5 Mar 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, Features, Hungary
This article first appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
The year 2025 was the “Dirty Fidesz” summer for Hungary. This was the chant that could be heard at events across the country, from small concerts to the international Sziget Festival. When the anti-government slogan first emerged in 2023, it was primarily heard at concerts by musicians openly criticising the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
By 2025, it had reached the mainstream media.
In January, Hungary’s most popular rapper and former reality TV star Majka released his music video Csurran, cseppen (Drip by Drip). The song tells the story of a corrupt dictator from an imaginary country called Bindzsisztán (literally translated as Kleptistan), who having been given a truth potion confesses in an interview about how he took over the country.
“I can survive anything; the laws are written on me,” sings the autocratic leader, as heaps of banknotes fly through the air.
The video went viral within a day, reaching 28 million views by October in a country of 9.5 million. Without any direct references, viewers quickly drew parallels between the fictional state and Orbán’s Hungary.
Other Hungarian musicians used even stronger language. The 23-year-old Hungarian superstar Azhariah, who sold out the 60,000-seat Puskás Stadium for three consecutive nights, angered government supporters when in an Instagram post, he called Fidesz voters “mentally and intellectually retarded creatures”, for which he later apologised.
However, it is not only musicians who are expressing deep anti-government sentiments in Hungary. Tension and frustration are particularly high among the young generation, who feel that they have not been able to express their views through elections for a very long time.
“We don’t like what we see,” explained Eszter, a 19-year-old university student from Budapest. She believes that the country’s problems are complex, but that Gen Z is particularly affected by the high cost of living, inflation, and social issues.
“The healthcare system is in ruins, the education system does more harm than good, wages are ridiculous, and it’s almost impossible to buy a flat unless you were born into wealth,” she told Index.
Eszter also believes that young people in Hungary lack a vision for the future. Her words are supported by demographic data. According to 2024 figures, 546,000 Hungarians are officially registered as living in other EU countries, or the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway. If we add the USA, Canada, South America and Israel, the estimates are around 700,000. This is around 7% of the population.
The figures are even more alarming when we consider the so-called active population, defined as people between the ages of 15-64. In 2023, there were already a total of 420,000 people in this age group living abroad, which is having an impact on the Hungarian economy.
According to researcher Ágnes Hárs, the exodus is primarily driven by the cost of living crisis, low wages and high inflation. Younger generations are also leaving for western Europe to study, as an increasing proportion of students in Hungary now have to pay for their higher education. The situation is made worse by the fact that 21 Hungarian universities have been banned from participating in EU-funded Erasmus exchange programmes because they were taken over by public trusts filled with people from Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.
According to a recent survey by Fay Andras Foundation, only six out of 100 Gen Z Hungarians are certain to stay in the country. A staggering 57% of young people envisage living abroad within ten years. Of those who leave, the majority are unlikely to return.
For an increasing number of people, the economy is only one of the problems. Since Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010, he has steadily undermined the rule of law and democratic norms. Corruption has become rampant, prompting the EU to suspend a significant portion of the funds allocated to the country. The government has also started a culture war to dismantle the independence of academic institutions, including universities. When teachers at several secondary schools began acts of civil disobedience in response to restrictions on strikes, the authorities fired more than a dozen of those who participated.
Fidesz has also become increasingly vocal in its opposition to the LGBTQ+ community, and the introduction of a new law banning Pride parades has sparked a backlash at universities. Pázmány Péter Catholic University initiated disciplinary proceedings against three psychology lecturers who, after the ban was announced, published a newspaper article supporting the view that a loving family is more important to children than the gender of their parents, using scientific evidence. Ultimately, all three resigned.
But Gen Z are fighting back. In June, over 200,000 people defied the Pride ban and marched in Budapest to celebrate freedom. Among them was 20-year-old Zsolt, who was attending a public demonstration for the first time.
“I don’t want to care about politics, but I have no choice. It has become part of my life, whether I like it or not. Fidesz’s politics and ideology are everywhere, including my school and among my friends. Half of my classmates went on to study at foreign universities, and although I stayed, I increasingly feel suffocated by the atmosphere around me,” he said.
