Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Austria Gives Plurality to Far Right
Austria has an unfortunate history with the far right. Adolf Hitler may have been Chancellor of the German Reich, but he was an Austrian by birth. Over the weekend, the Austrian voters went a few paced back down that sorry and awful road when they gave the far right Freedom Party a plurality in its latest election. While the party did not win power, it did finish first. That is a troubling result. Given that turnout was over 77%, that means far too many Austrians have too much comfort voting for the ideology that destroyed Europe just a lifetime ago. And it is hard to say how they can detoxify their system.
The Austrian parliament has 183 seats, meaning a majority is 92. The Freedom Party [FPO] led by Herbert Kinkl, secured 28.9% of the vote, which got them 57 seats. A more sensible rightist party, People's Party [OVP] led by Chancellor Karl Nehammer, got 26.3% and 51 seats. The leftish Social Democrats won 21.1% of the vote and 41 seats. The centrists {Neos] won 9.1% of the vote while the Greens got 8.2%. Both got a handful of seats.
The BBC said:
The FPO was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. Two days before the vote some of its candidates were caught on video at a funeral where an SS song was sung. The party later denied the song, dating back to 1814, had any link to "National Socialist sentiments".
As the party's victory became clear, a small group of protesters appeared outside parliament carrying anti-Nazi banners. One read "Nazis, get out of parliament", while another said, "Don't let Nazis govern, and never [let them] march". . . .
President Van der Bellen has voiced reservations in the past about the FPO because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria's neutrality, and many of its MPs walked out of a speech to the parliament in Vienna last year by Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky.
For those reasons (and probably many more), the FPO is going to have a hard time finding coalition partners. The obvious arrangement would be a deal with the OVP, but the cost could be abandoning Mr. Kinkl as potential chancellor. And if eeeit unlikely right now, a while of failed negotiations could change that. But this journal is confident that the right will not unite.
A more plausible arrangement would put the OVP and Social Democrats in office similar to a grand alliance between right and left in Germany. At very least, one might see the OVP in office with the Social Democrats supporting them on a confidence and supply basis, where they vote with the government on the budget and on matters of confidence.The
FPO must be kept from government. The reason was best explained by Reuters:
Berat Oeztoprak, a 22-year-old kebab seller in Vienna, told Reuters: "What I might fear is that many will no longer be allowed to stay here."
He added: "I was born in Austria and I know that I belong here. I also did two years in the army and I have a badge. And I also served for the state for two years, I pay my taxes, I'm nice to the people here, they're just as nice to me."
There is no room in any country for a government that wants to interfere with people who are busy being nice to one another.
© Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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