Contents
Hungary has been on our radar for a long time. The prime minister Viktor Orbán is not an autocrat like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but he has been slowly eroding his society’s democratic institutions and helping his Fidesz party allies take them over.
It’s meant not only that power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires, but that the public space for freedom of expression and pluralistic thought has been narrowed.
President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement has been fascinated with the Orbán model and how Hungary became what Orbán himself has described as an illiberal democracy. Many powerful MAGA figures would not only like the USA but also other countries in Europe to follow suit. Orbán is an ally who wants to weaken the principles on which the European project was founded.
Freedom of expression globally seems further away than ever as Israel, the USA and Iran are locked in a war spreading across the Gulf states. But we will continue to write about what is happening in the increasingly contested world of censorship.
Finally back to Hungary. The country goes to the polls in April and the opposition leader Péter Magyar is tipped to win, but we all fear the illiberal model is unlikely to die anytime soon.
Up Front
The monster unleashed: Sally Gimson
Hungary’s nightmare politics threaten to engulf Europe
The Index: Mark Stimpson
The latest in the world of free expression, including deep dives on Iran
Features
From police to Pussy Riot: Olga Borisova
A Russian activist recounts her path to dissent
Hot off the prison press: Poppy Askham
Mothers of jailed protesters are making unusual paper rounds in Georgia
Kill the messenger: Salil Tripathi
Angry mobs in Bangladesh are putting journalists’ lives in danger
Challenging the lion: Danson Kahyana
A Tanzanian cartoonist goes into hiding
Taking out the opposition: Kaya Genç
Social scientists exposing the Turkish president are under attack
I can imagine going anywhere: Ai Weiwei, an artist without a country: JP O'Malley, Ai Weiwei
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei knows a thing or two about censorship
Jailed for wearing a T-shirt: Sophie Wilkinson
When Moroccan authorities took offence to the slogan “Allah is lesbian”
The monster unleashed
Light at the end of the tunnel?: Viktória Serdült
Encrypted messages are piling up in Hungarian journalists’ inboxes
Orbán rewrites the Habsburg fairy tale: Victor Sebestyen
A careful re-crafting of the past is bolstering nationalism in Hungary
Hungary leads the far-right charge on free speech: Martin Bright
Far-right hardliners unite in Brussels, with an Orbán-linked institution playing host
Europe worries a lot about Trump. Trump doesn't think about Europe at all: Evan Sandsmark
Is Trump’s America trying to destabilise Europe?
Orbán's anti-culture club: Katie Dancey-Downs
Book censorship in Hungary is just the beginning of the attack on LGBTQ+ people
The island of freedom: Mark Stimpson
A ticket to the Hungarian music festival where free expression is celebrated
Dissent is in the icy air: Connor O'Brien
Index, a camera and the streets of Budapest
Orbanology: Márton Hegedűs
A new cartoon pulling apart the politics of division
Print your own news: Connor O'Brien
In Hungary, Samizdat is back in circulation
Comment
Don't let labels mask the narrative: Akin Ajayi
An argument against using the word “genocide”
Unfinished revolutions: Roshaan Khattak
Exploring the links between Kenya and Balochistan
Indian cinema: propaganda at the pictures: Nilosree Biswas
The rise of anti-Muslim films
No unflattering portraits of the past, please: Jemimah Steinfeld
A global view of the countries sanitising history
Finding Annie on my mind: Sarah Hagger-Holt
The transformative moment of discovering a book about lesbians in the library
Culture
Escape to the woods: Alexandra Domenech
Russian theatre goes to the countryside
Like father like daughter: Katie Dancey-Downs
Kurt Vonnegut’s daughter Nanette is taking on the state of Utah
Growing up Russified: Connor O’Brien, Nina Kuryata
A Ukrainian author takes us back to her childhood, in this exclusive translation
Poems in the darkness: Mark Stimpson, Mohamed Tadjadit
Poetry by the jailed Algerian human rights activist in English for the first time
Totalitarianism on trial: Xue Yiwei, Jeffrey Wasserstrom
A chilling tale from China, published exclusively in Index
Should charities and music mix?: Rich Clarke
The inside track on War Child's new album
