Magyar Narancs

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Magyar Narancs (Hungarian Orange in English) is a weekly liberal magazine with a strong satiric tone appearing on Thursdays in Hungary. It is informally referred to as Mancs (Paw in English) which is a joking abbreviation of the name. The language of the magazine is unique in that it uses everyday speech and not the strict language of common Hungarian journalism. It has a great effect on the Hungarian liberal-libertarian intellectual society. It includes articles mainly on politics, culture and sociology.

[edit] The name

The name is a reference to the communist-era attempt to cultivate oranges in Hungary, which failed. The climate is not suitable and the oranges didn't ripen fully, and they were almost yellow and had a sour taste. This was parodied by the movie A tanú (The Witness in English), where the only fruit from the plantation is eaten by a boy, just before being presented to the great leader. In order to salvage the situation, a lemon is used as a replacement. The leader's reaction to the substitution (It's small, yellow, bitter, but it's OURS!) gave rise to the term "Hungarian orange", which has since become a metaphor, similar to the "goulash communism" used abroad. It was used to refer to the pseudo-communism in the communist era and to the pseudo-capitalism after the country became a democracy, and other phenomena. The orange was also used as the logo by the Fidesz (currently centre-right, but started as libertarian) party, for similar reasons. This however caused confusion since Fidesz became a conservative-populist party and the magazine did not want to be identified with the changed party. To solve this, recently the orange basic colour of the magazine's headline has been changed to yellow which is also the actual colour of the "Hungarian orange", a lemon. (This however is not visible on the website cited below)