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27 Sep 06

Crisis in Hungary|30Sep06|Socialist Worker

www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php - Preview

activism economics hungary politics social_justice

Some vaguely leftish internet sites are documenting police abuses and are trying to conduct a dialogue with the younger rioters who still appear to enjoy the insurrectionary feel of the burning capital.

The “left” for these people means poverty, rule by millionaires, mendacity, fake sanctimony and the arrogance of the powerful.
The small groups of the “independent” left are frightened and playing a “lesser evil” game. Only a handful of people on the left, including this writer, called for the resignation of the prime minister.
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- The riots were far from pleasant and occasionally rather mindless. Nevertheless, the protesters had a point. They had been cruelly deceived, and the proposed government policies are monstrously unfair.
- The mainstream press speaks of “fascist rabble”, exhibiting the usual kind of sovereign contempt for the masses.
- It is true that football hooligans and other unappetising specimens have played an important role, especially in the violence - which is at a level not seen in this country since the 1956 revolution.
- Ideologically, the protest has been hijacked by the far right. Fascist regalia - the “Arrow-Cross” Hungarian Nazi flags and insignia - are on show.
- The protesters speak of revolution. They describe the government, the mainstream press and the figurehead president, Dr Sólyom, as common criminals.
- Extreme brutality was countered by extreme brutality, cars and shops were burnt, several hundreds beaten, arrested, chased by mounted police.
- The crowds took over the state television headquarters in the very centre of the capital, devastated the building and attacked the startled police. Out of some 200 wounded, 125 were policemen, an unusual ratio.
- Otherwise, he said, the Socialist Party would have lost the elections, since nobody would have voted for their real programme that had been kept secret from all but 15 selected officials.
- Retreat
  
  In the first days of September, a secret speech by Gyurcsány at a retreat of the parliamentary Socialist Party, the major party in the coalition, was leaked to the press.
- In this speech Gyurcsány, using unusually frank and brutal language, full of four-letter words, declared that everything he said during the election campaign, including his entire election manifesto, was an outright lie.