The End of Covidistan, Pt. 1: Revenge of the Voters
On 29 Jan., State Elections in Lower Austria (think: TX, or NY) delivered a crushing blow to the governing People's Party, with massive gains for the Freedom Party
This is part 1 of a multi-part series on what is going on in Covidistan right now. As long-time readers may recall, this is the moniker I use(d) to refer to the country of my birth, Austria, which has changed so dramatically during the past three years.
For convenience to my many new readers, you may read up on post-WW1 Austria here:
My many dedicated postings have two distinct titles, which you may also use to identify past reporting; just search for ‘Covidistan Annals’ (autumn 2021-summer 2022) or ‘Covid in Austria’ (autumn 2022–).
Recently, I translated a good post by Eric Angerer, which first appeared on Rubicon News, a Switzerland-based alternative outlet a few days before the above-mentioned state election. You may read-up on this one before continuing.
The below is a translation of a piece by my colleague, Thomas Oysmüller, which appeared earlier this week over at TKP; emphases and bottom lines mine.
Historic Losses for SPÖ and ÖVP: A Punch in the Face for the Political Establishment
The policies of recent years were punished in the Lower Austrian election. Lockdowns, vaxx mandate, and Russian sanctions caused a heavy slap for ÖVP and SPÖ. The class conflict is clearly visible.
Never before has the ÖVP been so weak in Lower Austria, never before has the SPÖ been so weak in Lower Austria, never before has the FPÖ been so strong. A sizeable political earthquake occurred in Austria on Sunday, its epicentre was in St. Pölten. But as is the case with a political earthquake, nothing will change noticeably in the short term. However, the ÖVP has lost its majority in the proportionally representative state government [all parliamentary parties are ‘in gov’t’], and must now make concessions in its hitherto absolutist-ruled realm. [For comparisons, or analogues, think of an electoral defeat in which the Ds in NY or Calif., or the Rs in TX, would need their opponent’s help to govern: it’s no small thing]
Counter-Punch
Mikl-Leitner explains that federal politics and the ‘wave of protests’ throughout the country are to blame for the historic defeat. But she is likely to remain state governor, and the other election principal loser, the SPÖ, will see to that. While the Social Democrats could also demand personnel changes at the top, this will happen nonetheless as the clear winner, the FPÖ, has already ruled out supporting Mikl-Leitner.
The FPÖ’s victory is quickly explained: only the FPÖ took a stand against the Corona policies, where many people had felt disenfranchised. Now it is the only party to speak out against the Russian sanctions. Many people are aware that both Corona and the Ukraine war are at the root of the dearth. The FPÖ has it easy, alright. The unpopular mass immigration as an issue comes on top of that.
So the Freedom Party took a lot of voters from both the People’s Party and the SPÖ. More than 70,000 new voters came from the ÖVP, about 30,000 from the SPÖ. In addition, there were more than 20,000 people who did not vote last time. The turnout this time increased by 5% to 71% [context: Lower Austria has about 1m inhabitants, roughly as many as, say, Montana, but it’s the conservative-in-name-only (‘cino’, if you’d like) People’s Party heartland: the ÖVP has ruled the state along virtually uninterruptedly 1945].
White-Collar Employees vs. Regular Joes
A class conflict within the electorate is apparent at first sight, although this is not too readily addressed by legacy media: among those who went to university, there is almost an absolute majority for the Austrian [left-of-centre] Uniparty of SPÖ-NEOS-Greens. Their horrifying ‘programme’—diktats by Brussels, NATO affinity, and Zero Covid fetishism—are anathema for the ‘ordinary people’.
Conversely, the FPÖ reached but 14% of academics. But—in the former traditional SPÖ milieu—the workers and low-wage earners—their supporters massively outnumber those who still vote SPÖ. In short, the ‘higher’ the education, and the higher-up the social hierarchy, the more likely people are to vote for ‘progressive’ parties. It used to be the other way round: once workers were close to social democracy. That was a long time ago. [see, dear US-based voters, you’re not that special, eh? Also, don’t take this the wrong way: it’s a sad testament to how things changed in the last 30-40 years.]
