Covid Aftershocks: Austrians Punish Gov't for Mass Immigration, 'Pandemic™' Policies
Meanwhile, branch Covidians are baffled by the 'far-right™' winning, which indicates that 'the Pandemic™' isn't behind us--it's fuelling the backlash
You’ve perhaps heard about it elsewhere, but on Sunday, 29 Sept. 2024, Austrian citizens went to the polls—and returned the Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei, or FPÖ) to the top spot. Garnering some 28-29% of the vote, this represents a historic shift in party preference.
For the first time since 1945, the Freedom Party is the single-largest faction, with the long-governing, former ‘big tent’ factions—the conservative-in-name-only People’s Party (Volkspartei, or ÖVP) and the ultra-woke/retro-Marxisante Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei, SPÖ)—coming in at a distant second and third spots. The Greens, partners-in-deed of the ÖVP in the past five years, lost some 40% of their 2019 voters, with the small ultra-woke/economically pseudo-libertarian New Austria (Neues Österreich, NEOS) complementing the set-up of the next parliament:
Above, you can see the official results, courtesy of the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
Absurdly, this dramatic shift has made many of the losers go completely nuts. To cite but two examples from ‘the left™’, Andreas Babler, chairman of the SPÖ, has managed to lead his party to its worst election result ever, although yesterday he sent out a message to his supporters calling on them that, ‘to prevent the FPÖ from getting into power’, he interprets these results as the voters’ mission for the SPÖ to form a government. Mr. Babler literally sent out a press release introduced with the statement, ‘we have a mission: we must protect democracy!’ (This is, of course, insane, because if your party comes in a distant third, who do you need to ‘protect democracy™’ from?)
The most insane consideration, however, came from the Greens, specifically Health Minister Johannes Rauch who, in a first reaction upon learning about his party’s huge losses, told journalists: ‘I believe it is a mission to keep on fighting.’
Of course, everyone else told the winners—the Freedom Party—that they didn’t want to work with them and instead muttered to work together to build a ‘fire wall’ (Brandmauer) ‘against the Right™’; we note, in passing, that such ideas (sic) were floated well before the election was held.
Two days after the election, though, ostensibly cooler heads prevail, and we’ll enquire now about the role of ‘Covid™’ and ‘Pandemic™’ policies pursued by the previous gov’t consisting of the People’s Party (which never lost as much as in this election, i.e., a third of its voters compared to 2019) and the Greens (who lost some 40% of their voters, ‘outdoing’ even their partners-in-deed).
For ‘insights’ into the consequences of ‘Covid™’ and the impact of ‘Pandemic™’ policies on Austrian politics, we turn to two ‘analytical’ (sic) pieces that appeared in one of theworst Zero Covid/Branch Covidian rags, Der Standard.
As always, translation and emphases mine, as are [snarky comments] and the bottom lines.
‘Corona’ as ‘Success Guarantee’
Thus Petra Stuiber in an op-ed that appeared the day after on 30 Sept. 2024. Writing in Der Standard, Ms. Stuiber hypothesised that ‘the FPÖ’s guarantee of success is still corona’:
The Kickl party has recognised best that the anger of the past is the best breeding ground for sowing mistrust of ‘the system’. Now it is reaping a rich harvest.
Why is the FPÖ so successful? The electoral motives provide an initial orientation. Firstly, there is immigration and asylum. Here the FPÖ is fuelling fear and mistrust of everything and everyone foreign. The solutions offered by the FPÖ are not really solutions at all [of course this allegation must be labelled]—unless the intention is to isolate Austria because it disregards human rights and the rule of law [wait for the subsequent paragraph, because the Zero Covid/Branch Covidian rag Der Standard had no qualms whatsoever to deny so-called ‘human rights’ and due process to ‘the unvaccinated’]. However, FPÖ voters seem to be able to easily shrug off this danger, as well as the constant verbal border crossings by FPÖ politicians and the constant pandering to diehards.
The coronavirus pandemic is another strong root of the FPÖ's success. For one in six FPÖ voters, the coronavirus measures and the ‘compulsory vaccination’ were a motive for voting [why the infamous vaccination mandate is in scare quotes I don’t know]. More than four years after the outbreak of Covid, the country has still not recovered. After a brief phase of national cohesion, a deep rift ran through society. Those opposed to the measures became less and less aware of the pandemic-related restrictions and limitations—this was even more noticeable in rural areas.
