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Analyzing the newly emerged Trianon cult, this article argues that the current wave of memory politics became the engine of new forms of nationalism in Hungary constituted by extremist and moderate right-wing civic and political actors. Following social anthropologists Gingrich and Banks, the term neonationalism will be applied and linked with the concept “mythomoteur” of John Armstrong and Anthony D. Smith, emphasizing the role of preexisting ethno-symbolic resources or mythomoteurs in the resurgence of nationalism. Special attention will be given to elites who play a major role in constructing new discourses of the nation and seek to control collective memories, taking their diverse intentions, agendas, and strategies specifically into consideration. This “view from above” will be complemented with a “view from below” by investigating the meanings that audiences give to and the uses they make of these memories. Thus, the analysis has three dimensions: it starts with the analysis of symbols, topics, and arguments applied by public Trianon discourses; it continues with the analysis of everyday perceptions, memory, and identity concerns; and finally ends with an anthropological interpretation of memory politics regarding a new form of nationalism arising in the context of propelling and mainstreaming populist right-wing politics. The main argument of this article is that although the Hungarian Trianon cult, identified as national mythomoteur, invokes a historical trauma, it rather speaks to current feelings of loss and disenfranchisement, offering symbolic compensation through the transference of historical glory, pride, and self-esteem within a mythological framework. This article is part of a larger effort to understand the cultural logic and social support of new forms of nationalism in Hungary propelled by the populist far right.

This is the first issue of the new journal Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics (IEEJSP). As our point of departure, we take a timely subject for European societies: the far-right phenomenon as related to mainstream politics and discourse. Instead of relying exclusively on views of radical developments prevalent in the field of politics, our aim was to bring together insights from sociology, social anthropology, political science and media studies, as well as from discourse and network analysis, and integrate them into a comparative and interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon. As far as the investigated topics are concerned, special attention has been paid to the interplay of media and politics, the discursive aspects of politics, and the role of cultural commodification beyond ideologies on the supply side as well as recent developments explaining increasing interest on the demand side.Most of the contributions are empirical case studies, the variety and diverse methodology of which is one virtue of our collection, but comparative and theoretical papers also contribute to the understanding of the global socio-political processes which are the framework of the mainstreaming effect 1 . But before presenting the articles of this issue, as introductory essays usually do, we would like to expand our own position on the topic. We begin by highlighting the significance of the discursive criminalization of migrants and minorities by Europe's far-right politics and media, as also adopted by many actors in mainstream media and politics. Presented as collective threats, the racialized "others" legitimize another set of discourses intended to reassert or re-sanctify native communities, especially the homogeneous perception of nation based on ethnicity and cultural values. This is what we claim in the second part of our essay, and we support this with predominantly Danish and Hungarian examples. Finally we conclude by claiming that neo-nationalism and neo-racism are the main engines of the process that we call 'mainstreaming the extreme'. Our statements lean

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The year 1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the cascading wave of revolution that swept across Europe in the spring of 1848. Like all great upheavals (indeed like all great events, personalities, or works of art), the revolutions of 1848 do not contain their own meaning. Powerful cultural objects-whether events, persons, or cultural creations-are always ambiguous: indeed that ambiguity, according to Griswold (1987a) is a key part of what constitutes their power. Such objects always offer rich and varied, though not unlimited, interpretive possibilities. It is now widely agreed that the meanings of such cultural objects are not fixed, given, or uniquely ascertainable, but instead are created and recreated in different times, places, and settings through a series of "interactions" or "negotiations" between the objects and their socially situated, culturally equipped, and often politically engaged interpreters (Hall 1980; Griswold 1987a, 1987b; Liebes and Katz 1996). In the last fifteen years, commemorations-and social memory generallyhave emerged as a fruitful site for studying this interactive production of meaning. That the past is constructed and reconstructed to suit the needs and purposes of each succeeding generation; that even personal memory is a thoroughly social and cultural construct; that collective or social memory is not only constructed but chronically contested; that the "search for a usable past" (Commager 1967) involves not only highly selective memory and a good deal of for-700