With fewer and fewer spaces available for young people to express their political opinions, music festivals and the ballot box are all that remain.
Opinion polls currently show that the new opposition party Tisza, headed by Péter Magyar, has a steady lead ahead of general elections in Hungary in 2026. Magyar, who is the ex-husband of Orbán’s former Justice Minister, Judit Varga, was once a beneficiary of the system. Now he is hoping to topple the regime.
Unlike Orbán, a 62-year-old grandfather who reportedly still uses an 18-year-old Nokia phone, Magyar is dynamic, sporty and stylish, and is particularly popular with younger people. Opinion polls show that Fidesz has fewer and fewer voters the younger the age group, being especially unpopular among 18–29-year-olds. According to a Medián survey published in June this year, Gen Z have almost no personal memories of any other prime minister besides Viktor Orbán, yet 58% still support the Tisza Party.
Fidesz is well aware of this and has been searching for a way to win back young people. Initially, they tried to engage with young people on social media, particularly TikTok. They are now also offering economic incentives: such as exempting people under 25 from paying personal income tax and introducing extremely favourable loans to help them buy their first home.
Some high-profile government politicians have also dismissed criticism by saying that it is only natural for younger generations to rebel against the system. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén argued that young people in Hungary have never received more support than they do under the current government.
What they probably don’t realise is that Gen Z is not just after money. They also want a better quality of life and freedom.
“These loans aren’t free. We’re just getting into debt while our education and healthcare systems are failing. The government can’t find common ground with young people – they’re on a different wavelength – but that’s fine by us. Let’s keep it that way,” said Zsolt.
We can be the change
Hungarian pop star Marci Mehringer reflects on being a Gen Zer in Budapest today
Pop star Marci Mehringer, who rose to fame on X Factor in 2021
I often wonder how much my perception reflects reality from my somewhat privileged position. I can at least do what I love. This in itself is a luckier situation than most young people find themselves in. Nevertheless, I think our problems are exactly the same. We have always lived in democracy, and we never thought that we would have to fight for this freedom again.
As dystopian as it may sound, I think most young people feel this way. They feel that they have to raise their voices over and over again so that they can live their lives the way they want to. Even though – on paper – this is everyone’s right.
The biggest problem facing young people today – apart from the housing and livelihood crisis – is perhaps that politics has permeated everything in Hungary. Our politicians have forgotten that they are there for us and not the other way around. Young people have not. And as they have nothing to lose, they can be braver and more honest than anyone else. Even if it sometimes means making less considered decisions.
In Hungary, life has become overly politicised. This is why, even at such a young age, we are so deeply involved in certain issues and want to bring about change, primarily in people’s attitudes. But what young people really want goes beyond material goods and our livelihood. We want to live in a united society that is not filled with so much unnecessary hatred.
We do not want to live in a country where people condemn each other’s views, Hungarians turn against each other, and our corrupt politicians divide us in order to retain power. We want an accepting, European Hungary where everyone can live together in happiness and peace, regardless of their background. In short, young people want a slightly more collectivist and accepting society.
All this may sound utopian, but this is how we were raised. Therefore, I am not asking whether change will come, but when it will come and how long we will have to tolerate those responsible for this chaos.
I am also convinced that these principles are present not only in young people, but in the older generation too, they just find it more difficult to express them. Perhaps the younger a person is, the easier it is for them to want to effect change. After all, isn’t it customary to rebel when you’re young?
In any case, the future of our country is in our hands. We will live here for another 50 or 60 years and it is our duty to rebuild the country from the current ruins, creating a place where what has been said will be second nature to future generations.
I believe that we can be the change; that we can be the ones to put our hearts and minds in order for the greater good.
Marci Mehringer is a Hungarian musician who rose to fame on the 2021 series of X Factor. He regularly sells out concert halls in Budapest with his band, Mehringer. His songs often criticise the current Hungarian regime and highlight the issues facing younger generations
19 Feb 2026 | Features
Short-form video is the medium of our time. The average teenager will spend hours a day on TikTok and Instagram reels, which are the main sources of news and entertainment for the 18-24 demographic.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, administers the most important algorithm in the English-speaking world. He is undoubtedly as consequential as David Zaslav or Rupert Murdoch – the CEO of Warner Bros and the owner of News Corp – but his name rarely makes headlines.
