Executive Summary    

Hungary is currently suffering from the country’s first foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in over 50 years, triggering mass cattle slaughter and border closures. Despite this, Slovakia has reported outbreaks in its Southern region. Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas has claimed that the outbreak might result from an artificially engineered virus, suggesting a possible link to biological weapons. So far, this claim remains unsubstantiated. Budapest has yet to expand on the initial bioweapons claim. Given the information environment in Hungary and the upcoming elections, there is a risk of the outbreak being politicised and incorporated into pre-existing Fidesz disinformation campaigns. In similar fashion, some US right-wing figures have suggested that a recent measles outbreak in Texas was the result of a bioweapons attack. Post-COVID-19, such conspiracy theories have proliferated in right-wing discourse globally. [source, source]

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