Analysis
EU Values Foresight
Society
Viktor Orbán’s New Assault on Free Media and Civil Society
23 November 2023
The Velvet Revolution has also become a battlefield of rivalling political narratives, with billionaire and ANO party leader Andrej Babiš setting the populist agenda.
A closer look into media coverage of the ten-year (1999) and the thirty-year (2019) 17 November anniversaries shows that, first and foremost, the Velvet Revolution has become the commemoration of the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia and, in a liberal democratic view of post-1989 developments, a breaking point from the country’s communist and undemocratic past.
It wields exceptional political and what French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu referred to as “symbolic power” when discussing the influence of media content on politics and society. Moreover, the capture of the narrative surrounding the Velvet Revolution may prove useful for the unceasingly favoured populist forces attempting to return to power.