This presentation analyzes the contradictory relationship between the resurgence of defensive, populist nationalism and the unfettered advancement of global, digital media in the central and eastern, postsocialist states of the European Union. I argue that this relationship is not actually paradoxical; rather, it revolves around shared fantasies, fictions and mythologies between the two phenomena. Central and Eastern Europe, a semi-peripheral region, has emerged in the past decade as a crucial resource for such political fantasies in the current stage of globalized capitalism, particularly within the Global Right’s networks. I scrutinize these processes across news media production on the one hand and fictional media production in the domestic and foreign service industries on the other hand. While my scope is regional and global as well as local, Hungarian media culture provides a particularly instructive case study of political fantasies.
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