A Hungarian kids ‘football team won the Under 14 National Championship after surmounting an impressive 40-goal difference with a 43-1 victory in their very last match of the season Kerekegyháza SE and Miklós GYFE were tied at 43 points but the latter had a comfortable 40-goal advantage which virtually guaranteed its first-ever U14 football title But there is a reason why ‘virtually’ isn’t synonymous with ‘definitely’ Kerekegyháza SE scored an epic 43-1 victory over Palmonostora while Miklós GYFE only managed a 1-0 victory in their last match Miklós GYFE was getting ready to celebrate their title after the comfortable win when they got the unbelievable news that they had actually finished second The 43-1 victory is now being investigated by the Hungarian Football Federation Photo: Janosch Diggelmann/Unsplash “Then came the shock that forty-four goals were scored in the eighty-minute meeting, with three goals scored in the sixtieth minute alone,” Erdős added. “In that amount of time, the teams can’t even get back to their sides of the field to restart play… I’m not even talking about the pure playing time, which is roughly forty-eight minutes.” The Miklós GYFE president expressed hope that the federation’s investigation will clarify how Kerekegyháza SE managed its impressive victory and, if it discovers evidence of foul play, that its U14 team will receive the title they worked so hard for. Meanwhile, Kerekegyháza SE is still celebrating its historic comeback, and the club’s president insists that everyone there has a clear conscious because there was no match fixing involved. President Antal Kunsági said that the team’s coach “ordered” players to score 50 goals before the match, and actually apologized to the opposing side for the “massacre”. Although the 42-goal difference seems extreme for such a high-stakes game that ended up deciding the winner of the championship, Palmonostora, the team that suffered the painful defeat, insists that there was no foul play, since these are just 14-year-old kids we are talking about. News of Kerekegyháza SE’s unlikely victory and title have been making news headlines all over the world, and the general consensus is that no matter how weak the opposing team was, scoring just the right number of goals to win the national championship seems unlikely, to say the least. Conspiracy theorists contend the drought is the result of previous weather-manipulation experiments devised to prevent hailstorms from ruining crops A water level meter in the middle of the dried-up Kondor Lake near Kerekegyhaza is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive Science at the Central European University in Vienna Edited byPam Weintraub SaveSYNDICATE THIS ESSAYEmailSavePostShareThe climate crisis is turning more severe with every passing year and we are coming close to a point where it would no longer be possible to ignore or deny its existence weather conditions become ever more extreme reducing access to goods and increasing prices in many places Somewhere down the line in this collective awakening we can expect the rapid emergence of actors who are more interested in blaming others for the climate emergency than actually providing solutions; culprits could be immigrants old enemies – the usual suspects or new targets Already we can see early signs of a shift from denial to blame in what one could call climate populism – an approach to the problem and the politics operating with slogans but without solutions with blame but without taking responsibility – a direct descendant of the populisms we know of today To make an even sharper prediction: the climate populists of the near future might just turn out to be the same politicians and pundits that today fashion themselves as the most ardent deniers of anthropogenic climate change Climate-related conspiracy theories are not new human history is awash with instances of people attributing agency and intentionality to the weather There have been gods and all sorts of supernatural beings that were imagined responsible for dramatic weather conditions the Greek god of thunder; the feathered serpent Kukulkan had something to do with weather conditions and were worshipped so they would bring a harvest of plenty But one could say that humans have left behind these characters long ago ‘Modern’ people would rely on weather reports instead of praying to some deity for rain They would use weather manipulation systems instead of ritual animal sacrifices beliefs in deities that control the weather cannot really be called conspiracy theories in the first place while our technology advanced at an incredible speed our mind’s propensity to imagine intentions behind dramatic outcomes did not human populations react in ways that are predictable – including in politics Hawaii of 2023 were followed by a deluge of conspiracy theories and disinformation These range from the use of weather manipulation systems to space lasers – the list is weird A narrative repeatedly debunked by half a dozen high-profile news outlets claimed that weather manipulation systems would be used to force people into ‘smart cities’ where do I sign up?) Others cited the use of obscure military space technology created and deployed by some ‘global elite’ (aka Jews) to generate natural disasters artificially it seems that some people are just as likely to attribute agency and intentionality to weather changes and natural disasters as our ancestors did social media functions more like a prism that empowers status-seeking extremists these networks magnify fringe opinions and make them feel more prominent than they actually are Climate-related conspiracy theories offer people something precious: a feeling of control and justification for not changing their lifestyles in the face of a warming world then people