Austria’s far right rides wave of public anger as election nears
The anti-asylum, pro-Kremlin FPÖ is leading the polls amid growing frustration over the political status quo
What if, you know, the people vote the wrong way?
Austria’s far right rides wave of public anger as election nears
The anti-asylum, pro-Kremlin FPÖ is leading the polls amid growing frustration over the political status quo
What if, you know, the people vote the wrong way?
So the Guardian reports that the water industry in Austria (which is publicly owned, and where, IIRC, water privatisation is prohibited by the constitution) is providing faecally-contaminated tap water in southern Austria…yet The Guardian also blames UK water contamination on, er, privatisation….
How are they defining pro-Kremlin here. Presumably not ‘in favour of associate membership of the Russian Federation’. So what? The same territory as ‘not being in favour of unlimited immigration’ is ‘racist far-right’?
You’re expecting coherence and consistency from the dear old Grauniad, Theo?
What if, you know, the people vote the wrong way?
Thuringia is there to show you what happens when people vote the wrong way: the “democratic” parties come together to overrule democratic process in order to protect democracy from the “extreme right”.
The People have clearly lost the confidence of the Establishment…
“pro-Kremlin”: somebody who is more concerned about the millions of foreign thugs and rapists their government let in to replace you than they are about LGBTQ++ rights in Novosibirsk.
What’s happened in Thuringia is quite instructive. In Germany there’s no such thing as a filibuster and they don’t even have a word for it, which must go down as some sort of German first in itself.
When the parliament convened for the first time its traditional that the oldest member to act as president and call the vote for the election of the Mister President. This time it fell to an AfD member and he refused to call the vote. Cue massive outrage, the end of democracy as we know it, Hitler putsch etc. The CDU was particularly incensed because they’ve applied their firewall and stitched up the AfD.
Anyway, as everyone knew would happen the constitutional court has said the vote can’t be blocked and “normal” service is being restored.
It seems that excluding 30% of the voters isn’t anti democratic but a bit of parliamentary theatre is and this from the CDU which is prepared to do a deal with the equally extreme BSW. There’s no wonder the people are getting really pissed off with politicians.
The anti-asylum, pro-Kremlin FPÖ is leading the polls amid growing frustration over the political status quo
Whereas as in Germany the anti asylum pro-Kremlin BSW party is being lauded and their eponymous leader is never off the political talk shows.
It has happened before.
In 1999 Haider’s FPOe came second ( just) and went into coalition with the ‘conservative’ OeVP ( distant third )
The EU firstly tried to reverse the result and then sent ‘three wise men to make sure the new govt didn’t get the old swastikas out . That fat Finnish premier Marti Hopskipanjumpi, some other fat guy and the cherry on the cake Jean Luc de Haaan of Belgium, the most corrupt politician in the history of Western Europe.
If the FPOe win, Guy Vehofstsdt himself will lead the European army’s tank battalions to unseat them.
JuliaM: He’s still expecting us to vote Tory.
You’re expecting coherence and consistency from the dear old Grauniad, Theo?
No, Julia. But it’s amusing to expose their inconsistencies, self-deceptions and (avoidance of) cognitive dissonance.
Steve
Less tendentiously, “pro-Kremlin” means being supportive of a tyrannical regime that imprisons and murders opponents and is bent on territorial expansion by force in violation of self-determination and fundamental international law.
Less tendentiously, “pro-Kremlin” means being supportive of a tyrannical regime that imprisons and murders opponents and is bent on territorial expansion by force in violation of self-determination and fundamental international law.
Isn’t that describing the US?
Trying to imprison or assassinate* Trump.
Plenty of people on the Clinton body count.*
US troops still in Syria despite being asked to leave… They also in living memory invaded Iraq, Afghanistan…
*Depending on which conspiracy theory you believe
Theo – Do you honestly believe our foreign policy has something to do with morality?
CD – Israel is objectively far more aggressive and warmongery than Russia. I wonder when they’ll be banned from competing in international football.
Theo – PS, we had a world-historic opportunity, between 1991 and 2008, to create an Arc of Prosperity between the US/Canada, Europe and Russia.
The major white, Christian nations, if you will, coming together for their mutual betterment in peaceful free trade. Becoming economic partners and forgetting all about that “global thermonuclear war” business we used to feel a bit ambiguous about in the 1980’s, trudging back over pebbles and sand.
