The election has been a single issue business, all about migration. On everything else there's an easy consensus between the parties; Austria is a protectionist, social-democratic republic with a socialist economy and conservative values. This has enabled the conservative OeVP and the socialist SPOe to govern in coalition for most of the years since the war. But it was Germany's stupidity in opening Europe's borders last year that provoked the backlash; until the young Sebastian Kurz took the initiative in co-ordinating the closure of the Serbian migrant route with steel fences, the tsunami of economic migrants all came through Austria, many staying.
The Austrian Federal government went over the heads of the Länder in dispersing migrants as thinly as possible across the country. They didn't want to create ghettoes in Vienna. Here in my gemeinde we were allocated 74, though fewer than half that number are actually billeted here. The owner of a closed and tired small hotel, last refurbed in the '70s, volunteered his asset to the Vienna government with alacrity. He houses and feeds the migrants twice a day on boiled pasta and rakes in more money than he's made in the past decade. The Afghans shrug off the -20 winter cold and the snow, the Africans shiver in misery under their bedclothes. CAFOD have donated some bicycles (migrants can't drive in Austria) and volunteers now coach ex-Iraqi tank drivers, Afghan helo pilots and Sudanese taxi operators as they wobble uncertainly around the car park like children.
Muslim migrants in particular have found an immovable cultural barrier. Not only do the valleys tintabulate to the sound of church bells three times a day, not only can you not travel more than 100m without meeting a crucifix or a Marian roadside shrine, only pork and beef can be bought in the shop, and there are no halal foods, but the locals insist on greeting them in public with a cheery smile and "Grüß Gott!". They know damn well that the God being asked to bless them is the Holy Trinity of the Christian Diety and not the sterile Allah of their own death cult. You can see them wince almost imperceptibly at the greeting. They do not respond.
In dispersing the migrants so widely the Federal government scored a home goal. In those provinces in which most gemeindes had never seen a black face before the dispersal, the SPOe and Green vote has collapsed and the OeVP and FPOe have benefited. The message is very clear; thus far and no further. The migrants here themselves want to leave the rather bleak and isolated Austrian rural areas for German cities, and the Austrian authorities are complicit in turning a blind eye to their leaving; the whole mess was, after all, Germany's fault. In return, Germany is keeping the Austrian border closed - to intercept both migrants and Balkans cigarettes.
All this has put Sebastian Kurz in the Ballhausplatz.
I was in the local pub yesterday evening with a couple of young German friends and the place was fairly packed with folk watching the election results. I'd worked out that the full tables in front of us were SPOe until young Katz nudged me to point out an FPOe 'Strache' scarf draped over a chair on the table behind. This is how rural Austria works. There's only one pub, so Labour and UKIP share, and get on politely enough, greeting eachother in the toilet and enquiring about children. They're likely to be related, after all, in an Austria in which extended families have largely stayed in place on the same land their ancestors inhabited centuries ago. And community and cultural identity are always more important than party politics.
8 comments:
Thank you for this interesting post Raedwald.
Why was there a "snap election"? What caused it? It seems only a short time since Norbert Hofer had to concede defeat.
All religions are death-cults, please get it right .....
In fact, that's one of the testts, that (for instance communism) a thing maust pass to be a religion:
"Does it kill millions in the name of the "Holy cause"?
Otherwise, highly amusing.
Please note, though, they ARE fed, they ARE housed & there are opportunities to learn, all of which are important.
Poisoned Chalice, they were "Presidential" elections: you even commented.
http://raedwald.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-month-is-long-time-in-politics.html
Ah! Senior moment - sorry!
G. Tingey said @ 10:25
'All religions are death-cults, please get it right'
No they aren't - and you know that but you're too conceited to admit it. You never join a conversation do you Mr Tingey? No, you barge in (see above). Were you bullied as a child, small penis perhaps?
Raedwald said:
'And community and cultural identity are always more important than party politics.'
Used to be like that here amongst ordinary folk. The Liberal Club would play the Labour Club at darts and the Conservative Club would play both of them at snooker. As for identity there's a government department for that and it has rules - rules that if you break them could put you in prison. We're pretty fucked just now. Unrecoverable in fact.
Steev
A fascinating insight mate.
I count myself as greatly enlightened through having perused and inwardly digested it.
Though, the Hapsburgs ran an Empire for much of the Eastern kingdom's modern existence, the Empire goes back to the C9th first Reich I believe they name it.
Yet, the people who dwell in the valley's which lend it to a peculiar parochialism which perhaps is not found so much in the distant cousins on the north German plain.
Moreover, though Vien was a crossroads, a capital, a centre and cosmopolitan city, the Austrians have retained a very strong sense of cultural, linguistic and familial identity, which is mirrored in varying degrees in England in many ways though the Austrians more protect their identity and fiercely. For more than, 40 years of mass immigration and multcult poisons spread by aljabeeba and the state not least in the Long March and 'Common Purpose', have diluted England's sense of cultural cohesiveness and being, this was deliberately done, Austria being under the umbrella of big cousin over the mountains, has been better sheltered from the Marxist scum and Austria always regard as a little brother wherea those hateful Brits always a thorn in the side of the Vaterland, they had to be dealt with and literally 'washed' away.
that job [fuck England over] is nigh done.
While the going is good, Austria had better concentrate on telling big brother over the mountains to fuck off and do its own thing, looking east and to its old partners in the; Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenians, Poles, Hungarians and even further into the Balkans [Little Russia and even the Serbs] + not least the Russkies.
"When I use a word," G Tingey said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." Actually you cannot re-define the English word "religion" to include Nazism and Communism just to suit your prejudices.
Both Nazism and Communism are (were) atheistic ideologies. Both used the atavistic desire to belong, so in a sense they may have been a substitute for religion, enabling those willfully refusing to believe in God some form of ersatz meaning in their miserable Godless lives.
Post a Comment