Ah, the rural bumbling ‘deplorables’, it’s their fault once more (as an aside, the leftist slur ‘Nazi’ has its origins in quite comparable circumstances, deriving, most likely from the name ‘Ignaz’, taken by the cosmopolitan Weimar Republican leftists to be levelled at the traditionally Catholic South-German supporters of Adolf Hitler’s party). In other words, for well-to-do leftist city-dwellers, it’s literally par for the course to denigrate their ‘hillbilly’ compatriots (?) as such.
This is, of course, a stunning observation by Ms. Stuiber and her ilk—esp. if one considers that, in this particular electoral context, this is nothing new:
To feign surprise now is indicative of but two things: either Ms. Stuiber and her ilk are genuinely ‘baffled’ or they are just so totally isolated and ignorant as they remain within their circles (bubbles).
I know this is an either-or question, but I do think these people are delusional and it can, in fact, be both, as the subsequent snippets show.
Rage Against the System
The fear of ‘foreign’ viruses was increasingly accompanied by resentment towards those who were perceived as ‘part of the system’: ‘the’ politicians, ‘the’ media—and anyone who publicly spoke out in favour of vaccination. Compulsory vaccination—which was never implemented—and the ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ were considered to be the pinnacle of infringements [remember that this is a left-woke woman who found it o.k. to force-vaccinate her fellow-citizens, but the direct comparison to, say, abortion, never crosses her mind; click here for my take on the ‘vaxx mandate’].
Conspiracy myths flourished and many people found and networked in relevant forums [no need to name a single ‘conspiracy’ here, for vague allegations cannot be refuted]. No other party saw through this development as quickly and utilised it as cleverly as the Kickl-FPÖ. It recognised that this was fertile ground on which to sow distrust of a ‘deep state’, an aloof elite with supposedly evil intentions.
For those who need a refresher about the enabling legislation masquerading as a public health™ (sic) measure, please see the below detailed analysis:
It is true that, back in February and early March 2020, the FPÖ under Chairman Kickl was among the loudest voices demanding a ‘lockdown’.
To Mr. Kickl’s credit—and a testament of his political acumen—he quickly realised his error of judgement. Unlike the other parliamentary parties, Zero Covid ‘experts™’, and virtually all legacy media outlets, the FPÖ positioned itself as the anti-mandate party. Surprisingly, perhaps even to themselves, they also stuck with this stance, something that I still find hard to believe because consistency in policy matters isn’t exactly the strong suit of party apparatchiks.
The most absurd—if very telling—aspect of Ms. Stuiber’s, well, ‘reflections’ (if you’d like to call it that) is her concluding paragraph:
The deep disappointment with ‘those up there’ is the flipside of a still deeply rooted belief in authority [orig. Obrigkeitsgläubigkeit]. It seems as if everything that comes from ‘those at the top in Vienna’ is resented—every little misdemeanour is magnified via social media, the FPÖ is busy stirring things up and reaped a rich harvest on Sunday. The other parties stand helplessly by and don’t know how they can still reach people’s minds—because they sense that they have long since lost them on an emotional level. That is probably the most bitter realisation of this election.
I’ll add my two cents here, Ms. Stuiber: I think your subconscious got the better of you in that first sentence, flanked by the other highlighted sections:
You write of ‘the deep disappointment with “those up there”’, which you liken to ‘the flipside of a still deeply rooted belief in authority’.
So, since you apparently don’t ask yourself, let me ask you: could it be that these sentiments are, by chance, the result of the stunning betrayal of the citizenry’s trust by ‘the politicos™’, ‘the experts™’ (who weren’t censored by), and legacy media?
I do read it that way; what you and your ilk are doing is little more than projecting your unwillingness, and perhaps your refusal to at least apologise, for the mistakes you—‘politicos™’, ‘experts™’, ‘journos™’—made.
Imagine a child who is repeatedly abused by his or her parents.
How do you think the child will respond to the continued, evidence-free, and sustained defamations and gaslighting of the parents long after the beating stopped?
‘The Post-Election Covid Echo’
This latter notion appears to make inroads even in places like the editorial board of Der Standard, though. Today, 1 Oct. 2024, the writer Martin Prinz (who, it must be added, is a diehard Social Democratic partisan, as his Twitter/X profile shows), penned a few quite, well, telling lines:
For the first time, it was not just the exchange of votes between the ÖVP and FPÖ that decided an election. Nor did the FPÖ make any other gains from other camps. 258,000 votes from previously non-voters decided these elections, pushed the right-wing and far-right bloc to a new peak, and made a party with an openly fascistoid, illiberal party programme the largest in the country [the rest of that sentence betrays Mr. Prinz’ ultra-woke/retro-Marxisante sentiments].
