. The fellowship was only helpful if I wrote about the topics that my MCC-affiliated research mentors suggested. These were mostly subjects that would bolster Orbán’s political positions. For example, a piece contrasting the circumstances in which Ukrainian and Syrian refugees came to the Hungarian border. They wanted me to retroactively defend Orbán’s controversial decision to not admit refugees in 2015.
The three other fellows on my programme and I were asked to attend lectures about Hungarian history and politics, which were often given by members of Orbán’s Fidesz party. The lectures were meant to give us the contextual knowledge to discuss Hungarian current events, but this context was provided with a distinctly pro-Fidesz tilt. As a Hungarian American, well versed in Hungarian history, I recognised what they were doing. Although not everyone did.
One of the American fellows in my programme, who had never been to Hungary before, published articles that relied heavily on information from our lectures. I remember one lecturer railed against sanctions on Russian oil. Shortly after, one of my colleagues published a piece arguing that Hungary was acting fairly by continuing to buy Russian oil.
To me, this felt like priming Americans to publish articles into the English-language media that furthered Orbán’s political causes. There are MCC fellows from France, England, Germany and more, who produce this type of writing in their respective languages. They propagate Orbán’s positions to an audience in their home nations. A school may teach from a specific position, but it should encourage students to express their varying viewpoints. In my experience, this was not the reality at MCC.
I didn’t take the fellowship to write state-sponsored flattery, so I continued researching the topics I was interested in, primarily political corruption and ethnic tensions in eastern Europe. Once, when discussing my article ideas with an MCC administrator, she warned me repeatedly to “be careful”.
After going back and forth with MCC about their politically motivated edits to my work, I took to publishing my writing independently. I focused my articles on issues outside Hungary in hopes of protecting myself from any trouble. A friend at MCC told me that my work was being monitored. I lived with a constant fear that became debilitating at times. Twice I had panic attacks after publishing articles.
There was a period when I would leave my phone in my bag when talking to friends, scared it would be targeted with spyware like the investigative reporter, and my friend, Szabolcs Panyi’s was. It is widely believed the Hungarian government – which was outed for buying Pegasus spyware – was responsible. These were overblown concerns, I was overestimating my importance, but this is the climate of fear affecting journalists in Hungary.
When it was all over, several other fellows in the same programme as me were offered lucrative positions at MCC-affiliated institutions. These fellows had furthered MCC’s cause and were rewarded for it.
Toeing Orbán’s line can bring substantial rewards. His Fidesz party is estimated to control between 70% and 80% of the domestic media in Hungary. Many of the country’s universities have been placed under the control of Fidesz allies. That is part of its system of domestic influence. I believe MCC is extending that influence into other countries.
MCC acts as if it speaks for Hungary, as if the political positions it pushes are synonymous with the country itself. With its international expansion, I fear the realities of Hungary will be further muted to international audiences. Hungary is much more than MCC, Orbán and far-right politics.
The international expansion of MCC is an opportunity for more people to be swayed by this narrow view. As the institution grows, more people will hitch themselves to this ideological wagon because they are financially motivated to do so. It’s a powerful tool for far-right propaganda, and it really might be coming to a city near you.
Bence X Szechenyi is a master’s student at Columbia University School of Journalism. He was previously a Fulbright scholar in Budapest, Hungary
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