But signals are being heard by social democrats—question is, though, which ones. A directional struggle within the SPÖ is imminent. The main protagonists: Andreas Babler, who stands for open borders and organised a preferential vote election campaign with the help of the Zero Covid Hawks around Rudi Fußi, Natascha Strobl, Robert Misik, and Daniel Landau vs. more ‘right-wing-sigh’ Hans-Peter Doskozil, state governor of the Burgenland.
Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Lower Austrian governor, was saved from an even greater ÖVP debacle by the older voters. In the voter group over 60 years of age, 55% again voted for the ÖVP. As we’ve explained in the run-up to the election, an ÖVP eletoral defeat therefore has certain limits, and the People’s Party cannot (yet) slide towards 30%. Their core voters can still be relied on. But only 30% of the under-60s still vote for the People’s Party, or about the same share of the electorate that prefers the FPÖ. Shockingly, in the group up to 29 years of age, a full 10% voted for the pro-NATO party NEOS.
Carinthia votes in March, Salzburg in April. It would be very surprising if the initiated trend did not continue. ‘Spring is the time to wake up. Maybe then something will change in Austria’, as a FPÖ member from Wiener Neustadt commented to state broadcaster ORF on the Lower Austria election.
Bottom Lines
As usual, a very concise and spot-on analysis by my friend Thomas Oysmüller, with little to add.
The above piece appeared on 30 Jan., i.e., one day after the state election. At first, the Uniparty and their willing executioners in legacy media were super-fast to blame the result on literally anything—but the past three years of ‘Zero Covid fetishism’.
So, we’ve got the full range of inanities and insults, e.g., ‘global crises’, such as climate change, exacerbated by ‘Russian aggression’ and EU sanctions (i.e., massive price hikes for utility bills), and politicians declaring that the unprecedented number of asylum-seekers—more than 100,000 last year, up 130% compared to 2021, and almost all of them young, Middle Eastern men—were to blame. (Austria has 9m inhabitants, Germany c. 83m, yet the latter saw ‘only’ c. 225,000 asylum-seekers; if you’d use the Austrian numbers and extrapolated it to US proportions, that would be approx. 3.75m asylum-seekers in 2022…)
No criticism of sustained US-Israeli-European support for the devastating Western policies in, say, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, or Libya was heard, which is where most of these asylum-seekers come from.
No mention was made of the Zero Covid policies of the past years, which I documented in these pages (see the introductory comment). Instead, politicians of the Uniparty also resorted to insulting the voters who, seemingly without reasons and virtually overnight, had ‘become right-wing extremists’ and voted for the FPÖ.
The most apt US comparison would be the sore losers around Hillary Clinton in 2016 who also couldn’t grasp that Donald Trump’s victory had come about by the same combination of elitist condescension, betrayal (of the middle and working classes), and outright rejection—by seemingly democratically elected (ahem) politicians who couldn’t understand their defeat—of what mattered to ‘ordinary people’: open borders, blatant disregard for the concerns of the masses, and support for special-interest minorities.
Needless to say, the Freedom Party was the only systemic opposition party to consistently oppose mass-immigration and, to their great credit, had opposed the Zero Covid Hawks from day one.
Voters honoured this stance, and, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I know quite a few family members and friends who, until last Sunday, would have never-ever in their life considered voting for the Freedom Party. This time, though, they did.
The crux of the matter, then, appears to be this:
Will the Freedom Party be able to sustain the momentum and win the state elections in spring? At this point, it seems quite likely.
How long would it take before the political caste and their camp followers in legacy media ‘discover’ that the origins of this massive, if not completely unprecedented shift in voting patters would be mainly due to the Zero Covid fetishism and mass-immigration?
The current coalition gov’t at the federal level, an uneasy motley crew of bottom-feeders from the conservative ÖVP and the warmongering Greens, is almost out of runway. The next federal elections must take place as late as autumn 2024. I personally doubt they will last that long, in particular as the state elections in spring will quite likely bring more electoral defeats for the Uniparty—and more successes for the Freedom Party.
As to how long the Uniparty and its camp followers would take before noticing anything fishy, well—spoiler alert—the above piece appeared on 30 Jan., and by the next day, 31 Jan., the obvious had reached the mainstream.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s instalment of the impending End of Covidistan.