Why, quite a few well-meaning people ask themselves, how can this be? Who are these people, where do they come from?
ORF tries to answer this question with cheap short documentaries in which the stupid fears of cowardly rural dwellers are played off against urban openness; literally prefabricated footage that is ready for broadcast on election night [oh, look, Mr. Prinz discovered the bias of the state broadcaster /sarcasm].
But not a word about the most important figure of all social science studies, which since the pandemic has always spoken of a third of the population that is becoming more and more socially and politically disconnected [remember that about a third of the electorate refused the ‘offer’ to ‘get vaccinated’; note the conflation of ‘population’ and ‘electorate’ here, which is quite a deliberate obfuscation, esp. as the paragraph begins with the invocation of ‘social science studies’]. This means that the hard core of democracy despisers has now been added to those whose anti-social, anti-democratic anger was at least still linked to issues (migration or inflation).
Facts and reason be damned, Mr. Prinz would be better off by controlling his emotions, but then again, even a casual glance at his utterances on Twitter/X show a deeply partisan and, frankly, very telling pro-Covid mandates and pro-modRNA poison juice stance. This is perhaps best encapsulated in Mr. Prinz’ Nov. 2021 op-ed in—no wonder there—Der Standard, which bore the telling title ‘Call #vaccinesprotect: Knight State, Vassal Art’ (orig. Aufruf #impfenschützt: Ritter Staat, Vasallin Kunst). I shall cite a few choice bits here:
Especially at a time when a federal government is announcing measures against a section of the population for the first time in this republic, which include exit restrictions as well as complete exclusion from cultural and social life, it is both wrong and frightening when a nationwide initiative of artists in the echo chamber of such threats dares to issue a ‘last-call vaccination appeal to all Austrians who have not yet been vaccinated’.
No Discussion
‘We don’t want to have a discussion’, the invitation letter characteristically states, ‘we want to show, as different as we are, that we are united by one thing: the knowledge and conviction that vaccination protects’…
This is both astonishing and frightening. Because whether it is a full-bodied fop as Federal Chancellor or a narrow-lipped aristocrat who threatens a third of the country in this way—to line up behind such ‘last-call appeals’, moreover pathetically at 5 to 12 on the bank holidays, is the self-abandonment of any subversion. Instead of pursuing the rupture lines and seismographic traces of such an exceptional social situation as a free soldier, art joins the ranks as a vassal with fanfares and trumpets, where it will be left in its true sense as a silent and tuneless vassal. As a silent traitor to both its own and, above all, its republican cause.
That is about as far as ‘criticism’ of the vaxx mandate and the ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ was permissible among the self-declared ‘vassals’ of the Covidian régime.
Martin Prinz and his ilk have seemingly forgotten about all of this. In today’s op-ed, he concludes his dark musings as follows:
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl knows what he has to do. He just has to remain radical enough. As long as he has the right opponents, he will retain his majority. It is not yet an absolute majority, but as difficult as it is to achieve one in a National Council election, as recent history has shown us, it is just as close in a run-off for the office of Federal President. As a precaution, Rudolf Anschober [the former Green health minister who oversaw the first lockdown measures] has already positioned himself as the Green Party candidate. Anyone who is familiar with the constitutionally authoritarian residuals of the real power of the Austrian Federal President can guess that this means that an entire state is ready on a silver platter for Kickl.
The concluding musings about the continued rise of the FPÖ are, well, par for the course for the Zero Covid/Branch Covidian juste milieu, which is why, in the concluding section, I’ll offer you my thoughts about what Sunday’s election results mean.
Bottom Lines: A Farewell to the Republic
We do live in interesting times, that is, without a doubt, true.
What is also true is that the ‘Pandemic™’ years mark a watershed moment in Western society at-large: with lighting speed, all Western societies moved from democratic-pluralistic, slightly neurotic but relatively open societies to one big blob under lockdown.
Austria, which I likened to ‘Covidistan’ in these pages, was perhaps one of the more extreme manifestations thereof, as evidenced by the above-linked firsts, most notably the infamous ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ and the enabling legislation masquerading as public health (sic) measure, the modRNA vaxx mandate.