What’s not to love about that? Russia is a vast treasure box of natural resources. Combine Western European high tech and funding and lovely Eastern cheap energy + minerals, and you’ve got yourself a competitive advantage, baby! China no longer looks so scary in this scenario, we simply don’t need em as much.
They _______ed that strategic opportunity against the wall. Our, um, “leaders”. The smart guys.
So now, instead of peace and wealth, we get poverty and murder.
I read a bit of bouncing Boris’ recent Speccie article where the famous adulterer, with apparently zero guilt or shame, turned up at a hospital for crippled Ukrainian soldiers and one plucky machinegunner with no legs, arms or head apparently asked “Meester Boris, when will the West give Ukraine the Tools We Need™ to Finish the Job© against Putin’s war machine by permitting long range Storm Shadow™ airstrikes into Russia proper? And please tell us more of your fascinating anecdotes about Latin.”
(I may be paraphrasing slightly but it was about this level of reality, remember the author of the article and his promiscuous relationship with Verity, and he probably shagged her sister an all)
– What if, you know, the people vote the wrong way?
Harry Truman’s desk accessory famously anounced “the buck stops here” but of course that wasn’t, and isn’t, true. In a democracy the buck stops with the people when they accept the outcome of an election. That’s probably not what Donald Trump meant when he said “the buck stops with everybody” but that’s a more accurate summary. The people enjoy the consequences of their choices.
.
– Thuringia is there to show you what happens when people vote the wrong way: the “democratic” parties come together to overrule democratic process in order to protect democracy from the “extreme right”.
There was nothing undemocratic about the outcome. The AfD didn’t win a majority – they, one party among many, got the biggest vote share (33%). It is entirely appropriate for the other parties to form a coalition government representing a bigger share of the vote. The parties, AfD included, selectively decided the traditional way of parliamentary business was out the window and the constitutional court ruled that traditions aren’t law and the way of business of parliament can be decided by the parties – democratically.
“we had a world-historic opportunity, between 1991 and 2008, to create an Arc of Prosperity between the US/Canada, Europe and Russia.”
Once communism in Eurasia stutters, this is pretty much where I start from. But the wogs (sorry Dennis) just couldn’t help themselves.
Steve
we had a world-historic opportunity, between 1991 and 2008, to create an Arc of Prosperity between the US/Canada, Europe and Russia. The major white, Christian nations, if you will, coming together for their mutual betterment in peaceful free trade.
That is a risible fantasy. For centuries, Russia has viewed the West with suspicion and hostility. Consider the claim that Moscow is the Third Rome, and Lev Gumilyov’s bizarre theories of Russians as a “super-ethnos” with the “passionarity” to expand and dominate other ethnicities and states, and Alexandr Dugin’s calls for an illiberal totalitarian Russian Empire to control the Eurasian continent from Dublin to Vladivostok to challenge America, and the rantings of Ivan Ilyin, a White Russian religious fascist, posthumously repatriated from Switzerland to the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. Putinism is not some ideology created indirectly by the West, but an unsurprising expression of deep historical attitudes in Russia.
Isn’t that describing the US?
No
Trying to imprison or assassinate* Trump.
The US state has not attempted to assassinate Trump. And the lawfare against him is party political, not state
Plenty of people on the Clinton body count.*
Zero
US troops still in Syria despite being asked to leave… They also in living memory invaded Iraq, Afghanistan…
All justifiable. Or would you prefer Russia and China as world policemen?
Steve (Master of the Non Sequitur)
Do you honestly believe our foreign policy has something to do with morality?
No, because raisons d’etat.
But there are strong moral reasons for individuals not to be pro-Kremlin.
“ There was nothing undemocratic about the outcome. The AfD didn’t win a majority – they, one party among many, got the biggest vote share (33%). It is entirely appropriate for the other parties to form a coalition government representing a bigger share of the vote”
Maybe, but when the so called mainstream parties are prepared to do business with another party that is in many ways equally as extreme as the AfD it calls in to question their reasoning and indicates that their coalition is based on personalities and not policies.
we had a world-historic opportunity, between 1991 and 2008, to create an Arc of Prosperity between the US/Canada, Europe and Russia.
