Covidistan Reprise Q&A in Austria's Parliament
The gov't admits to massive increases in children's' mental health problems (+57%) and suicidal ideation (tripled), yet Branch Covidians see no fault on their part
These pages started as a kind of journal, or diary, about Austria’s insane Covid mandates and policies way back in September 2021.
Fast-forward to the present, despite massive political shifts—the Freedom Party (FPÖ) is now the biggest parliamentary faction yet remains shut out of gov’t (for better or worse)—there’s virtually no desire to consider what happened on part of the powers-that-be.
Yes, the FPÖ is far from perfect (and that’s pushing the adage quite a bit), and, yes, the FPÖ was also in favour of locking down in spring 2020. Yet, once the Freedom Party shifted its stance in summer of that year, it stayed on message ever since, and it’s literally the only parliamentary faction in Austria that still talks about the Covid Mania (nastier voices might suggest that staying on topic for that long might be a first for the FPÖ).
Despite loads of electoral victories, the Freedom Party remains out of office at the federal level, mainly due to their rather less compliant stance on all matters Covid. This is hardly surprising as the gov’t—currently, an uneasy three-party coalition led by the conservatives-in-name-only of the ÖVP in cahoots with the Social Democrats and the oligarch-funded small liberal™ NEOS. Together with the ÖVP’s previous partner in the last legislature, the Greens (don’t get me started), these politicos™ were, and in many cases are still (!), all-in on the entire charade:
Mandates saved lives, the vaccines™ helped a ton, and ‘Covid deniers’ are evil and stupid—it’s the entire charade all over again, that is, if these people and their camp followers in academia and legacy media ever talk about it.
To this day, to cite FPÖ Secretary General Michael Schnedlitz who spoke on that subject matter to legacy media back in spring of this year,
No introspection, no honest remorse, no apology, and not a word about a real reckoning. [Former health minister Rudi] Anschober’s statements are a single continued mockery of the victims of the forced coronavirus regime that he installed under ÖVP leadership and from whose consequences tens of thousands are still suffering today…
But Herbert Kickl and us Freedom Party members are certainly not done with it when it comes to the coronavirus regime…
Children and young people were virtually locked up at home, old people were isolated, trenches were torn right into families, businesses were ruined, and people who criticised all these evidence-free measures and also demonstrated peacefully against them were vilified as Covid deniers, conspiracy theorists, conspirators, sectarians, right-wing extremists, etc.
For full coverage, please refer to the below posting:
Why am I bringing it up once more?
Well, back in mid-March, after unsuccessfully negotiating with the ÖVP to form a gov’t—from what I was able to gather, the ÖVP blocked all topics related to mandates and pandemic™ management (sic), which, among other things, ended these talks—the Freedom Party used the right of MPs to question the gov’t.
Any MP may submit a so-called parliamentary interpellation (orig. parlamentarische Anfrage) to the president of the assembly whose office then forwards them to the competent cabinet-level minister. The latter, in turn, is legally obligated to respond truthfully (on pains of perjury), and these interpellations must be answered within a set period of time (usually two months); if the answer is not available, this must be justified.
It just happened, as detailed in the above-linked posting from mid-March, that Freedom Party MPs sent a whopping 827 individual interpellations to the new (current) gov’t; now, the first answers are available, and this is the subject of today’s posting.
We’ll start with a brief item from state broadcaster ORF about these answers, followed by a legacy media piece reporting™ on them.
Translations, emphases, and [snark] mine.
FPÖ Receives First Responses to Flood of Covid Enquiries [orig. Anfragenflut]
Via ORF.at, 5 July 2025 [source; archived]
The FPÖ has submitted 827 parliamentary enquiries in order to come to terms with the pandemic—the first answers have now been received. In a response, Freedom Party National Council President Walter Rosenkranz provided information on citizen participation during the pandemic. At that time, there was a sharp increase in statements from private individuals [see the spin: as per Art. 1 of the constitution, ‘all law derives from the people’—private individuals may not be in office, but technically speaking, the citizenry is the owner of the country].
While there were only around 200 comments from private individuals on the parliamentary website in 2019, there were more than 250,000 in 2022 [some from yours truly], during the height of the pandemic more spin: wasn’t that in 2020?]. The curve then levelled off again: there were around 7,500 comments in 2024 and around 800 in the first half of 2025.
