As a reminder, the elections in June were won by the left-populist party Smer, headed by new PM Robert Fico. Due to the difficult party arithmetics, he formed what is only called "catastrophe-coalition" here in Hungary: he involved HZDS, the party of former populist (and criminal) PM Mečiar, and SNS, the openly racist party of Ján Slota, but kept of of these dangerous egomaniacs outside of the government.

However, no good could come out of this. First not for Smer: the European Socialists suspended its membership for coalitioning with SNS. Then came trouble in relationship with Hungarians.

Slota reportedly fumed at a campaign event that he's ready to jump into a tank and crush Budapest. (He also said that he regrets ethnic Hungarians weren't dumped after WWII as fully as Germans were by the Czechs, and claimed there is 'brutal Hungarianisation' in Southern Slovakia.) But when a nationalist ethnic-Hungarian politician (himself a lot of trouble) opined that SNS is a fascist party, Slota called the police to investigate, something which in turn even liberal politicians in Hungary over-reacted (as if they never had similar court battles with the local far-right).

Such developments of course emboldened skinheads on both sides to do some provocations. First there was a scandal with a Hungarian flag-burning internet video, then a spray attack ("We won't forget!" in red) on the Slovakian embassy in Budapest, and there was trouble at football matches.

This culminated last Friday in the attack by three skinheads on a student: they overheard her speaking in Hungarian on her mobile phone, beat and robbed her, and tore out her earrings.

The behaviour of the two government didn't help much. While Robert Fico coupled a denouncement with calls for the media not "over-playing" and Hungarians not "exploiting" the atrocities, e.g. he used the standard rhetoric of moderate nationalist politicians confronted with the ghosts they called, the Hungarian leaders seemed most concerned with awoiding criticism from their right-wing opposition with some "we'll tell them!"-style declarations.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}