Régime Change in Austria: Covid Mandates to Return after Yesterday's Election, but the More Substantial Change is the End of Austrian Neutrality

The post-war period is dead and gone--hence, we are, again, in a pre-war period

A lot of (virtual) ink will flow in the next few days—hence the punch line: with the federal presidential election in the rearview mirror, the Committee of Public Safety (the ÖVP-Green government) will return to mandate madness at full speed: less than an hour after the first results were in, the head of the Green parliamentary party, one Sigrid Maurer, told Austrians to go f*** themselves. As collateral damage at home, we note not only compulsory masking (not that it ever helped, see here for a helpful overview) but also the renewed ‘mass testing’ of our children.

In terms of foreign policy, the results of the dilettantes of the Turquoise-Black-Green government and their stalwarts in legacy media (Qualitätsmedien) are many times worse: neutrality, which has been an essential part of Austria’s consciousness and, yes, identity since 26 Oct. 1955, is also gone.

The Importance of Yesterday’s Election

Arisen from the ruins of the National Socialist ‘Third Reich’ in April 1945, the Republic of Austrian with its certainly not perfect parliamentary-representative democracy was already in intensive care since last autumn—when the Committee of Public Safety announced the ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’, which was unique in the world at that time.

With the re-election of by far the worst Federal President since World War II, one thing is clear: no matter what absurdities and illegalities the Committee of Public Safety deems acceptable to treat the sovereign people—one can expect it.

The cause of the death of the Republic of Austria can be stated just as briefly: a caste of politicians—of all parties—without charisma and character has driven the country to the wall. Many people didn’t care, their main concern in the past couple of years appears to have been the continued ability to go eat and drink out, denigrate their fellow citizens (!) for standing up for constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and, in case of doubt, ‘grumble’ a little.

At least one thing is clear after yesterday’s election: it appears very much doubtful that many contemporaries are aware of what has been going on in recent months. Many of them, especially those who work for the various parliamentary parties as well as for legacy media, which, of course, doesn’t make things any better. At least it is quite clear who is responsible for this misery: the Kurz II, Schallenberg, and Nehammer governments.

If you want to share your thoughts and condolences, please feel free to do so in the comments.

Here’s the background: an obituary I wrote back on 20 Nov. 2022, which focused mainly, if not exclusively, on domestic politics (current content continues below):

The Covid Puppets

Twin Crises: Covid and Ukraine

Both Austrian identity and the current form of parliamentary representative democracy were problematic from the beginning. This is especially true for the Second Republic, for it was the (former) big-tent parties ÖVP and SPÖ that pushed for the (re)establishment of the state in April 1945.

Whatever one may think of the achievements of politics after 1945, this approach—unelected functionaries apportioning positions in back rooms (federal party executive committees)—hardly seems different from outsourcing responsibility ‘to the experts’ or ‘to Brussels’.

In this respect, the current government, on the one hand, is by no means something ‘new’, nor does its governance differ from the previous cabinets in its disregard towards the sovereign people. Loyal party cadres, of course unelected by the people and also not something the people are allowed to vote on, exercise power, proclaim this or that goal, or dispose of the wishes of the sovereign people without much debate (the following quotation is Art. 1 of the Federal Constitution):

Austria is a democratic republic. Its law originates from the people.

Beyond all the connections between ‘Corona’ and ‘Ukraine’, often invoked to gin up emotions by legacy media’, and in view of the events of the last twelve months, the contours of change are becoming more and more apparent.

The long-standing practice of unquestioningly following experts and/or directives from Brussels in particular, which national governments ‘just implement’, has been massively accelerated by the twin crises of ‘Corona’ and ‘Ukraine’.

Take, e.g., the Kurz II government, which dismissed any legal and constitutional concerns of the Covid measures on 14 April 2020 with the following remark:

...whether it was all in order to the letter of the law or not, that will be decided…by the [Constitutional Court]…at a time when the measures are no longer even in force.