The five ministerial draft legislations with the most comments between 2019 and 2023 were all related to the Covid-19 Measures Act, the Compulsory Vaccination Act, or the Federal Crisis Security Act, according to the response [that alone should tell you everything you need to know as to why the no-one in gov’t, legacy media, and academia wishes to talk about the Covid Mania].
Eleven of 36 Ballot Initiatives Related to Covid 2019-23
These do not come from ‘conspirators or right-wing radicals’, but are ‘the voice of a free people with a free attitude towards democracy and law’, emphasised FPÖ party leader Herbert Kickl.
The FPÖ has also requested a parliamentary committee [orig. Untersuchungsausschuss] to investigate on the pandemic. In this way, the people would have defended themselves against the ‘authoritarian corona policy, against the threat of compulsory vaccination, and against the erosion of our fundamental rights’ [which, let’s not forget, was also pushed by the EU—and instead of defending civic rights, the gov’t conspired with hand-picked experts™ and journos™ to take away freedoms and liberties: to my mind, a clear case of treason].
The FPÖ took particular offence at the ÖVP, as the ÖVP-led governments ‘consistently ignored’ the opinions of citizens [that’s the MO of gov’t once in office]
Eleven of the 36 petitions submitted between 2019 and 2023 were Covid-related. The initiative ‘Compulsory vaccination: Strict NO’ received the most responses, namely 4,703, one of several that opposed the compulsory vaccination that was decided in 2022 but ultimately not implemented.
Deadline for Response Expires at the End of the Week
There were also nine (out of 151) petitions and seven (out of 74) citizens’ ballot initiatives dealing with the Covid measures or the restriction of fundamental rights. Government ministries have until Sunday to respond to the FPÖ’s remaining Covid enquiries.
Intermission
Needless to say, back in spring, the FPÖ was accused of all kinds of things, esp. that these enquiries were ‘clogging’ and ‘hampering’ regular gov’t work™ (gimme a break).
I shall, as pars of toto, link to one of my pieces from around Christmas time 2021, which details the then-pending Covid Vaccine Mandate, a first universal injection order with crushing penalties. Here’s what I wrote, with tons of references to specifics detailed in the below-linked posting:
One can see that this is not a public health measure. It is, frankly, a piece of Enabling Legislation (Ermächtigungsgesetz) that is both unwarranted and irresponsible.
Among the many reasons why I said so, the perhaps most appalling notion was
the empowerment, or authorisation, of a single government minister (the Health Minister) to determine which vaccines, how many jabs, and on what grounds these may be decreed (§ 4 and 5);
A single gov’t minister—who must not be a trained and licensed physician with commensurate credentials and experience—arrogated to him- or herself the right™ to do all this; and to add insult to injury, once passed into law™, the act would permit this by issuing regulatory ordinances.
Let that sink in. Sources and extensive commentary via:
Out of the many dedicated postings from that January 2022, I’ll delimit myself to a telling selection about the mood back then: protests were growing, the gov’t was in disarray, and the shaky legality™ of the mandatory vaccination act were the flip-side of what FPÖ politico™ Schnedlitz spoke about back in March of this year.
In the end, public pressure (and Omicron, but mostly the former) grew so big that the brittle Covid régime cracked and reversed course: although the act was passed into law (shame on all of them), the Branch Covidians never implemented it (it was revoked unceremoniously half a year later) and instead ended most mandates a month later:
And now—for the FPÖ’s response.
‘A Shame’—Dramatic Covid Episode Revealed
The first answers to the series of parliamentary Covid enquiries are alarming. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl wants to hold the government to account.
Via Heute.at, 5 July 2025 [source; archived]
It is now exactly two months since the FPÖ’s flood of enquiries on the subject of corona (827 were submitted in one go, at a cost of several million euros [what’s the price of liberty?]). This means that the answers from the ministries are now gradually trickling in.
Around 150 are already available on the parliament’s website. Particularly alarming: the one that scrutinises the rise in mental illness [while the legacy media piece doesn’t provide a link, here is the reply]. ‘The Black [the ÖVP’s traditional party colour]-Green government has caused serious psychological damage to young people by locking them up—and to this day there has been no word of apology’, says FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl [how bad is the situation? Here’s what the gov’t minister Wiederkehr’s answer, found on p. 3, says:
Question 4: How was the mental health situation of pupils during the lockdowns systematically recorded and documented?
On the one hand, the school psychology hotline was monitored to record the reason for the calls and the content of the telephone counselling sessions [there goes your privacy, by the way]. On the other hand, the individual case files and documented counselling cases were evaluated as part of the school psychology activity reports. This revealed a clear trend towards increasing and increasingly complex individual case work.