For once I’m inclined to agree with Theo on this. The reason US/Canada & parts of Europe are prosperous is that their peoples behave in a way produces prosperity. But the methods used in those countries don’t necessarily transfer to other cultures with the same outcomes. For instance the US/Canada, N.Europe arc are high trust societies. High trust societies are better at producing prosperity because they’re more efficient. But you can’t successfully use high trust society methods in low trust societies. They’re not going to get the same result. And the Russia that came out of the collapse of the USSR was a low trust society. The capitalism that in the West produced shareholder corporations in the East produced the oligopolists & mafia capitalism. To build western style capitalism in Russia you’d have to conquer it, get rid of its “ruling class” & build up from the bottom, instilling mutual trust as you went.
I know this from dealing with Romanians who suffer some of the legacy of Russians. Simply trying to do business with them is asking to get ripped off. You have to build a social relationship with them to create an environment of mutual trust & advantage & then do business on top of that. In other words, you’re trying to reprise the 200 years of societal development western capitalism precariously stands on.
My experience in Russia sorta ran that way. Contracts, the law, meant nothing. But $500k and up deals on a handshake, sure. But you had to be inside the bubble to be able to make the handshake.
Isn’t that describing the US?
No
Trying to imprison or assassinate* Trump.
The US state has not attempted to assassinate Trump. And the lawfare against him is party political, not state
Plenty of people on the Clinton body count.*
Zero
US troops still in Syria despite being asked to leave… They also in living memory invaded Iraq, Afghanistan…
All justifiable. Or would you prefer Russia and China as world policemen?
The party political lawfare against Trump is using the state instruments to do so. Raids etc. So the state is complicit.
Afghanistan was, though it took a long time and didn’t end particularly well.
Iraq was justifiable? The second time wasn’t for sure. WMDs that didn’t exist?
Do we need a world policeman? And I’m not sure how much worse Russia or China would be. We could end up with corrupt politicians and limits on our freedoms like speech…
Oh.
What concerns me, Tim, is when the two systems interact. That pedestal of mutual trust western capitalism stands on is flimsy & unstable. There’s no guarantee a combined US/Canada, Europe, Russia arc wouldn’t have ended up with Russian style capitalism. The strong overcoming the weak.
“My experience in Russia sorta ran that way. Contracts, the law, meant nothing. But $500k and up deals on a handshake, sure. But you had to be inside the bubble to be able to make the handshake.”
Which rather illustrates the point, aspiration even. Handshakes are a good start – no one would suggest things don’t take effort or time. But the wogs weren’t really interested in escalating handshakes. That would imply mutual understanding or a level approach to a potential relationship. Too much moolah up for grabs (natural resources).
Maybe, but when the so called mainstream parties are prepared to do business with another party that is in many ways equally as extreme as the AfD it calls in to question their reasoning and indicates that their coalition is based on personalities and not policies.
Not really; BSW (the “another party”) is of the left so is more palatable to the so called mainstream parties. It will also be a junior member in a coalition as opposed to being the senior member. Yes, it’s a fit up by the smaller parties to keep the biggest party out of government, but it’s not undemocratic and is absolutely typical of politics in a proportional representation system. If the same arrangement was made to keep a commie or islamic party out of power nobody here would be whining.
Austrian elections
FPOe 29% +14
OeVP ( Cons) 26% -11
Socialists 20% +0
Greens 8% -5.5%
Neos 9% ( not sure what they stand for, sort of Liberals I think )
78.5% turnout
Interesting to see what happens with coalition discussions. I have a bad feeling that the Cons and Socs will stitch things up to prevent the Freedom party getting in.
A note on the BSW. They have swamped Die Linke and Green vote. Sahra W is an intelligent, attractive and telegenic woman and a formidable debater. Hence her omnipresence on telly. The other left parties are pretty dirigiste and determinist, but she is a populist and says things people like to hear.
Alice Weidel is similar but they don’t like her in the media because she gives everyone a fucking good kicking and puts interviewers in their place.
Not really; BSW (the “another party”) is of the left so is more palatable to the so called mainstream parties. It will also be a junior member in a coalition as opposed to being the senior member.
Fair comment (I think), but it’s a kick in the teeth for those who voted AfD, many of whom did so because they were fed up of being kicked in the teeth by the existing political parties (cf Reform in the UK). At best, it’s likely to ensure a bigger vote for AfD next time, at worst … Further, AIUI, AfD now have a blocking minority in the Landtag.
it’s not undemocratic and is absolutely typical of politics in a proportional representation system
Which, as I regularly have to point out to some on here, is a system whereby the people vote and ten the politicians decide who has won.