Similarly, his short-term successor and pedigreed tinpot tyrant Alexander Schallenberg, who had been in office for a few weeks only, was not only responsible for the ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’—once again in the absence of available evidence that was not shared with the sovereign people in a timely manner—but also for the massively discriminatory measures and the heated atmosphere in the country. As early as February 2022, it was, nevertheless, clear that there never was enough evidence, as an infamous reply by former Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein held:

As far as the burden on hospital capacities and the factual danger of an imminent collapse of the health care system are concerned…it makes no difference, in the opinion of the [Ministry of Health], whether someone is hospitalised ‘because of’ or ‘with’ Covid-19.

Numerous ‘rumours’ about the return of many Covid mandates floated around before the election, and they were confirmed by Sigrid Maurer (Greens) about an hour after yesterday’s election results came in. This occurred despite, as late as Saturday, 8 Oct., the Green’s (and Big Pharma’s) most favoured media outlet, Der Standard, among others, more or less arrogantly dismissed such reports in the ‘tabloid Österreich’. In light of the above, there can be no more questions about the government’s integrity or sincerity.

The described mechanisms of irresponsibility, i.e. the shifting of political-personal responsibility to ‘the experts’, were also once again prominently on display, as Maurer's remark clearly shows: ‘When exactly it’ll be the time [to reintroduce the mandates] depends on [the government’s expert advisory panel] GECKO.’

In all likelihood, children and adolescents will soon be abused anew with compulsory PCR tests, although the pointlessness of testing these population groups, with their much lower risk of contracting Covid-19 (compared to, say, senior citizens) for the sake of the testing régime, is obvious. In addition, testing is a medical intervention whose coerced participation is factually, legally, and not least morally problematic.

All of this is widely known, but none of it will change anything about the Committee of Public Safety’s course of action.

The current federal government under Karl Nehammer, which has finally abandoned Austria’s decades of neutrality, is similarly irresponsible in the realm of foreign affairs.

Apparently, the unconditional and thoughtless support of the sanctions ‘against Russia’ (?), which, by the way, are decided in Brussels, is the new hobbyhorse of Nehammer, Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler, and Federal President van der Bellen.

Those Austrians who are in favour of peace and understanding with our neighbour Russia—a position that is, incidentally, also shared by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel—were denigrated by van der Bellen as ‘collaborators’. His party colleague and Vice-Chancellor Kogler, who didn’t serve a day in the military said back in August 2022 that he would defend the country with a gun in his hand. More recently, he topped even that kind of pandering:

In view of Russia's ‘bestial war of aggression’ on European soil, one cannot stand by neutrally, said Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler (Greens). And he stressed: ‘Those who do nothing are complicit in mass murder, rape, and the abduction of children. There can be no neutrality there.’ The sanctions ‘are working, but it would take perseverance.’

Not to mention van der Bellen’s detached statement on inflation (‘just put yourself up by your bootstraps’). Of course, he said something else, but the gist is this statement.

Meet the Undertakers of the Second Republic

Governing through constitutionally problematic decrees and ‘outsourcing’ any responsibility by resigning one’s office through more or less wordy references to ‘our European’ and/or ‘Transatlantic’ partners are too little.

Not surprisingly, a good part of Austrians—and our European neighbours as well—are dissatisfied with the current situation, with legacy media (second to last) only being ‘trumped’ by the even worse performance of the Nehammer-Kogler government, according to this year’s ‘(dis)trust in institutions’ survey.

There is no doubt that the last few years have left their mark, whereby in domestic politics the establishment of biopolitical tyranny—such as the shameful ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ and the ‘Covid Passport’ (although injections prevent neither infection nor transmission)—as well as the frequently imposed restrictions on civil rights, above all the rights of assembly and freedom of expression.

In the realm of foreign affairs, the situation is hardly any better.

Austria's ‘perpetual neutrality’ has been de facto abolished by the Nehammer-Kogler government, assisted by the senile arsonist in presidential chambers within barely three quarters of a year.

This drastic departure from a foundation of post-1945 Austrian politics, identity, and consciousness was not discussed society-wide. Apart from the Covid frenzy, there is hardly any other subject area in which the government applied a greater wrecking ball:

• in March 2022 Moscow expressed ‘serious doubts about Austria’s neutrality’

• in early in May—again an ‘expert’—considered ‘Austria’s neutrality [to have been] already weakened’

• and by early October 2022, the Kremlin described ‘Austria’s neutrality as “eroded”’.