On Mosseri’s Instagram, videos proven to hold users’ attention will be shown to more people. “Watch-time” is the basic currency of his algorithm. This has forced creators, many of whom earn a living on the platform, to abide by a golden formula: hook, secondary hook, payoff.
The algorithm has spawned an entire coaching industry in which aspiring influencers pay veteran creators for crash courses in perfecting the formula. Each course teaches more or less the same thing: promise the viewer an answer to a question, keep promising, then answer at the end. Better yet, don’t answer it – promise to answer it in the next video.
Where watch-time is the quantitative component of these algorithms, “trends” are the qualitative. If a particular word, image or sound appears to be trending among a certain data demographic, unrelated content will be algorithmically choked out of that demographic’s feed. This forces creators to cluster their content around proven trends.
A trend is never a story. It is always a concept or feeling that can be immediately communicated within three seconds, because it is generally understood that creators have only three seconds to hook users before they scroll away. As influential creator coach Dominik Rieger will often remark: “The viewer must immediately know ‘This is for me’.”
When Sean “Diddy” Combs trends, as he often does, it is never regarding a piece of evidence or a development in one of his trials. What is, on paper, a story about sexual coercion and exploitation of power is translated by the algorithm into a static portrait: a shame-faced Puff Daddy slick with baby oil. Searching “Diddy” will take you to a trove of baby oil related brainrot, and barely a single piece of factual reporting. Diddy’s actions did not create a story to be followed but a crude vignette to be gawked at.
When US president Donald Trump’s shocking birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein was published by The Wall Street Journal, it did not become a major trend on TikTok or Instagram because the only way to parse the story was by reading the letter itself, which takes more than three seconds. As far as the algorithm is concerned, if an event’s essence cannot be compressed into a three-second span, it may as well have never happened. The proliferation of short-form video has created a media environment structurally hostile to sequential reasoning.
Young people’s attention is guided by an ever-narrowing algorithmic spotlight. Stories that are too big to be rendered by the spotlight are able to bask in pitch darkness and the people we allow to control the algorithms are not interested in changing that. In fact, Mosseri has been open about his efforts to speed up trends: “I want us to be better at trends. It takes still too long for things to pop on Instagram.”
The political implications of this media environment are clear. If short-form video platforms continue to transmute real-world events into less-than-superficial spectacles, the rich and powerful need not manually censor anything. If all chains of cause and effect have found their terminus in the platform algorithms, and if public consciousness is held inert by the same three-second hooks, what will be worth censoring?
18 Feb 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, News, United Kingdom
Each generation has its resentments and irritations with the previous one. The baby boomers rebelled against post-war austerity, and their fury fuelled the student revolutions that swept the world in 1968. In some senses, they were the lucky ones. In the UK, free higher education and cheap housing made the boomers rich and comfortable. My own peers, Generation X, sneered at their smug complacency as we were hit by recession, the Poll Tax and Thatcherism. But some also benefitted from the unleashing of the free market, or rather the housing market. The millennials that followed were the first digital natives. They were hopeful and idealistic, but they were also the first generation to be saddled with crippling student debt.
These generations had little in common, but one thing they rarely felt, in the West at least, was silenced.
At the launch event for our Gen Z edition of Index on Censorship at the University of Essex recently it was striking how many ways the panellists felt their voices had been muffled and contained, if not outright censored. The speakers at the event (Has Gen Z Been Silenced On and Off Campus) could not have been more diverse, but they each felt restrictions on their free expression keenly. Sariah Lake, head of editorial at Essex Student Union’s Rebel Media said while she recognised that in some parts of the world, young people’s voices were being genuinely censored, for her the key issue was the influence of social media. “We are losing focus, we are getting distracted, we are just going to repost things,” she said. “Overcoming distraction, connecting with the real world, connecting with originality is what we can do to maintain freedom of speech.”