PJF,
That’s all well and good in theory but alienating an increasing proportion of the population isn’t going to end well. Far better to bring them in to government as they have done in Denmark and make them own som of the problems, it does have a moderating effect.
PJF: « BSW (the “another party”) is of the left so is more palatable to the so called mainstream parties»
This, the BSW, is a break-away party from Die Linke the direct desendent of the DDR’s SED (or Social Unity Party) of Ulbricht and Honnecker which “absorbed” the eastern branches of SPD and CDU into its blanket and uninterrupted representation of the people in the workers’ and peasants’ state. Basically these parties are all good friends now.
Wagenknecht’s demand that any coalition partners repudiate the basing of US missiles on German territory will be fudged in the short term (while ceding her greater long-term traction nationally) because this is not an issue to be decided at Land level. In no way does any of this make the BSW an unpalatable coalition partner even if it does look, well, engineered towards a political end of doubtful democratic pedigree.
Wagenknecht also differs from the other parties that will be represented in the Türingen Landtag who continue to advocate support for Ukraine.
It’s always a pleasure, though, to bow to the greater analytical prowess of someone like PJF who clearly speaks with the authority of considerable knowledge and personal experience.
The special feature that makes Germany different* from other demos such as Denmark is their Nazi history. Everyone except neonazis is very engaged with not going down that path again. Time will tell whether their exclusion methods succeed or backfire.
*Apart from Austria, of course, where the far right party has just achieved a similar result nationally. They’ll probably get the same treatment. In this case I think “far right” is fair use for a party founded by high ranking SS officers that deliberately provokes by playing with nazi slogans and visuals.
As to the “pro-Putin” aspect, I suspect it’s no coincidence that Austria, Hungary and Slovakia are the keenest to undermine the stand against Russia. If I was Putin I would definitely have dangled the prospect of a revived Austro-Hungarian based grouping with added lands from a defeated Ukraine. The hankering after the old days goes a lot further back than the Nazis. It was quite astonishing the other day to see the Hungarian number two say that not only should Ukraine surrender to Russia but that Hungary should surrender to Russia too if they roll further. If volks in that region go pro-nazi and pro-Russia they should expect a visit from the Polish army, cos the Poles are definitely not going there again.
Not that a resurgent Poland is without problems. People should be very careful what they wish for when advocating for the end of NATO and withdrawal of the US from the world stage. They’ll get no more of an Arc of Unified Christian Prosperity than they had before.
FFS
The FPOe for a long time was analogous to the FPD in Germany : pro free market and liberalish ( proper liberals not Lib Dems ). Like thr FPD they were doomed to terminal decline apart from the occasional spell as junior partner in coalitiins.
Haider became chief in 1986 and realised that there was great untapped discontent with rhe moribund System, especially with the doling out of high ranking jobs on party lines { proporz ). The FPOe split in the early 90s, a new Liberal party emerging under Heike Schmidt. This left Haider free to pursue his anti EU anti migrant and economically incoherent path. They nearly won the election in1999 butHaider didn’t like the coalition agreement and went off in a huff. Without him the FPOe were defanged.
Kickl’sFPOe have had everything handed to them with the migrant crises, Eurozone stagnation, government corruption and uselessnes and so on. He does not have anythinglike Haider’s charisma, but the message of ” enough is enough” still rings true.
And TMB is right. Sahra W is a hardline SEDer under her soft outer coating. She’s the acceptable face of Stalinism. Freundschaft !
The special feature that makes Germany different* from other demos such as Denmark is their Nazi history. Everyone except neonazis is very engaged with not going down that path again. Time will tell whether their exclusion methods succeed or backfire.
Of course which is why illiberal laws like holocaust denial are acceptable in Germany, even if we don’t like them.
The also have a very strong constitution with a constitutional court and an office of constitution protection that can be used to investigate political parties and if there is enough evidence that they are trying to undermine democracy they can be placed under constant surveillance. As a last resort they can even be banned and for the AfD that process is being started in the Bundestag today, although its likely to fail.
I’m not defending the AfD, I’m arguing that the way the existing parties have placed a firewall round them is counter productive and will come back to cause more problems than it solves. To say you won’t work with the AfD even if they propose or support a policy you agree with is the behaviour that drives people towards extremist parties not away from them.
(as an side as you raise it, the path that Hitler used (an unconstitutional enabling act) was one that had been laid and used by the SPD. That’s the lesson that really needs remembering.)