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The message is visible on almost every street corner, looming out of giant advertising hoardings and plastered on the side of what seems like every second passing bus in Budapest: “Let’s not put Hungary’s future at risk!,” the slogan urges against the background of the Hungarian flag, “Vote ‘No’”.
The “no” being requested of Hungarian voters at a referendum being held on Sunday is to attempts by Brussels to force Hungary to accept a compulsory quota of migrants as part of a European-wide burden-sharing scheme introduced after last year’s migrant crisis.
Even though Hungary’s putative share would only be 1,294 people, Viktor Orban, the country’s self-styled strongman prime minister, is emphatic that his country will not be dragooned into accepting either the refugees or an EU policy which he recently condemned as “self-destructive and naïve”.
“These quotas are a just bad idea. They don’t work and we won’t accept them,” Zoltan Kovacs, the chief spokesman of the Hungarian government, told The Sunday Telegraph.
“All these quotas do is encourage more people to come to Europe and demonstrate the failings of the EU institutions."
The referendum has been designed to mobilise Mr Orban’s political support at home but also to spearhead what he has called a “counter-revolution” against Brussels for trying to foist both migrants and western, multicultural values onto the countries of the former Eastern bloc.
Mr Orban, who was condemned as “un-European” when he decided to build a razor-wire fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia last year, feels he has been vindicated by events and an admission by German chancellor Angela Merkel last month that her open-door refugee policy was a mistake.
“The prime minister has been absolutely consistent in his view and this referendum will confirm that,” adds Mr Kovacs. "It puts ammunition in his hand and there is no better, weightier, more legitimate ammunition than a democratic referendum."
The vote – the result of which is not in doubt, with polls predicting at least an 80 per cent “no” to migrant quotas – is explicitly designed to thrust home Mr Orban’s advantage at a time when anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim parties are flourishing in Austria, Poland, Slovakia and now Germany too.
Regional analysts say that the fact that the EU has effectively already abandoned its migrant quotas - as Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, made clear in his State of the Union speech last month - speaks to the fact that Mr Orban has a much bigger target in mind by staging a referendum he knows he will win.
At a joint appearance with Poland’s nationalist leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, the Hungarian leader promised a “counter revolution” in Europe to take back power to the EU capitals who have grown wearing of being chided by Brussels for what Mr Orban once proudly called their “illiberal democracy”.
“The whole idea of referendum is to keep the migrant issue on the table,” says Otilia Dhand, eastern Europe analyst with Teneo Intelligence. “It’s a complete godsend for Orban. He can play up his nationalist rhetoric at home while simultaneously positioning himself abroad as a ‘big guy’ on the European stage.”
This weekend’s vote comes at the end of an 18-month propaganda blitz that began last year with Mr Orban’s decision to build his fence and has continued hammering home its anti-migrant, anti-Brussels message ever since.
For over a year, a series of billboards headed “Did you know…?” have warned Hungarians that, since the migrant crisis, some “300 people have died” in EU terror attacks, sexual harassment cases “have risen” and the EU wishes to resettle “a town’s worth” of migrants in Hungary.
The pressure has ratcheted up still further in the run-up to the vote as Mr Orban pushes to reach a 50 per cent turnout threshold that would make his referendum legally valid, with government ministers and police holding press conferences detailing how the Paris attackers criss-crossed Hungary on their way to attack.
Critics say the rhetoric is disproportionate and excessive when Hungary currently houses only just over 500 migrants out of a population of 9.9m people which is only 0.1 per cent Muslim. However, the government-backed media machine is unrepentant.
"We have to avoid that terrorists are resettled in Hungary. The referendum is about defending Hungary,” said Lajos Kósa, the leader of Mr Orban’s ruling Fidesz party ahead of the vote.
“The referendum is about the ability to decide about who can live with us and not the EU bureaucrats never elected by anyone.”
No one doubts that Mr Orban will win his referendum – and not just because he has spent more than 18bn Forints (£50m) on posters and TV slots – but also because his brand of unrefined identity politics resonates with many Hungarians, judging by the positive effect on his own poll ratings.
“Those who feel Hungarian should vote ‘no’ to these migrants. We don’t need any terrorists or any rapists here,” said Kalman Nemeth, a 53-year-old house painter on his way home from work in the northern Budapest suburb of Ujpest.
“The EU should leave Hungary in peace to decide its own future. Orban has done one good thing, which is to tell these big corporate and political interests in Europe to get lost. For that, he’s a great guy,” added Mr Nemeth, who was formerly a supporter of Hungary’s far-Right Jobbik party.
Such sentiments are easy to find outside a small, urban, educated liberal elite which one senior Hungarian media executive estimates accounts for only a million of Hungary’s 8.3m-strong voters at a time when the Left-Liberal opposition to Mr Orban’s ruling Fidesz party is also hopelessly divided.
Among the elite, there has been some fightback, notably by the “Dog with Two Tails” party who ran a series of nonsense billboards mocking Mr Orban’s crudeness with satirical messages like “Did you know…? In Somogy county there were 42 bear attacks in the 16th century”.
Such jokes play well among the media elite in Budapest – one 28-year-old international law graduate shuddered at Mr Orban’s name, telling The Sunday Telegraph he was “an embarrassment” – but, in the countryside, it is the hardliners who have prospered such policies.
In the village of Ásotthalom, on the Serbian-Hungarian border, the town’s mayor László Toroczkai was elected unopposed last year after winning headlines for proposing the 105-mile, £112m fence which is now patrolled by officers in a new Toyota Hilux, paid for, in part, by a public subscription.
“When we built it, most of Europe said we were wrong, but now they have changed their tune. Even Angela Merkel has now admitted that her willkommenskultur [welcome culture] was wrong,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“We were right about the whole illegal migrant mess and it has changed the political landscape of the EU, and it was one of the reasons why people in Britain voted for Brexit. Governments in Europe have only two options – to change their policy on the migrants or disappear.”
It remains to be seen how far Mr Orban is ultimately prepared to push talk of re-ordering the EU political landscape - Hungary relies heavily on the EU’s free movement of labour, EU grants and the German economy – but for this weekend at least, he is remaining firmly on the offensive.
"If there are more 'no' votes than 'yes' votes that means Hungarians do not accept the rule which the bureaucrats of the European Commission want to forcefully impose on us," he told Hungarian state television ahead of the vote.
“The more migrants there are, the greater the risk of terror. We would like to preserve Hungary a safe country like it is now.”