The End of Covidistan, pt. 2: Discrimination Doesn't Pay
The End of Covidistan, pt. 2: Discrimination Doesn't Pay
Guess what: politicians and their camp followers in MSM pretend that discrimination vs. 'the unvaxxed' isn't to blame for their historic electoral defeat. Data says it is.
Reference is made to pt. 1 of this multi-part series on the end of the Covid Régime in Covidistan, the country formerly known as ‘Austria’:
Brief Recap of Events
On 29 Jan. 2023, the first of three state-level elections was held in Lower Austria. It witnessed a dramatic decline of the share of votes garnered by esp. Austria’s two major post-WW2 parties, the ‘People’s Party’ (ÖVP, conservative-in-name-only) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ). Together with two small parties (Greens, NEOS), these factions form Austro-Covidistan’s ‘Uniparty’ when it comes to all matters Covid (esp. mandates) and a whole host of other, no less problematic issues, ranging from rampant support for EU/NATO/Transatlanticism to ‘neoliberal’ economic policies to mass immigration.
Readers may recall that it was only the ‘right-wing’ Freedom Party (FPÖ) who, for the past three years, consistently opposed the above, incl. Western sanctions on Russia (but not on Azerbaijan, also ruled by a dictator prone to attack neighbouring Armenia in 2020.
Given these contours, it was perhaps only a matter of time before something went awry, by which is actually meant:
What happens in (notionally) democratic societies after two years of official discrimination vs. ‘the unvaxxed’ if ‘they’ are also going to the polls?
Well, it’s a kind of easy question to answer, eh? It may very well be that ‘the unvaxxed’ would flock in droves to the one systemic party (FPÖ) that constantly spoke up in their defence.
This happened in Lower Austria on 29 Jan. 2023 (see pt. 1, above, for details).
Struggling to explain the result, at first, every member of Covidistan’s political and media complex (PMC) spoke about ‘virtually’ everything else but the failed Covid policies: ‘international affairs’, ‘Russia’s war in Ukraine’, ‘far-right preferences’, ‘mobilising anti-immigration sentiment’, and the like. In short: re-imagine, if you will, how the NYT, WaPo, and the Twitterati struggled to ‘splain to themselves how Donald Trump ended up defeating Hillary Clinton, Austro-Covidistan style.
It was, arguably, only a matter of time before anyone whose intelligence exceeded that of, well, single-cell organisms, looked at the data—and guess what: that moment occurred on 31 Jan. 2023 (yes, two days later).
The below is a recap by my friend Thomas Oysmüller (read tkp.at, if you can—there’s an in-built Translate feature for those who don’t read German); emphases mine.
#Baffled: Political Scientist is Completely Surprised: Unvaccinated People Voted FPÖ
Some in the media and academia are now utterly baffled: the more unvaccinated people live in a community, the better the FPÖ’s result.
Austria’s political-media complex is in a state of bewilderment: analyses of the Lower Austrian elections have shown that unvaccinated people tended to vote for the FPÖ. For Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik (prof., political scientist, U Vienna), this is ‘quite a big surprise’:
[Translation: ‘o.k., I think we need to re-write the narrative of the Lower Austrian state elections ‘23: look at this plot—it’s quite a telling piece, imho: on the municipal level, the shares of ÖVP and (vs.) FPÖ voters correlate massively with injection status’]
Revenge of ‘the Unvaccinated’
Ennser-Jedenastik is completely astonished: the lower the vaccination rate in a municipality [the bottom x axis of the above plot], the more losses the ÖVP suffered and the more gains the FPÖ could record. One has to rewrite ‘the narrative’, says the political scientist. The ‘narrative’ of the dominant political observers is that the FPÖ was helped above all by the migration debate.
The central election motive, even according to mainstream polling firms, was inflation, technically an issue found on the left-of-centre. But many people know that the causes of the current bout of inflation [currently 11+ % in Jan., according to preliminary data] is to be found in the Covid mandates and anti-Russian sanctions. In other words, it was triggered by the positions of the ÖVP, the Greens, and the SPÖ.
Still, it is quite remarkable that journalists and scientists are now wondering whether the vaccination status would have an effect on voting behaviour. Unvaccinated people were specifically discriminated against and also persecuted, at least rhetorically. Especially Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the punished ÖVP leader of Lower Austria, displayed fierce authoritarian rhetoric. Discrimination has also been scientifically confirmed in the meantime.
Anything but a Surprise
It is a clear expression of ignorance. The group ‘Greens against vaxx mandates and Covid Passports’ reminded [state broadcaster] Ö1 journalist Bernt Koschuh that they had received ‘thousands of emails from Greens’ who had now voted FPÖ or MFG [a new party that was formed in reaction to these policies, but it’s extra-hard for non-parliamentary parties to make it, absent massive aid by tycoons (NEOS); the last such party to ‘make it’ are, ironically, the Greens]. Especially in the election in Upper Austria [in early 2022], MFG was an alternative and received 7% state-wide.
The breakaway Greens formulate the motive of the former Green voters:
Politics has it backwards, not the voters. Because the FPÖ suddenly advocated pro-fundamental rights positions, while the Greens/ÖVP committed one breach of the constitutional order after another.
The SPÖ, it should be added, under chairwoman Pamela Rendi-Wagner, put the government in its place by often demanding even tougher measures.
It was not difficult to talk to people in the run-up to the election who would vote FPÖ for the first time. They all had one thing in common: until Covid, the FPÖ would never have been an option for them. More than 30,000 voters who previously voted for the SPÖ now voted for the FPÖ, for example. One can assume that these people saw through the Covid manoeuvre, but are rather ‘left’ oriented. For them, however, there were only two options, one often heard: don’t vote or vote for the FPÖ.
So this electoral motive is not surprising. What is more surprising is that there are academics who are surprised by it.
Bottom Lines
Anecdotally, I know of quite a few people who until now never would have countenanced voting for the Freedom Party. This time, it would seem, it is different for about 25-30% of the electorate who were bullied, shamed, placed under house arrest, and segregated on a whim.
Last weekend, I chatted with a California-based friend. When I told him the above, he asked, ‘if the upward trend of the far-right will continue’?
I answered: we’ll see, it’s quite early in the game, but I would suspect it to do so. The next state-level elections are going to take place in 5 March (Carinthia) and 23 April (Salzburg), both states in which the above-mentioned former ‘big-tent’ parties ÖVP and SPÖ are in the majority.
On the federal level, recent polling is quite indicative (courtesy of Statista.de):
Now, if anything, the take-home message would perhaps be the downward trajectory of both SPÖ and ÖVP in the past month.
The way it looks right now, voters—esp. ‘the unvaxxed’ ones—clearly remember who put them on the spot.
If anything, the astonishment on part of the political-media complex is embarrassing to them: Prof. Ennser-Jedenastik was really #baffled, but ‘the narrative’ marches on, and we’ll look at what happened afterwards in future posts.
I like the distinction of the unaware academics. Freaking manipulated by their own devices.
Revenge in the voting booth. Revenge in the courts. Revenge of the assassins. Revenge of the masses. phds running scared! All due up would be my timeline of guesses. Yeah, we'll see what happens.
Wouldn’t it be nice if unvaxxed were not allowed to vote? 🤡 Our lives would be so great! 😍 Yours truly, SPÖVPGrüNeos
PS: I still would not vote for FPÖ, as they are as populistic and corrupt as the others (in my opionion). Therefore I will never be able to vote again, I fear.