prefer to think it must have been someone’s fault As the cultural evolutionist Olivier Morin pointed out in 2015 one of the best predictors of audience success of tales is that they have already spread with success in the past Old narratives are updated to meet the requirements of contemporary historical environments The common motifs in conspiracy theories – such as the malevolent and powerful outgroup the scheming behind the curtains coupled with a profound distrust for official sources of information – have been attractive elements in stories for millennia and this time the focus will likely be the climate crisis; but they will all make their re-appearance in the conspiracy theories of the future scientific literature is rife with competing explanations as to why they thrive among us follows along with the ideas of the science historian Michael Shermer who’s written extensively on conspiracy theory in science and beyond and attributed agency and intentionality to these patterns The tendency to find meaning in random noise becomes even more pronounced when it comes to information about bad happenings the observation is simply that if an outcome is really bad then people prefer to think it must have been someone’s – or some group’s – fault If climate change is slowly turning the planet into an oven then this must have been the outcome of our enemies’ intentional wrongdoing Strengthening this hypothesis is the finding that humans in general find it hard to bear with uncertainty and ambiguity Conspiracist thinking is on an extreme end of a spectrum of causal thinking about the world people would consistently believe that everything is chance and nothing can be controlled through intentional actions Just like conspiracist thinking seems to be maladaptive at first sight this other extreme would then be a recipe of not taking action even in situations when something could actually be done This rather depressive mental predisposition was named learned helplessness by the psychologist Martin Seligman Conspiracy theories have an appeal precisely because they promise to completely eradicate uncertainty and chance from the interpretation of events They make everything look controllable by making everything appear controlled Conspiracy theories are not just amusing or compelling explanations that float around in space where members actively construct meaning and goals for themselves are sometimes formed around conspiracy narratives This has been apparent in the case of QAnon an omniconspiracy movement in which believers together participate in a conspiratorial treasure hunt fuelled by the epic background story of saving kidnapped children QAnon community membership skyrocketed during COVID-19 and it is speculated that this growth was at least partly due to quarantining and the social isolation it brought along As the philosopher Dan Williams noted believing in a conspiracy theory – or in any other questionable belief – may occasionally be socially adaptive in a sense that it allows the believer to participate in rewarding group activities and consequently avoid the pain of loneliness and exclusion Showing public conformity with group beliefs is a standard requirement of belonging While conformity is not exactly genuine believing opinion may change over time during repeated exposure to beliefs Adherence to group narratives is also dependent on emotional and social investments in a community It should come as no surprise that parallels have been drawn between conspiracist thinking and religious beliefs Promoting a conspiracy theory also helps the promotor Conspiracy theorists on YouTube may make revenue through advertising or by selling merchandise The most well-known example of this is Alex Jones’s Infowars website which generated an estimated $165 million in a three-year period mostly by selling supplements and prepping gear for viewers who became convinced that society was going to collapse There are other, non-monetary perks for communicators, too. The messenger of bad news is often perceived to be more competent, according to an experimental study carried out by Pascal Boyer and Nora Parren suggesting that they possess ‘secret knowledge’ or ‘insider information’ – like the anonymous government official ‘Q’ in QAnon who claims to hold Q-level clearance to classified information – may find it easier to boost their reputation as experts in the eyes of explanation-hungry audiences building this kind of reputation may pay off in politics too: boys who cry wolf are sometimes elected as mayors of the town followers are also granted the same benefit they may act and feel superior towards the ‘sheeple’ It is no wonder that users holding extremely fringe beliefs tend to be more active on social media: they use platforms for identity protection landowners became convinced that the system was to blame for the absence of rain what should we expect to see when the worst ecological catastrophe of the planet becomes an undeniable reality when the most devastating impacts of climate change come home to roost My favourite overlooked case comes from Hungary central-eastern European country experienced previously unseen Crops had been destroyed over 1.3 million hectares – one-third of the land available for full cultivation The country had to import large quantities of corn an unprecedented transaction in modern Hungarian history the country had installed a weather manipulation system capable of managing ice and protecting crops from hailstorms The system consists of approximately 1,000 ground generators that release silver-iodide into to the lower layers of the atmosphere preventing the formation of large pieces of ice in clouds As the historic drought of 2022 turned more severe with every passing week several landowners became convinced that