On these measures—as well as on a ton of other things, such as the grift for well-connected ‘service providers’ (e.g., firms offering ‘Covid tests’) and the accoutrements of authoritarianism, such as random police check-ups of ‘papers’—all the parliamentary parties except for the Freedom Party agreed and still agree on.
Those who voted against ‘the system’, as Der Standard invokes in their pieces, they must be bumbling morons, conspiracy-mongering ‘deplorables’, and ‘enemies of democracy™’. Yes, there were protests in Vienna even before the polls closed organised by those pro-Covidian régime supporters who purported to ‘defend democracy’ by protesting the eventual winner of, well, an election.
Yes, like in neighbouring Germany where AfD won in a state election, the Greens moved to deny the presidency of the parliamentary assembly to the FPÖ. This has been customary since 1918, and in so doing, the Greens showed their ‘true’ intent: once in power, they get drunk on it and don’t want to relinquish it, the electorate be damned.
In present-day Austria, these notions are compounded by the ‘firewall™’-in-the-making that unites the People’s Party (ÖVP), the Social Democrats (SPÖ), the Greens, and NEOS—they all have left the constitutional grounds of the Second Republic the moment they abused a ‘public health™’ issue to subvert constitutional liberties (which cannot be taken as I consider Liberty a natural right) and voted, time and again, to criminalise a segment of the population/electorate based on their refusal to undergo a forced medical experiment with a previously unused, highly dangerous, and lethal gene therapy product.
To their credit, the FPÖ under Herbert Kickl, once they saw this as a political wedge issue, actually stuck with this stance (which honestly surprised me), but it is what it is: it was the FPÖ that remained true(r) to the constitution of the Second Republic than all the other wannabe builders of the rainbow-coloured ‘firewall against the Right™’.
It is the FPÖ that ran on a party platform that friend-of-these-pages Thomas Oysmüller summarised succinctly as follows:
A critical stance towards Brussels, stricter migration policy, a coronavirus response and protection against an overbearing security and health state, no sanctions against Russia and an end to aid to Ukraine, no ORF tax, less homo-LGBT policy: these are just a few—but probably key—points that the FPÖ used to successfully distance itself from the other four parliamentary parties. The FPÖ is the only party with several clearly unique selling points. Kickl has created this clear profile for his party in just a few years.
It is quite true—and talks of a rainbow-coloured ‘firewall against the Right™’ that might reasonably involve all the other parliamentary parties is simply proving Kickl right.
To be fair, the Freedom Party isn’t ‘all-in’ on these matters; to be a true alternative, I’d argue that staunch opposition to the EU, the UN, and a whole host of other issues would have to feature prominently, too. Sure, given the realities of the EU straightjacket, this is perhaps as good as it could get for now, but we must not forget to consider that the FPÖ is now a big-tent party, which also means it’s becoming less easy to steer. It may very well be that non-Kickl factions are merely biding their time, and an election blowup might literally all that is required for the quite sizeable share of anti-Kickl/pro-globalism supporters to come out of the woodwork once more. At least this is what I hear from people who are quite ‘deep’ in the FPÖ.-
As such, the FPÖ—much like the AfD in Germany—remains a partially compromised party, but its current leadership is literally the only faction that offers a clear profile against the globalist UN/WEF agenda.
I expect the counterattack by the powers that be to be picking up steam before too long, if only because the FPÖ victory will inform both its sympathisers and its enemies going forward.
Next year, Austria’s federal states of Styria and Vienna will hold state elections, followed by a federal election in neighbouring Germany. FPÖ successes will certainly bolster the chances of the AfD, too, and in these considerations we may identify the issue we’re faced with:
As public anti-globalist sentiment finds its expressions ever more clearly at the ballot boxes, the powers-that-be will become ever more creative to end the current ‘democratic™’ régime.
As the backlash gains momentum, the self-declared defenders of ‘our democracy™’ will resort to ever more absurd and invasive tactics.
Buckle up, we’re in for quite a ride.
At least Austria seems to still have an intact electoral system in which the deplorables’ votes are still counted.
Wow. The real test will come if any of these parties will seek to dismantle and eliminate the Emergency laws that allowed the covid response to occur in the first place. If not, they are just a grift.
Sadly, there are no 'pro-freedom' politicians in Australia willing to eliminate our laws. Therefore, in my mind, they are not pro-freedom but complicit.