Az állambiztonsági tekintet legendája
The Legend of the Gaze of State Security

Summary/Abstract: Those possessing power always possess control over information. To establish continuous control over society’s political, economic, cultural and information structures, their strategic aim is to become ‘super-informed’. Conspirative political police, with clandestine institutional background, secret personnel and operative techniques, and the disciplinary practices of the Establishment, have always considered ‘watching the enemy’ as crucially important in perpetuating the power postition. Since the events of an erstwhile present become historical facts of the future, the world of politics can be viewed as contemporary history. This study, through the analysis of Hungarian state security textbooks and training films, examines the methods of the political police of gathering information in a sphere fixated by the ‘gaze of state security’, as well as the ways people in this special position perceived what they were watching and how this peculiar angle influenced their view of society’s events. The main focus of the study is the training of the official and cooperating conspirative agents in this special ‘gaze’, its concealment, and pretence.

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