the system and its operators were to blame for the absence of rain Conspiracy theories either suggested that generators ‘split’ the clouds in half preventing their maturation into proper rainclouds or that they ‘forced’ the rain to fall earlier The logical incompatibility of these two explanations is not unusual is because a powerful someone intentionally caused something bad an ecological catastrophe suddenly becomes controllable The Jéger narrative quickly found its referential basis establishing connections with other conspiracy ideas including the HAARP-conspiracy theory from abroad The acronym stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program with the goal of studying the ionosphere – the part of the atmosphere where northern lights are observable The scientists working in HAARP definitely didn’t see it coming in the 1990s when some people – including influential politicians – propagated a rumour about the global elite (again the Jews) deciding that the planet was overpopulated thus initiating the HAARP-system to starve everyone to death some people thought the same or similar forces were at play despite efforts to debunk the conspiracy theory at organised roundtable discussions with farmers and despite multiple factchecks published in different segments of the media the Hungarian Jéger system had to be partially deactivated Members of the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture (NAK) were accused of working for the CIA Desperate farmers nearly lynched a Jéger worker the president of the NAK claimed in an interview The invocation of HAARP highlights another interesting aspect of conspiracy theories that they raise more questions than they answer Why would the operators of the Jéger system want to cause a drought in their own country To provide an explanation for the motivations of the wrongdoers in this case – as well as in many other Western cases – the one about Jewish world domination An individual engaged in one conspiracy theory becomes inclined to engage with more as there are many open questions that remain This marks the beginning of a long journey down the rabbit hole Once this particular type of causal thinking is learned, it may influence the interpretation of other events, up to the point where all social information from the outside world is organised into fearful conspiracies. Psychological science found that one of the best predictors of a person believing in any given conspiracy theory is that they already believe in another one looking to a conspiracy theory to explain the weather has remained a fringe occurrence as the impact of climate change becomes more disruptive in which politicians and pundits exploit worries about the climate emergency for political and economic gain Climate populism – the political stance that is imagined surfing on the back of climate-related conspiracy theories – would have a number of features in common with populism as studied by researchers today. Just like other populisms we cannot expect it to form a coherent ideology or worldview – apart from the usual trope of pitting ‘the people’ against the malevolent ‘elite’ The goal of the climate populist will be to seize power in democratic elections by playing on the populace’s worries regarding their rapidly changing natural environments as well as their changing lifestyles The climate populist would achieve this without providing two essential elements that all good climate-focused political movements should feature: long-term solutions and responsibility-taking What the climate populist would seek to do instead is to provide justification for voters so they do not feel pressured to change their usual lifestyles and consumer choices The conspiracy theories of the future would certainly make use of two recent developments: artificial intelligence and gamification Large language models (LLMs) spared from moral-alignment training could be used to generate conspiracy theories and to fabricate evidence fake online personas that attempt to provide a sense of public support for the false narratives written by the LLMs QAnon’s most dangerous feature was that it married conspiracy theories with gamification Potential believers are no longer just consumers of narratives They are given an opportunity to actively shape the narrative structure in which players collectively solve problems using clues that the writers of the game – sometimes called puppet-masters – have written in order to develop an intriguing storyline occasionally causing a form of addiction in which gamers tend to fuse real life with the game Gamification transforms conspiracy theories into a more immersive in which the game has the potential to step out from the digital world into the real one The political forces that are the most ardent climate change deniers will be the climate populists of tomorrow where players encountered cryptic messages called ‘Q-drops’ from the anonymous source Q and interpreted these with likeminded friends Some people have written articles and even books deciphering Q’s messages driving an interactive treasure hunt as plotted as Indiana Jones Conspiracy theories are going to be just one tool in the ugly little toolbox of the climate populist Traditionalist and essentialist tropes may call for ‘protecting our ancient ways of life’ and ‘sticking to the heritage of our forefathers’ – conveniently forgetting that it was partly the heritage of our forefathers that brought about climate change Populist movements are often incapable of forming long-term alliances with each other One likely area of cooperation is exclusionary action against climate refugees climate populists would suddenly discover their mutual interests and display them as collective identities I consider Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro known for his rhetoric of blaming Indigenous people for fires causing deforestation in the Amazon and an outspoken climate-change denier although I doubt that he would take due credit In a speech delivered remotely for the United Nations General Assembly in 2020 Bolsonaro blamed Indigenous tribes for instigating catastrophic fires in the Amazon rainforest pointing out that deforestation is to blame – a direct outcome of Bolsonaro’s environmental policies which emboldened land speculators to log and burn vast areas Bolsonaro answered by citing suspicious details – for instance that fires always break out at the same side of the forest where ‘peasants and Indians burn their fields’ It justifies not doing something difficult – changing the economy – while also justifying discrimination against minorities It lifts responsibility and identifies a target The narrative takes the shape of a conspiracy theory: an ignorant outgroup destroying our beautiful national heritage It’s easy to see how the narrative structure of conspiracy theories can be similar from one to the next But I predict that even the sources of conspiracy theories will stay the same The political forces that are right now the most ardent deniers of anthropogenic climate change will turn out to be the climate populists of tomorrow How could a political force or actor that claimed the climate crisis does not exist put forward a narrative that the Jews caused the climate crisis voters in functioning democratic societies would detect the discrepancy between incompatible claims this is not always our experience with extremist political messaging For concerned believers of conspiracy theories group belonging might be more important than narrative consistency It could also be that the logical inconsistencies are not perceived at all This is not because conspiracy believers are stupid uneducated or incapable of logical thinking It is because the narrative still contains the critical motifs from the hated outgroup to the malevolent intent and all the rest The story would still offer the same psychological (and material) benefits is that they ‘uncover’ a more ‘complete’ picture of the ‘truth’ still fit with the worldview that is characterised by outgroups scheming to destroy traditional culture but conspiracy-communicators could remain capable of increasing their own reputation by using conspiracist narratives even if the conspiracy they advocate is in logical disagreement with what they have advocated yesterday not only because we may feel discomfort from what we see but because of the expectations we may perceive when looking at ourselves Imagine a political campaign focused on how we personally need to make our lives more uncomfortable to minimise the sum total discomfort that all humanity experiences This is a career-ending slogan for even the most popular candidate Collective responsibility is a hard sell in politics Blaming some other group for the wreckage is much easier and it may yield short-term benefits – and long-term catastrophe to keep on doing what we have been doing so far It allows us to say: others need to change This will be the fundamental appeal of climate populism EmailSavePostShareSYNDICATE THIS ESSAYSaveessay The precipitous decline of birthrates throughout the world poses a serious threat to humanity. What is to be done? The Norse ravaged much of Europe for centuries. They were also cosmopolitan explorers who followed trade winds into the Far East Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty Saveessay After a murderous kidnapping in Nigeria, I launched a campaign to put a stop to the abductions. Why did no one listen? The weird paradox of Schrödinger’s cat has found a lasting popularity. What does it mean for the future of quantum physics? Saveessay When we see the Earth as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ what do we learn about human significance Ervin Nagy has had to scrape together his company which he founded in his father’s soda factory in Akasztó The Coca-Cola price war didn’t stop him either and with the help of online research he made a complete profile change in 2008 replacing carbonated soft drinks with sports drinks and then vitamin drinks Not only did it become a major player at home but it also established itself on international markets HE BELIEVES THAT SUCH PRIVATE COMPANIES ARE CHARACTERISED BY THEIR ABILITY TO OUTGROW THEIR COUNTRY’S BORDERS ON THEIR OWN STRENGTHS AND TO STAND UP TO FOREIGN RIVALS It is a basic economic thesis that the more such firms strengthen a country’s economy There is hope even in a difficult situation Each of these businesses has a unique story rather a story of how to make a company in difficulty succeed through thoughtful yet courageous strategic decisions Ervin Nagy’s father was a winegrower His son started working here after his military service “I was more in the mood for making soda than working in the vineyards,” he explained An important detail to remember is that in the early 1990s a Hungarian family from the south of the country fled to nearby Kerekegyháza to escape the South Slavic war and started producing a carbonated soft drink called Bambino They had everything from pineapple to mango to the most unexpected flavours The Nagy’s idea of selling the product themselves was a hit They used the family Barkas minivan to commute between Akasztó and Kerekegyháza which could hold 250-300 bottles of soft drinks and most of the third was sold out before I even got home from Kerekegyháza.” The Hungarians loved flavoured sparkling soft drinks but it is worth remembering that after the fall of communism with the collapse of the state-owned farms and the cooperatives that produced the drinks This paved the way for small businesses like Ervin Nagy’s “We felt that this