Adil Zawahir, an Indian lawyer working on a master’s degree in human rights law, said the situation was different for overseas students. “In the West, and the UK in particular, the curtailment of speech is not due to a fear of repression, it is more because of the fear of social ostracization and the anxiety you may feel after you’ve spoken out.” He added that international students have a double problem. “We share the social anxiety, but in addition to that, every time we think about speaking out, in the back of our minds is our status in this country. It is a temporary status. We are always subject to what the government decides for us.”
For Yelyzabeta Buriak, a journalism student from Ukraine who has written about her experience for the latest edition of Index, her situation as a refugee from a war zone brought with it extra concerns and restrictions. She said she avoided discussing the topic of Ukraine altogether for the first year in this country. “I’ve been carrying a feeling of guilt: for being safe here while my parents and friends are still in Ukraine in a very dangerous area,” she said. “You have this feeling of guilt, and you are always careful with words. You think ten times before saying something.” Sometimes, according to Buriak, the biggest silences are not caused by the law or university policy. “Sometimes it is self-censorship, sometimes it is fear, guilt and online judgement and sometimes its is paperwork and systems.”
An important reminder of the wider international context was provided by Merick Niyongabo, President of the Politics Society at Essex, who celebrated the Gen Z revolutions in Nepal, Bulgaria and Kenya but also pointed to the internet shutdowns being used across the world to silence dissent. “It’s important we raise the voices of those who are not being heard, the voices of those in Iran and Russia, who are going through repression, but not able to publish what they are writing or express their views because of censorship.”
A launch event for the Index on Censorship Gen Z issue was also held at Liverpool John Moores University, where the students mainly discussed a campaign to make LJMU a “Pro-Choice Campus”. A report of the event can be found on the Mersey News Live website, which is run by students at the university.
The event at University of Essex was to launch the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
17 Feb 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, Features, Spotlight, Ukraine, Volume 54.04 Winter 2025
This article first appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
For Ukraine’s Gen Z, the war has created two kinds of silence: one under sirens and the other under guilt.
Those who stayed live through air raid alerts and numb routine; those who left watch from abroad – scrolling through updates, unsure what to say to the people they love back home. Both carry their version of survival, and both are having to learn to speak to each other again.
In Dnipro, Dasha Buldenko, 19, says she has grown used to fear.
“You get used to the sirens, you get used to the explosions. You stop feeling anything,” she tells me. “We live in totally different worlds now.”
For her, life has narrowed to a quiet persistence: staying, coping and enduring without expecting understanding from those who left Ukraine.
“People who moved abroad forget where they came from,” she says, frustrated by what she calls the “pity” tone of returning friends.
“They see a different world, different opportunities. We don’t have those because of war.”
Mark Neshta, a 21-year-old student at the University of Essex in the UK, describes another kind of distance: the one between empathy and experience.
“You just can’t truly understand how it feels,” he admits. “At the beginning, I was deeply depressed that my country was going through such horror while I was sitting safely 1,000km away.”
He calls it “a strange cognitive dissonance” when “you’re physically abroad but all you care about, all you live by, is news from Ukraine. You consume it only through the internet or through conversations with loved ones who stayed”.
Over time, that guilt has turned into a determination to define himself more clearly. Living abroad, he says, has made him think about what it means to represent Ukraine.
“When people ask where I’m from, I want them to see more than war, to see culture, history, identity.”
He even switched to speaking Ukrainian, though he grew up speaking Russian. “I don’t think living abroad is what caused that,” he says. “It was the war itself.”
Both voices show the same wound from opposite sides.
Those inside Ukraine hide their pain behind fatigue. Those outside hide their guilt behind activism or composure. When they talk, it is not politics that divides them but the need to censor emotion, to sound strong, to sound grateful, to avoid hurting each other with what the other cannot understand.
What does that do to identity? For Dasha, being Ukrainian “just is”.
She says: “We are all Ukrainians; we stand for our own, regardless of language barriers.”
For her, it is a fact of staying and surviving. For Mark, it is something to articulate and explain. One holds on by living it, the other by translating it.
In the end, both sides are searching for the same thing: to be understood.
“People just need to actually listen to each other,” Dasha says.
