Man doused Hungarian PM with wine at a wine harvest festival. Since Tuesday, it is the third such incident — earlier a television broadcast called for a sniper

The man who threw a glass of wine at Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Saturday evening was escorted out of the grounds of the Szekszárd Wine Harvest Days by security. The prime minister wiped his face, ordered more food at a stand, and summed up the incident with the remark that it was a shame about the good wine. However, it was the third time since Tuesday that aggression had been directed at him — and in the two previous cases it happened on national television.

From Tuesday to Saturday, three stages

On September 15, an elderly woman called into the discussion program Paláver on HírTV. She spoke of three to four hundred "true Hungarians" who should come to parliament and clean it out — "but not with a broom" — and finally asked whether Hungary couldn't find a "sniper" or "good marksman" to "take out" the prime minister. Host Nóra Palányiová did not cut off the call and only distanced herself belatedly. The station's owner, the publisher Mediaworks, fired her the very next day for an "extremely serious professional error" and launched an internal investigation. Index ↗ Telex ↗

On Friday, another caller phoned into the same program. This time he suggested chaining the prime minister to the podium. Magyar called this progress compared to the previous broadcast on social media, adding that he wasn't angry at these people, since in his view they too were victims of the previous system — but that he did not consider it acceptable to endure the "constant sowing of hatred" from a station that gives space to open aggression. Index ↗ HVG ↗

On Saturday evening came the physical attack. Telex ↗

Where was security

It was on site and, according to Index, reacted immediately — the troublemaker was escorted out of the grounds, although he was already preparing to leave on his own. So it intervened only after the wine had already been thrown. Sources differ on how close the attacker stood: Telex speaks of being doused from close range, Novinky.cz of an attempt to hit the prime minister from several meters away. Magyar himself wrote that the attacker wasn't brave enough to come closer and look him in the eye. Index ↗

So what was missing was distance rather than security. Magyar travels around the country, and in Szekszárd, by his own account, he took photos with hundreds of people — this format is precisely his political signature and, at the same time, what makes protecting him difficult. The same type of incident already happened to him once since taking office: near Budapest's Western Railway Station, someone spat on him on his way to a press conference. HVG ↗

The prime minister turns it into a joke, security expert warns

Magyar reacts to both physical incidents the same way — lightly. After being spat on, he said that spitting on a person happens at football matches, at markets, and in worse cases even within families, that he doesn't consider Hungary a risky territory, and that he'd rather just shake it off. He called the attacker from Szekszárd a "fallen Orbánist fighter who drank himself into courage." On Sunday morning he posted another video from Szekszárd in which he left out the incident and showed only the good mood at the festival. Index ↗

Security expert Péter Tarjányi, however, wrote regarding the threats from HírTV that this very attitude is the problem. "For years I worked in a world where we were taught that we do not take a threat seriously because we are afraid of it. We take it seriously because we never know in advance behind which crazy sentence a real intent might one day appear," he said. According to him, it is the duty of protected persons to behave responsibly, and downplaying threats is not a sign of courage but of irresponsibility. He also warned that when society gradually grows used to the language of violence, that is an extremely dangerous process. Index ↗

Background: Orbán also faces a criminal complaint

The incidents come at a time when the dispute over asset checks on politicians is intensifying. Former prime minister and leader of the opposition Fidesz party Viktor Orbán compared the new National Office for Asset Search and Recovery to the ÁVH, the feared political secret police of the 1950s, and told its employees what awaited them after a "change of power." Former Momentum chairman András Fekete-Győr filed a criminal complaint against him on suspicion of incitement to violence, and on September 16 police forwarded it to the Central Investigating Prosecutor's Office. SME ↗

According to a survey by the Europion institute, most Hungarians consider Orbán's message unacceptable, yet at the same time do not take it very seriously. HVG ↗ The former prime minister declared at a party event in Kötcse that the time had come for "national resistance" against the new government — Slovak media reported on this on September 18. Aktuality.sk ↗

Slovak media picked up Orbán's criminal complaint and his call for "national resistance" from the whole series of events. In our monitoring of roughly forty Slovak and Czech sources, the HírTV broadcast about the sniper was found only on Novinky.cz. Novinky.cz ↗

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