Say no more: the Covid régime knew what the mandates were doing—and they kept them in place despite listening in on distressed school-aged children’s concerns speaking a very different language; and then there’s the entire issue of privacy and patient’s rights that were, it would appear, equally ended.]
Increase in Prescriptions
According to the response to the enquiry, the number of young patients and prescriptions of psychotropic drugs to children (such as Ritalin for the treatment of ADHD) has risen sharply [the Branch Covidians are strangely silent, esp. all those experts™ who always stood ready to yell ‘correlation isn’t causation’ from the top of their lungs]. While the number of patients with corresponding prescriptions rose from 21,500 in 2018 to 29,300 in 2023 (an increase of 36%), the number of prescriptions issued rose from 138,100 to 216,400, which corresponds to an increase of 57% [talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burns: the more apt way to speaking would be—talk about politicos™ taking a dump on the country’s future while…smiling, of course w/o adherence to mandates, while participating (partying) at a charity event].
Warning voices about this had already been raised in 2021, but were not heard [more BS: they weren’t event listened to plus remember all the name-calling of ‘Covid deniers = far right-wing extremists’] according to the accusation made by the enquirer Sebastian Schwaighofer. The Head of Paediatric and Adolescent Psychiatry at Vienna General Hospital, Paul Plener, had discussed the overcrowded wards, depression, exhaustion and lack of motivation at the time:
In 2022, the suicide rate among under 20-year-olds rose by 55% and clinics recorded three times as many cases of suicidal risk as before the pandemic.
[read this posting detailing the harrowing case of one such vaxx-injured young adult who committed suicide]
‘Years of Tyranny’
Herbert Kickl therefore announces: ‘We Freedom Party members will make these years of oppression, disenfranchisement and humiliation visible.’ The government's coronavirus strategy was ‘inhumane’ and should not remain without consequences for the individual politicians. ‘It is a disgrace.’ [I second that notion whole-heartedly]
Bottom Lines
I’m a fairly simple guy with a particular fondness for Occam’s Razor: as the powers-that-be knew what was going on during the Covid Mania yet determined to stay the course, I submit this is enough to infer either stupidity or malice. In the case of the former, these politicos™, experts™, and journos™ shouldn’t be anywhere near the jobs they are due to incompetence; in the case of the latter, well, it resolves the question of intent so relevant for criminal law.
We also learn, once more, that it’s impossible to plead ignorance here, which is yet another reason for a hard reckoning re all matters Covid.
Once we ‘zoom out’ a bit more, we must furthermore confront the yet-even-more insidious reaction of the Covid tyrants to the FPÖ’s dissident stance: as I mentioned in my introduction, every MP has the right to interpellation, which in turn obliges the competent cabinet-level minister to reply. This is part and parcel of any self-respecting parliamentary oversight—but given the Covid tyranny, many FPÖ politicos™ resorted to this option to at least put some gov’t members on the record.
As predictably as day follows night, the brain-addled Branch Covidians didn’t like that at-all, hence it won’t surprise you that, by summer 2022, Green MPs were calling for the abolishment of parliamentary oversight:
Green MPs Eva Blimlinger and Ralph Schallmeiner (bios here and here, respectively, courtesy of the Nationalrat’s website) were given a prominently displayed platform—their op-ed went live at 6 a.m. and remained on the top of their website for hours—to disparage their fellow MP (as always, emphases mine).
FPÖ Enquiries: An Abuse of Democracy
Parliamentary Enquiries are an Important Instrument of Control. However, when a Party Relies on Fake News and Disinformation, this Right is Ridiculed.
In an op-ed, Green MPs Eva Blimlinger and Ralph Schallmeiner vent their frustration about a parliamentary enquiry by the Freedom Party. In their view, no answers can be provided, because democracy…
Questions like these are an abuse of parliamentary democracy, have nothing to do with the constitutionally guaranteed right of interpellation or the right to ask questions, for they merely make a mockery of these rights.
Yep, you read that correctly: sitting MPs called the constitutionally enshrined right of MPs to question the gov’t an ‘abuse’ (their word, not mine).
When I saw two Green MPs—remember: they are in the federal government and, due to their grip on the Health (and Human Services) Ministry since early 2020, in charge of Covid policy implementation—using strong legal wording (‘abuse’, ‘disinformation and fake news’, and the like, peppered by du jour allegations of ‘Anti-Semitism’), it made sense to me:
These ‘Greens’ are actually laying the groundwork for their eco-tyrannical utopia, which will end, like all these pipe dreams, in rivers of blood.