was a much bigger business than soda but we simply couldn’t sell more because the people in Kerekegyháza couldn’t produce more Sometimes they couldn’t even supply the quantity they had negotiated because they were almost overwhelmed by customers even the greengrocers in Pest started to buy the drinks The Nagy family – Ervin’s brothers joined in – decided to take their fate into their own hands: they bought three or four machines from Kerekegyháza bought the recipe from KecskemétVin and started producing the flavoured 2,400 bottles of soft drinks were produced in two shifts by a dozen people they make more than double that in an hour “We were the third or fourth small business soft drink company in the country There was such demand that we reached maximum production capacity in two months We were at exactly the same point as the Kerekegyháza company: we couldn’t produce enough And sometimes I went to bed at 2 o’clock in the morning and two hours later I was back at the plant mixing the product.” BUT ALSO WILD CAPITALISM: WHEN THEY WANTED TO LOAD THE PET BOTTLES BOUGHT FROM THE AMERICAN CONSTAR THE WAREHOUSE CLERK REGULARLY HAD TO SLIP THE 100 FORINTS TO GET THE SHIPMENT GOING They loaded their upgraded tractor-trailer IFA so full that they had to drive in the middle of the lane on the Pest quay to fit under the bridge There was a huge boom of similar soft drink producers in the area a process that was finally brought to an end by Coca-Cola’s price war While the Nagy’s and other retailers were selling their 2 litre soft drinks for 52 forints Coca-Cola was charging 128 forints for its own product a cross-industry agreement between Coca-Cola and Pepsi led to a steep price cut slowly ‘pricing out’ the small players The entrepreneur from Akasztó was the first to go under closing the shop for two years and moving on to other business interests but when the big players started to raise prices again most of the old retailers had thrown in the towel so the entrepreneur had to deal with the retail chains that were emerging in Hungary at the time (such as SPAR the company did not have a forklift truck for packing and their IFAs could not be parked at the truck ramps of the storage facilities They simply did not meet the changing requirements the small shops that used to sell their soft drinks were closing down who is now one of the company’s directors had their first child and decided to start something new so they had grown too big to sell everything The only thing that came to mind was a change of profile I read statistics on American websites about how much the production of carbonated soft drinks was expected to fall and how it would be replaced by functional drinks such as sports drinks.” They looked around the market and found sports drinks linked to three manufacturers in the gyms came in different colours and sold for 400-500 forints Absolute live: It was time for big changes The Nagy family possessed the necessary technical equipment they had to figure out where to get the basic ingredients for sports drinks as the company had never before been involved in the production of functional drinks and they eventually launched Absolute Live products which are free of potency-enhancing colours “We started from our own old pricing so we sold our litre drink for almost the same price as our competitors’ half-litre plus double the carnitine content of 1,000 mg Consumers didn’t understand it at first.” BUT IT WAS SIMPLY THAT THE NAGY FAMILY DID NOT WANT TO WORK WITH HUGE MARGINS BECAUSE OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE After a range of products for lifestyle change and regular exercise The product is made from a wide variety of fruit types and for a few years now carrot and beetroot drinks have also been produced health-conscious lifestyle is becoming increasingly trendy and sports drinks are very fashionable in our country where we are perhaps even beating many Western European countries more and more players are entering the market we already had enough revenue from sales to make it worthwhile to invest in a new production facility Today we produce 6,000 soft drinks per hour and we need four people directly to produce them.” Akasztó is also a curiosity at European level The factory in Akasztó stands up to international comparison: the company’s food engineers test products in their own laboratory Ervin Nagy says that what he saw in the beer and spirits lab at the Budapest Agricultural University a closed air exchange system operates that exhausts the air in little more than two minutes creating a completely sterile environment and preventing product spoilage The bottles are rinsed with ozonated water for the same purpose.” supplying to many countries in the Central and Eastern European region It regularly tries to develop new products it recently launched a chewable tablet containing L-carnitine The company has 20-25 employees and sells 5.5 million bottles of soft drinks a year their efforts won them a MagyarBrands award but Ervin Nagy is even closer to his heart with the Factory of the Year award from a professional jury Disclaimer: the author(s) of the sponsored article(s) are solely responsible for any opinions expressed or offers made. These opinions do not necessarily reflect the official position of Daily News Hungary and the editorial staff cannot be held responsible for their veracity and website in this browser for the next time I comment Y"},"category":false,"taxonomy":{"active":false,"name":"category"}},"markup":{"custom_html":true,"wpp-start":"","wpp-end":"<\/ul>","title-start":"","title-end":"<\/h2>","post-html":"{thumb} {title} {stats}<\/span>{excerpt}<\/p><\/li>"},"theme":{"name":""}} You have successfully joined our subscriber list SupportUs Newsletter © 2025 DailyNewsHungary | All rights reserved