Jakub Jaraczewski

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

Their impact could be felt at every stage of the new political resistance forming, though it was stronger in Serbia, given the pluralist, dispersed nature of the Student List compared with the much more centralised, leader-based TISZA. Still, young voters were a key element for both.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

In both countries, the opposition ran heavily on the platform of transparency, accountability and asset recovery. The last of these items, the pledge to establish new independent bodies to recover misused funds and illicitly gained wealth from corrupt politicians, is particularly noteworthy.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

Meanwhile, Orbán, his family, and his allies have been lining their pockets through a system that funnels public money, including EU funds, to a closed circle of allies and their families. The country was not merely corrupt; it was built around a system that abused public funds.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

Both catalyst events paved the way for new opposition movements - the Student List in Serbia, built out of outrage over the Novi Sad catastrophe, and TISZA in Hungary, assembled by Varga's maverick ex-husband, Peter Magyar. While these parties differ in character, their origin stories are similar.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

In Hungary, President Katalin Novák pardoning an official with an OK from Justice Minister Judit Varga led to a firestorm when it emerged that the beneficiary of the pardon had covered up sexual abuse at a school. Viktor Orbán panicked and immediately threw both Varga and Novák under the bus.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

The Serbian railway station catastrophe claimed 16 lives and became a symbol of a country where infrastructure is collapsing despite being renovated with fat Chinese money (Serbia went all-in on the ill-fated Belt & Road Initiative). The investigation is still ongoing, two years later.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

🇩🇪💶🇵🇱 Extremely important voice from my friend Philipp on the urgent need for Germany to, even symbolically, compensate the Polish (as in: Polish citizens, regardless of ethnicity) victims of WW2. Their numbers are dwindling, and the far right on both sides of the Oder is exploiting the issue.

AfD loves this topic because it lets them run with the "Poles keep demanding things from us, like, you know who *whistles*" spiel and Polish far-right loves this topic because they can try to wrestle the Germanophobic men in middle-life crisis away from PiS. Win-win situation.

🇩🇪💶🇵🇱 Extremely important voice from my friend Philipp on the urgent need for Germany to, even symbolically, compensate the Polish (as in: Polish citizens, regardless of ethnicity) victims of WW2. Their numbers are dwindling, and the far right on both sides of the Oder is exploiting the issue.

🇵🇱 Polish range of answers to "How are you?" ("Fine, thanks, how are you?" is not an option) - somehow it's flying (jakoś leci) - dickish but stable (chujowo ale stabilnie) - old poverty (stara bieda) - could be worse (mogło być gorzej, peak expression of Polish happiness)

Poles will deploy "could be worse" both after winning a lottery and after seeing a flood destroy their house (the dog survived and the car was at the mechanic at the time)

🇵🇱 Polish range of answers to "How are you?" ("Fine, thanks, how are you?" is not an option) - somehow it's flying (jakoś leci) - dickish but stable (chujowo ale stabilnie) - old poverty (stara bieda) - could be worse (mogło być gorzej, peak expression of Polish happiness)

Ultimate CEE reverse Uno card to play against small talk Westerners bsky.app/profile/hono...

🇵🇱 Polish range of answers to "How are you?" ("Fine, thanks, how are you?" is not an option) - somehow it's flying (jakoś leci) - dickish but stable (chujowo ale stabilnie) - old poverty (stara bieda) - could be worse (mogło być gorzej, peak expression of Polish happiness)

Friendly reminder, never start small talk with us if you're not ready for the story about how Aunt Grażyna is coughing up pieces of her lung as her cancer slowly dissolves them.

🇪🇺🇮🇱 It's been 24h and I've already seen the first "European Parliament awarding the Sakharov prize to ICC is tantamount to antisemitism" take. On LinkedIn, of all places.

"Oh and what were your grand-grandparents doing back then?" Dunno, trying hard not to get randomly killed or jailed and to survive on a diet of stale bread, potatoes and beetroot, I guess.

🇪🇺🇮🇱 It's been 24h and I've already seen the first "European Parliament awarding the Sakharov prize to ICC is tantamount to antisemitism" take. On LinkedIn, of all places.

HIGHLY DEBATABLE

Kurwa

🇺🇦🇵🇱 The eternal tragedy of Ukraine is that its bench of historical heroes is so short that it leads to building a national myth based on vile people. An absolutely disgusting decision by the Lviv Oblast Council.

Then again, knowing that Światosław Szeremeta (I am deliberately using the Polish spelling here) was behind this, I am not at all surprised. The guy dedicated his life to denying the UPA crimes.