Don’t take my word for it, because there’s no need for this, as this was—in perhaps the only actually correct prediction in the field of social theory—foreseen by none other than the Greens’ ideological and virtue-signalling ancestor, Mikhail Bakunin, as inferred to by none other than, ironically, Noam Chomsky who, during the Covid Mania, also revealed his true colours (source here, my emphases):
[Bakunin] was arguing with Marx, and it was well before Leninism. He predicted very presciently that the rising class of intellectuals, who were just becoming identified as a class in modern industrial society, would essentially go in one of two directions.
Some intellectuals would believe that the struggles of the working class would offer them an opportunity to rise and take state power into their own hands. And at that point, he said, they would become the red bureaucracy who would create the worst tyranny the world had ever known, of course all in the interests of the workers. That’s one direction.
The other intellectuals would realize that you’re never going to get power that way. Therefore, the way to get power would be to associate yourself with what we would nowadays call state capitalism and just become a servant of its ruling class. Then you become one of the managers or an ideologue and so on for the state capitalist system.
The Greens, in espousing these non-sensical, if ultimately anti-popular rule, positions are actually managing to (re)unite these two vanguard factions: the claim to believe in the struggles of the chattering and laptop classes, have successfully carried out their ‘long march’ through the state institutions (to paraphrase former German vice-chancellor and Green party stalwart Joschka Fischer, although the phrase relates to both Chairman Mao and Herbert Marcuse), and they are currently building a bio-red bureaucracy that, if memory of the past 2.5 years serves—in particular in Austro-Covidistan—the ‘worst tyranny’, of course all in the interests of bio-medical security (I wrote these words in late July 2022):
They associate themselves with ‘the state’ and have become the most vociferous ‘servant of its ruling class’.
On top of this is the equally troublesome, if not even more pernicious, issue of levelling abuses on other MPs. Look, I know parliamentary representative democracy isn’t perfect, and I understand that ideological differences are real, but to call the political opposition’s constitutional right to petition state officials—with the equivalent of subpoena powers—to ask for redress of grievances—and act of ‘abuse’ [Missbrauch] is tantamount to declare open season on dissent…
It’s highly problematic that legacy media provides MPs of one of the parties currently in government with a platform to hurl—unsourced—allegations of ‘mak[ing] a mockery of science and research, whose interest is to undermine democracy with fake news, whose interest is to divide society, and who take anti-Semitism for granted’ at fellow MPs.
Lest we all continue to remain asleep and distracted, we may, one day soon, awaken in a kind of second Bolshevik utopia that, as Marx himself so eloquently put it (in the opening paragraphs of The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, first published in 1853)
History repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce.
He certainly didn’t discount the notion that the farcical reprisal will be less bloody than the original tragedy.
Please refer to this posting for sources and the like:
The Covid shitshow ain’t over, not by a long stretch of the imagination.
I am proud to be a coronavirus denier, and my motto has always been and still is "3 U and 1 G," which means: unvaccinated, untested, unmasked, but gesund = healthy. The FPÖ is the only political force we can trust to re-examine the anti-democratic regime of the ill-fated cartel of the ÖVP, SPÖ, Neos, and Greens.
(edited for typos)
I heartily concur with your conclusion.
The Austrian case may be extreme but in 2020-2023 (and beyond) plenty of Austrian covidians would have been right at home in California, Chicago, Boston, New York City, and so on. I personally have transcribed more videos than I can count of citizens, teachers, police officers, parents, you name it, detailing death by jabs, horrific injuries from the jabs, and even abjectly begging (and even several men crying) for their most basic human rights, all before a city council or county board or school board— said members black-masked in many instances, all offering their distressed citizens the aspect of ice-hearted zombies.
Nathan Fletcher (not usually masked), the then president of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors (California) comes to most brightly mind. This guy listens to a years long avalanche of public testimonies, including from a pediatric cardiac ICU (intensive care unit) nurse, for heavensakes, and up until the end of his term he was stll defending the covid protocols and the killing, injuring and otherwise pointless medical tyranny— in other words, treating the parade of his own constituents like a bunch of hicks, kooks, and dopes.
Hmm, I guess Nathan Fletcher wanted to take the Interesting Karma train.
Even the majority of the better among the covidians now "just don't want to talk about it."
Well, I do not think their hopes and expectations are in any way in line with the approaching tsunami of reality.