If this was the master plan, then Orbán even deceived his own

"Let us put it into the Constitution that a person is either male or female, period! In fact, I advise the organizers of Pride not to bother planning this year's parade. It would be a waste of time and money, regardless of what Weber, “the district commander”, and his Hungarian agents say," Prime Minister Viktor Orbán confidently declared in his annual state of the nation speech on February 22. His words were greeted with loud applause. As his loyals clapped, and many followed online, Orbán may have even smiled inwardly, because he already knew what they did not. He knew that this was all part of a political master plan and that there would be no ban whatsoever. Naturally, they would ban the event, but the real goal was to drive the opposition into a frenzy, to give them something to chew on, and then, despite the ban, to have a crowd of a size that has not been seen in a long time march through the streets of Budapest, ignoring both the amended law on assembly adopted by Fidesz's two-thirds majority and the warnings of the police.

Of course, there were some whom Orbán did not let in on his plan. For example, Minister of Construction and Transport János Lázár, who wholeheartedly supported the ban in recent months and and even publicly voiced his opinion that Fidesz would be making a fool of itself if Pride went ahead despite the ban, but he is merely collateral damage in the grand scheme of things, Orbán must have thought.

And once everything went according to the Prime Minister's master plan and there were more people attending the Budapest Pride march that was banned by Fidesz than the event had ever seen, on 28 June, the head of government leaned back with satisfaction in his heart and thought to himself: Look at that! All these idiots fell for the trick. From this point on, winning the 2026 election will be child's play!

Although the above scenario may seem strange, it is very real—that is, for those who believe that this is exactly what Orbán had planned. According to the pro-government think-tank Nézőpont, by taking to the streets, the opposition became one with Pride and thus walked into Viktor Orbán's trap. And why was this a trap? Nézőpont says this is so, because polls show that the majority of Hungarians reject Pride, and in a democracy, representing the majority is always the winning position. "Orbán's master plan is simple: he wants to win the 2026 election, and to do that, he needs to get the majority behind him. And the day of Pride was yet another step on the road to winning over the majority," Nézőpont argues.

At first glance, this argument may seem logical, as it is an old trick of Orbán's to escalate conflicts, to over-simplify things, to paint things either black or white, and to ultimately divide the society and create an either/or situation, whether the topic be migration, Ukraine's accession to the EU, or anything else that Fidesz chooses to make a subject in its permanent campaign. And the topic of Pride and LGBTQ rights are perfect tools for this.

Publicus Institute, which can hardly be described as pro-government, also published a survey on Pride. Admittedly, unlike Nézőpont, they did not ask who supported banning the event, but instead wanted to know how many approved of it being held. According to their results, even though the numbers are within the margin of error, 48 percent opposed it, compared to the 45 percent who were in favor. This is a significant increase compared to March, when only 20 percent considered the ban justified.

Another argument of Nézőpont, namely that even if many people take to the streets, it does not necessarily mean victory for the opposition may also be valid. As Nézőpont itself pointed out, there were many Fidesz supporters on the streets in both 2002 and 2006, yet Fidesz did not win the elections in those years. Moreover, compared to the 2000s, the ruling party now enjoys the backing of a political machine with unlimited resources and, last but not least, they still have a considerable number of committed voters.

However, even if Nézőpont's argument that the size of this year's Pride Parade does not “automatically translate into a majority” at the ballot box is correct, the narrative that Viktor Orbán intended to frame the whole thing this way is full of holes.

Let's start with the head scratcher that political analyst Gábor Török pointed out on his social media page the day after Pride. He wrote that even if we were to accept the explanation about the master plan, we would be saying that the Prime Minister's intention in banning Pride was not to protect the rights of children, but rather a strange political desire to see a bigger anti-government crowd than ever before march alongside the opposition through the streets of Budapest. “No politician can defend this logical conundrum (we banned the event so that what we wanted to protect children from would be even bigger), so the task is left to those who are always polishing the image of the always-winning, always-in- command leader, whose mistakes are always deliberate" -Török wrote.

And indeed, if we accept the claim that this is what Viktor Orbán wanted, then it also means that the Prime Minister's goal was to have thousands of people, whom he otherwise considers harmful to children, march by playgrounds and children. And all this, just so his political calculations would be successful. And then in the end, the analysts loyal to him even admit all of it. This is hardly realistic.

But there are other contradictions in this explanation of the supposed master plan. Let's review them one by one!

If indeed we witnessed Orbán's master plan unfolding before our eyes, why was János Lázár, who fought tooth and nail against Pride until the very last moment, not in the know about it? Why would he have taken on such an ungrateful role?

