Quick Note: Austria Changes Spots
Herbert Kickl leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) since June 2021.
Since the RT website’s being censored all over the planet, I’ll provide its report on the Austrian elections and change in government they brought, which I see as a very positive outcome. However, given the current topsy-turvy condition of politics nowadays where up is down, left is right, green is black, I’d hardly call the new Austrian Government “Right wing” as RT’s headline does: Hopefully, some of the Gym’s European readers will comment on this development:
Right wing triumphs in Austrian election: The Freedom Party has won its first ever national vote, but will likely find it difficult to form a government:
The right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) has won its first ever general election, emerging three points ahead of Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party (OVP) according to an exit poll published on Sunday evening.
The FPO secured 29.1% of the vote, ahead of the OVP with 26.2% and the center-left Social Democrats with 20.4%, according to Austria’s ORF broadcaster. The liberal NEOS party and the Greens came in a distant fourth and fifth place with 8.8% and 8.6% respectively.
The result comes three months after the FPO narrowly defeated the OVP in the European Parliament election, winning 25.4% of the vote to 24.5%.
The FPO has been a fixture in Austrian politics since the 1950s but has never surpassed either the center-right OVP or the Social Democrats to win first place in a national election. The party joined a conservative coalition in 1999, and again in 2018, but was forced out of government the following year when its then leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, became embroiled in a corruption scandal.
Now under the leadership of Herbert Kickl, the party promised voters stiff immigration restrictions, including the “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and vowed to use emergency powers to suspend the right to asylum. Kickl is also an opponent of EU sanctions on Russia and has called European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a “warmonger.”
In its manifesto, the FPO promised to stop paying into the EU’s weapons fund for Ukraine. “We stand for an active policy of peace and neutrality,” the document reads. In a separate section, it calls for Austria to resume purchasing Russian gas.
The FPO’s victory does not mean that the party will be able to form a government. As is the case with the right-wing AFD in Germany, most of Austria’s establishment parties have ruled out cooperating with them. Nehammer’s OVP has stated that it is open to working with the FPO but would not join a government led by Kickl.
Kickl is a close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a fellow immigration hardliner and opponent of military aid to Ukraine. The FPO, Orban’s Fidesz, and Czech opposition party ANO formed an EU Parliament alliance in June. Orban has vowed that the group, calling itself ‘Patriots for Europe’ will “very quickly become the largest faction of the European right-wing.”
Sunday’s victory for the FPO comes amid a broader shift to the right in European politics. After a resounding victory in the European Parliament election in June, France’s National Rally was only beaten in legislative elections in July by a strategic voting agreement between centrist and left-wing blocs. Meanwhile in Germany, the AFD has won one state-level election and come a close second in two others this summer, while in the Netherlands, the populist PVV is now the country’s largest party and the dominant faction in its current coalition government, formed in July. [My Emphasis]
So, traditional conservative, semi-nationalist parties are now “far right” while Liberal warmaking parties are supposedly on the Left?!? That equation is bassackwards. Now the horse-trading begins to form a coalition government. I presume if one can’t be formed then new elections will occur. IMO, Austrian business would back FPO as would more people when they do the math about the savings FPO’s policies would bring them. We shall see what transpires.
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"France’s National Rally was only beaten in legislative elections in July by a strategic voting agreement between centrist and left-wing blocs..."
This is a half truth, unfortunately not unusual in Russian media reports of European electoral politcs.
The truth is that the Left- Fronte Populaire- would have benefited from the natural alliance between Le Pen's supporters and Macron's, they both come from the same past of collaboration with fascists, both are fascists as anyone who has seen Macron's Cops in action over the past years will understand.
And what has happened since the election confirms this view: the Left won the most seats, but falling short of a majority cannot prevent Macron from appointing his own government because the Le Pen Ralliement will, if pressed, prefer Macron's government to one recommended by the Fronte Populaire.
On the more general situation in Europe I will confine myself to the cuntry I know best-the UK, where there is every indication that a party like the AfD or the Freedom Party would win an election if one were called. The current government, bankrupt in the womb, of Labour is just the latest in the absolute surrender of Social Democrats to neo-liberalism. This happened in France (Macron'xs first appearance in politics was as a minister in a Socialist!!! governmen. And it happened in Italy. Most notably it happened in Germany where Scholtz is presiding over a Social Democrat led government.
Starmer is but the latest in a string of US agents (he probably works for MI6 which as any James Bond reader will know is joined at the hip with the CIA) scattered over Europe and heading almost all the 'socialist' parties who, not always consciously, are clearing the way for fascism by erasing all traces of democracy and socialism from the 'left' parties. This is what Weimar did and it is what Starmer and the liberal Establishment set out to do when they nipped the Corbyn movement in the bud and drove the left off the political stage.
This would be bad enough, what makes the situation all the more dangerous is that socialists are associated with mass immigration (entirely the result of successive imperialist adventures whose only opponents were Socialists such as Corbyn) while one of the few bases of support for the anti imperialist foreign policy of the Labour Left is the muslim community.
And then there is the fact that all these faux populist parties are subsidised by Israel and its fascist, racist (no that is not redundant) backers.
Sara Wagenacht shows the way- Corbyn should follow it and Britain's thousands of sectarians and holier than thou pseudo-trotskyists should roll up their sleeves and rebuild the movement which will be required to fight fascism in the very near future.
What frightened the NATO Establishments about Corbyn was the thing that frightens them most, it was not his policies or even the possibility of his coming to office but the rapid expansion of the Labour Party from a moribund 100,000 old folk and slimy young careerists into a six hundred thousand, on the way to a million and more, socialist movement of the sort that could turn Parliamentary Office, based on electoral victories into political power.
I will only add that one of those responsible for this tango to death is the liberal oligarchical clique in Moscow which is as scared of socialism as the pseudo-socialists and radicals, like the SPD and the Greens, who have thrown in their lot with actual existing nazism in Kiev under the banner of anti-imperialism and the defence of popular government. Thus it is that we end up with almost all Europe's left wing parties supporting the Babi Yar party in Kiev while the forces of order on the right fall on the side championed by history, Russia.
The Democrats in The US have returned to their historic role of being the war party.
The European electorate has had its fill and is slowly being able to articulate it better. I am no fan of Geert Wilders, never was, but his increasing prevalence shows the disgust and lack of alternatives. Same in Germany, same in France, same in Austria.
There is still insufficient critical mass at present and the leadership could stand improvement. Credits to Orban and the Czech Prime Minister for surviving. Getting Germany not to be America's poodle will take a lot of doing. Germans do not like sticking their neck out.