When did the members of the federal government talk to the sovereign about this fundamental change in our constitution?

Never.

If we take a look at the preliminary results of the Federal Presidential Election 2022, we see a rather alarming picture of the advanced decay of the Second Republic: just 3,340,609 Austrians voted (excluding the results of absentee ballots), which corresponds to a voter turnout of 52.5%. According to ORF/SORA projections, turnout end up around 65.9%, which in any case means that the incumbent van der Bellen was only elected by around one third of all eligible voters.

The platitudes announced by van der Bellen on the evening of the election should not go unmentioned: in the nightly newscast, ‘Zeit im Bild 2’, he described the people’s frustration with politics as ‘absolutely alarming’. Van der Bellen failed to give any indication of his responsibility for this gloomy mood, as the ORF Online article from last night indicates:

Courage, confidence, a positive attitude, ‘and Europe has won’, the belief in the importance of a united Europe in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, said Van der Bellen, who thanked not only the Greens but also NEOS, SPÖ, and ÖVP for their support. Other candidates would not have seen it that way, said the re-elected Federal President.

But what do you think, Mr. van der Bellen, about the two-thirds of the electorate that you denounced as ‘collaborators’ before the election? Not all of them are ‘pro-Russia’ or against a principled stance in international relations—but how do you imagine addressing these people? (Fortunately, van der Bellen was not asked by the visibly relieved news anchor, Armin Wolf).

The aforementioned domestic political upheavals and the drastic departure from fundamental foreign policy-strategic certainties since WW2—not to mention any constitutional qualms—were also hardly an issue.

Something else, though, was unintentionally ‘comical’, if not more than alarming. I’m speaking of Mr. van der Bellen’s reference to neighbouring Italy and the demise of traditional parties there in the wake of the ‘mani pulite’—the massive bribery and corruption scandal that involved all parties, their entanglements with organised crime, and foreign (mainly US) intelligence services. This constellation swept away the ‘ancien régime’ of the first Italian Republic in the early 1990s. In yesterday’s newscast, however, (linked here, time stamp 3:58) van der Bellen said the following about it:

In my generation there have been other parties…[they have] all disappeared. The picture changes from election to election. I don’t wish that for Austria. I don’t really want that for any member state of the European Union.

Night Thoughts

In view of the multiple scandals of the current Austro-Covidian government, which van der Bellen has been inaugurated time and again—from the mismanagement of Covid to questionable appropriations (Cofag) to the misconduct in foreign policy—one can answer with the well-known quip by former Chancellor Bruno Kreisky: Go, young man, and learn history’. But in view of the crazy trip of the incumbent federal government, we should all be clear about what van der Bellen said:

All Italian parties since World War II have been closely intertwined with each other, with organised crime, and with the US-led secret services.

Yet, this is what the Federal President does not want:

A courageous judiciary that investigates these not-dissimilar (alleged) entanglements in Austria. Who knows what such investigations into the ‘Ibiza’ affair (details here), the many scandals of the Covidian Committee of Public Safety, or the SPÖ-NEOS-led Vienna state government (just search for ‘Wien Energie’) would bring to light.

Let's not fool ourselves: the Second Republic is no more.

In terms of both domestic and foreign policy, my mother country resembles a ‘brain-dead’ (Macron) revenant stumbling around.

In just under two years, the ÖVP and the Greens, constantly supported and cheered on by the overwhelming rest of the political caste and legacy media, have undermined the rule of law and eliminated the (remnants of) Austrian neutrality in foreign policy.

On 4 Feb. 2022, van der Bellen signed the ‘injection mandate’ into law, which was an act by which the state—for the first time since the end of World War II—forced its inhabitants into a compulsory medical experiment.

With the above-cited statements of the warmongers in politics and legacy media, the federal government managed to de facto abolish Austria’s ‘perpetual neutrality’, too.

The post-war period is definitely over, and no statement, no matter how hypocritical or unrealistic, can gloss over this fact.

A postscript, as it were: according to the ‘Human Progress’ index, which is also not without methodological flaws, Austria is worse off today than it was in the year of the French Revolution: Austria was ranked 12th in 1789; today, it ranks 34th.