"It is the job of the authorities to enforce the law. If we passed the law, then we should take it seriously, or we shouldn't have passed it. But we should not make fools of ourselves by passing a law that we do not enforce. That is my position, because if that were to happen, then we would be even weaker than before we started," Lázár said in early June. On another occasion, he said that now that the law has been passed, all that is needed is for the Hungarian authorities to dare to apply the new legislation, and he called on everyone to show courage.

If Lázár was aware of the master plan and he was only pretending, then that would mean that he deceived Fidesz voters, and the pro-government think-tank has now exposed it all.

If, on the other hand, he was unaware of the master plan, but it did exist, then it means that Lázár, who has been fiercely defending the government and Orbán's policies in recent times, is an insignificant figure within the government, whom the Prime Minister did not let in on the secret. This is difficult to believe.

Lázár's statements had caught the attention of both the opposition and Fidesz supporters. It is therefore no coincidence that after Pride drew a record-breaking crowd, many pro-government voters said they were perplexed as to why the government was unable to enforce its own ban and why the police stood idly by during what they perceived to be an illegal event.

Even though the majority of Hungarians reject Pride itself, the number of participants in the event confirms that this was no longer about Pride itself. Although there are no surveys on this, reports from the event suggest that many of the participants took to the streets to protest the curtailment of the right to assembly and/or the government's policy of curtailing civil liberties and its growing reliance on arbitrary measures.

If Orbán potentially truly had a plan for triggering or "dirtying" the forces critical of the government with Pride, as Nézőpont suggested, the success of such a plan is highly doubtful. This is primarily true because even before it took place, the event had been redefined in public discourse, with the subject of civil liberties in general almost completely overshadowing LGBTQ issues. This clearly had enormous mobilizing power.

While government propaganda will be able to use certain elements of the demonstration to depict the “decadence of the West”, the fact that the event was allowed to go ahead despite the ban could lead to the ruling party losing much more prestige than it could possibly gain by showing a few photos of men dressed as women.

On top of this, the visual of the huge crowd, which also speaks against the master plan explanation, only adds to this. Although opposing political forces often argue about how many people attended a gathering, in the case of Pride there has been no trace of such a dispute. And the reason for this is that the turnout was truly enormous.

A crowd of this size exhibits strength even if it has no intention of doing so. A crowd of this size conveys a message even if it does not want to send one.

This is bad for Fidesz because it could ramp up the internal erosion that has been going on for more than a year. Those who are not strongly attached to the party but benefit from it may feel that Orbán is no longer at the height of his power and that a greater force has emerged to challenge him. If this feeling grows stronger, it will also affect Orbán's political charisma. It is completely unrealistic for an authoritarian leader to want to see his charisma questioned.

Orbán could have chalked it up as a success story if the organizers had backed down, or if – for fear of being fined – only a few thousand people had turned up and the police had cracked down hard. But this did not happen, and Mi Hazánk immediately found a niche: almost immediately after the parade, the far-right opposition party attacked Fidesz for failing to prevent the mass demonstration. This provided Mi Hazánk with ammunition for the longer term.

It is hard to imagine that Orbán's master plan included the undermining of his own government's authority and the highlighting of differences of opinion within the ruling party, while providing a clear path for Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who supported the event, and Mi Hazánk, which opposed it. This is difficult to believe, even if Fidesz wanted to use the turmoil surrounding Pride to pit left-wing and liberal voters against Péter Magyar (the leader of the strongest opposition party, Tisza) who, fearing that the ruling party would present him as a supporter of Pride, waited until the absolute last moment to express his support for the event – and even then,only did so extremely cautiously.

But we can also ask the question: if the Prime Minister considers a protest attended by hundreds of thousands of people to be a success, what would have been a failure for him? If only small numbers had loitered at Pride?

In light of all the above, while "the master plan" explanation does contain certain elements of truth, it is nothing more than political damage control.

Such damage control is not unknown within Fidesz, which always seeks to portray its leader as a prophet. As they say: it's not that Orbán is right, but that he WILL BE right. And they do not like to question this even when what he predicts does not come to pass, whether it be the economy taking off, a transparency law, or the unfulfilled promise of the head of government that, with the help of the Trump administration, they will succeed in going after organizations that have received funding from USAID.

Saturday's Pride Parade is far from spelling the end for Fidesz, or even a sign of its implosion. However, it is evident that this is yet another in a long list of failures that Orbán has had to endure over the past year, and there is no real master plan on the horizon that would allow him to turn the situation around in his favour.