56% of Austrians in Favour of Leaving the EU--President Calls 'that idea alone dangerous'

So much for 'democracy' as 'rule by the will of the majority', as well as more evidence of a multi-faction Uniparty

A few times per year, opinion polling is conducted within the EU at the behest of the powers-that-be. Mostly, this is done to figure out how ‘people’ are thinking about this or that issue, and since such polling is heavily dependent on how the polling firm asks (as well as how representative their sampling/extrapolation is), results are typically questionable, to say the least.

In the EU, this kind of polling is conducted via Eurobarometer, whose homepage could be of considerable interest to anyone who wishes to investigate such practices. Their ‘standard’ measurements can be found here, and so far they contain 98 iterations of this typically biannual (winter/summer) polling.

The most recent data available is from ‘winter 2022/23’, has the index no. 98, and has shown the following overall results:

This Standard Eurobarometer survey published almost one year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, shows continued strong solidarity of Europeans with Ukraine and their support for the actions undertaken to support the country and its people. EU citizens also overwhelmingly support the acceleration of the energy transition, notably investments in renewable energy and actions to reduce the EU's dependency on Russian energy sources. While inflation is still a major concern for Europeans, support for the euro remains very high.

On all matters Ukraine (or vs. Russia), ‘a majority of European citizens (56%) remain satisfied with the European Union’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine’.

As relates to foreign affairs,

77% of EU respondents are in favour of a common defence and security policy among EU Member States, the same proportion as last summer, while 16% are against. In addition, 80% think that Member States’ purchase of military equipment should be better coordinated and 69% believe that the EU needs to reinforce its capacity to produce military equipment. (emphases in the original)

With respect to the much-touted ‘energy transition’,

a great majority of EU citizens (84%) agree that the EU should reduce its dependency on Russian sources of energy as soon as possible. They also overwhelmingly agree that EU should support the green transition by investing massively in renewable energies (86%). 85% of Europeans are convinced that increasing energy efficiency of buildings, transport and goods will make us less dependent on energy producers outside the EU. 82% agree that EU Member States should jointly buy energy from other countries to get a better price. In addition, 81% say that they have taken action to reduce their own energy consumption. (emphases in the original)

I could list the other items, too, but it wouldn’t make for much of a difference.

Asking the ‘correct’ questions provides the ‘right’ answers. In addition, I’d recommend you checking out their website to figure how they manage to ‘curate’ these numbers: by going for ‘averages’, as the data from the various member-states is highly variable.

This is perhaps best illustrated by the above graph plotting the answers to QA13: would you say that you are very optimistic, fairly optimistic, fairly pessimistic or very pessimistic about the future of the EU? (%)’

As mentioned, there’s a lot of variation, and it you’d like to check out further particulars about any of the EU countries, summary reports may be found at the bottom of their survey.

As regards, e.g., support for the EU in Austria, note that some 56% are ‘optimistic’ about the country’s prospects (for detailed data, here’s Eurobarometer’s spreadsheet on Austria, albeit ‘only’ in German).

As Majority of Austrians Turn vs. EU, Uniparty ‘Warns’

With that said, we may now turn to something that has changed since half a year ago: more and more people in Austria are turning against the EU (policies). As reported by a variety of mainly ‘alt-media’ outlets on 9 May (‘Europe Day’), here’s the write-up by eXXpress (my translation, emphases):

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Austrians Increasingly in Favour of Leave: Now Van der Bellen Warns Against Thoughts of Leaving the EU

The war in Ukraine, inflation, the energy question: more and more Austrians are fed up with the EU. Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen now explicitly warns against an ‘Öxit’ [a play on ‘Brexit’, as Austria is spelled Österreich in German]: ‘The very thought of it is dangerous’.

More and more Austrians are in favour of leaving the EU. According to a survey from Brussels, 56% of Austrians already held this opinion last year [check out the Eurobarometer above, i.e., the massaging of the numbers by the EU is glaringly obvious]. This topic is also hotly debated in the social media and in the eXXpress forum. In view of Europe Day, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen now expressly warns against this idea speaking at the Europe Gala on Tuesday in Vienna:

The very thought of Austria leaving is dangerous. Even flirting with such a thought can backfire very quickly. Brexit has shown how quickly things can turn south.

‘Austria will continue to make its contribution’

ÖVP, SPÖ, Greens, FPÖ, and NEOS spoke out in favour of further development and strengthening of the EU with different emphases. ‘Austria will continue to make its contribution to the positive further development of the successful and peaceful EU project’, Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Minister for European Affairs Karoline Edtstadler (both ÖVP) emphasised. If necessary, Austria would ‘relentlessly point out undesirable developments’, the Chancellor added. [Talk about Uniparty…also, do note that, terminologically, the word ‘contribution’ means ‘forced payments for the military’, the subject of my academic work of the past decade]

The EU's Major Challenges

Besides the war in Ukraine, inflation and energy dependency are among the EU’s biggest challenges. ‘What is important is a sovereign Europe that completely frees itself from energy dependency and makes the energy transition socially acceptable’, emphasised SPÖ leader Rendi-Wagner.

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Bottom Lines: Gaslighting Galore

This is, of course, quite good news, as far as this is possible.

The EU is the combination of the losers of 1940 (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, Denmark), 1943 (Italy), and 1945 (Germany, Austria) to withstand the pressures emanating from both superpowers (USA, USSR) and the British Empire. As such, there is a good deal of continuity between the aims of Nazi Germany in this regard and the ‘European project’ in its many iterations since 1945/57.

This does not mean that the original Nazis remain with us today, but perhaps it is worth pointing out that, in terms of strategy, there exists a strange kind of resemblance between the ‘Fortress Europe’ designs and the present-day incarnation of the EU.

As regards the above piece, it’s important to note that whatever isn’t going over well with the EUrocrats won’t make it into the polling. As reported by eXXpress, however, we can clearly see that there is much more going on than first meets the eye. This is apparent in the remark that, as early as last year (2022), a majority of Austrians held unfavourable views of the EU.

The sentiments expressed by Van der Bellen testify to the blatant disregard of the powers-that-be for democratic sentiment.

Now, I’m not arguing in favour of leaving tomorrow (even though I’d very much like to see that), but if a majority of the electorate holds that view, at the very least a broad-based public debate would be required. That the president disqualifies such ‘thought-crime’ speaks volumes about the true feelings of the powers-that-be as regards the will of the people.

Here, too, we can see that the Freedom Party isn’t much more of an ‘alternative’ in strategic terms than anyone else, including, most notably, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Neither ‘right-wing’ party is a true ‘alternative’ in terms of standing for a different policy with respect to the EU.

I suspect that there are two options:

• Either the EU proceeds to assimilate everyone into its Borg-like structure devoid of anything resembling history, long-grown culture, and national identities; this is the path favoured by all the parliamentary parties.

• Or there emerges a new faction with a new face (leadership) that strongly advocates not just for some revised window-dressing (like the FPÖ of AfD); sure, voting for any of these systemic opposition parties will provide a kind of middle finger to the powers-that-be, which then would move to corrupt these factions (further).

As regards the latter point, I don’t see anyone on the horizon here; any such movement would have to be in favour of a radical (as in: from the roots) re-thinking and re-kindling of the national state and society, which will immediately bring out resistance by the powers-that-be in ‘traditional’ politics and media, as well as bring forth partially unfavourable treatment from the business elites. It might, however, be quite popular with the people, even though significant dislocations from eventually severing ties with the Moloch of ‘Brussels’ would be a given.

Let’s see how long it’ll take for such a movement to emerge forcefully. And where.