I went along myself, but didn't hang around beyond the initial speeches which, as you say, were quite badly delivered and lacking in content. The turnout was pretty good, with fantastic weather for late October... I also walked past the Jobbik rally, which seemed to have a higher proportion of young people than both the government and the Milla demonstrations. Though there were quite a few people at all of these, I suspect the vast majority of the city was intent on lapping up the last of the autumn sun, at the end of the four-day weekend.

Bajnai's vision appears very minimalistic, as one would expect. You're absolutely right - much of the detail lurks around the edges. Yet what strikes me is that very little of the Bajnai-Gyurcsány axis is based on an indigenous growth strategy, the idea that somehow Hungary's resources, human and material, can be somehow utilised in some new or clever way. Whilst we haven't seen his full programme, so far it seems very conventional MOR neoliberal stuff. This in itself seems very risky, given the unstable nature of various externalities. I wonder where the domestic and cultural elements are, in this form of politics?

I added some details: the Family Guy episode, the three million beggars, and the dissatisfaction among the pro-government protesters on the train home.

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

From reports, it appears that the most notable event of the pro-government mass rally (again organised by the group of pro-Fidesz far-right journalists under the Orwellian name "Peace March") was when Orbán welcomed a 100-year-old woman on stage whose Slovakian citizenship was revoked when he took up the Hungarian one. The backstory is that, in another move designed to get more voters for Fidesz, parliament adopted a new citizenship law in 2010 which allows ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries to request citizenship. Slovakia's parliament retaliated by changing their citizenship law too, adding the automatic revocation of Slovakian citizenship upon the adoption of another citizenship that wasn't declared beforehand. The issue, of course, has nothing to do with 1956; and Orbán again cynically uses the results of a mess he himself created to stoke even more nationalist hate.

News reports in non-government-aligned media also confirm that turnout at yesterday's event was smaller than the other two pro-government mass rallies earlier this year. Yet, the numbers game is alive and well: police first issued an estimate of 150,000, then corrected it to match their estimate of the first pro-government rally at 400,000, a number that was unreal already back then.

At the Jobbik rally, reportedly attended by 3,000, the Jobbik leader sought to separate themselves from members of "the 1989 political elite" (that includes Fidesz leaders), and count himself into the "2006 generation", even though Jobbik had little to do with the 2006 events (the far-right street riots in the wake of the leaking of an internal speech by then PM Ferenc Gyurcsány in which he said "I lied").

Police proudly announced the detainment of one man at the Jobbik rally for anti-Semitic incitement of hatred. Which is no more than an excuse: On one hand, speeches at the Jobbik rally were full of allusions to anti-Semitic lore (including a recent one that interprets a quip by Israeli President Shimon Peres as an Israeli strategy to take over Hungary by buying up land). On the other hand, anti-Semitic incitement of hatred would have been a reason for police to detain the entire counter-protest of the right-of-Jobbik fascists on the sidelines of the Milla protest (which reportedly included a Jobbik MP, though), judging from a video by a reporter of web news site Index.hu (who was surrounded, tossed around and punched in the eye at the end): chants included "Die, Jews! and "We take you camping in Auschwitz".

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