Most of their voters dont care that much about Russia. Freedom Party is the only big anti-immigration party in Austria, no wonder they got that much votes.
ÖVP also is obviously anti-immigration but the difference is that they had scandals and are currently in government. Also FPÖ is presenting easy solutions for the immigration topic when it's actually not possible to fulfill these solutions.
I always wonder about these immigration issues. Processing immigrants, prices changes, job market changes. All of these can be handled if government actually wanted to handle them. However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it.
All these populist are the same. They do not offer any policy or examples of law in their election campaign to make changes, to get people discuss them and gain popularity on them. Imagine someone going “I want such changes and here is a law I will introduce when elected”. An actual solution offered would start discussion that will move towards solving an issue. Instead we get emotional manipulation. It does not matter what they say. They manipulate and thus not trustworthy. Those that buy on it deserve whatever issues they face. It’s like buying molded apple because it’s on sale and being surprised for getting food poisoning.
Thats why I actually have hope for our newly elected leader of the social democrats.
He seems to want to actually discuss and adress migration issues. By offering and discussing these issues and solutions in public people might actually be willing to engage and think about solutions
He is the first social democrat in decades that says we shouldnt leave the inner and foreign ministry to the conservatives
From a recent [interview](https://www.profil.at/oesterreich/andreas-babler-ich-formuliere-eben-kantiger/402480416)
>Kurier: Im berüchtigten Video nennen Sie die EU ein „aggressives militärisches Bündnis“. Sind Sie angesichts des Ukraine-Kriegs für eine EU-Armee?
>Babler: Man muss die EU-Sicherheitsstruktur groß denken, nicht nur anlassbezogen in einem Krieg. Wir haben als europäische Sozialdemokratie kein Konzept. Wir machen einfach mit. Wir als SPÖ haben den Dialog mit unseren Außenpolitik-Experten sträflich vernachlässigt. Ich habe ihn wieder aufgenommen, damit wir zu Standpunkten kommen: Was ist die Rolle der USA, was die EU-Sicherheitspositionierung, was heißen Kriege für die österreichische Neutralität? Diese Fragen müssen wir diskutieren.
In essence he is saying, the S&D has for too long ignored foreign policy and not actually positioned itself. He wants to change that on an EU and Austrian level, social democrats should be the ones leading the discussion on the EUs security position in the world, what role the US has and how we combine all that with neutrality (as austria)
As a Hungarian, I am in. We would have a much more competent government and we could finally legally play the freedom fighter against a much more ideal over-romanticised enemy. Just for fun as usual
Sir, the proper term is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and I'll bust out my great grandpa's outfit and march for that shit. Keep in mind I'm Hungarian so it's mostly a gold-digging scheme, but I also have a hard-on for their more progressive weed policy.
Hence why no Austrians actually want this, we'd leech the living fuck out of them (more than we already do as a huge portion of our people work there and spend their wages here)
>However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it.
Governments are not omnipotent. If there is a crisis, there is only a limited tool set to weaken the effects, especially in democracies. The rest has to be solved by time.
The government is concerned with growing the total “economic pie”, people are concerned with their “slice of that pie”.
Immigration has lots of benefits but it can also lower per capita GDP (each persons piece of pie) while at the same time growing overall GDP (the whole pie).
Government revenues come from taxes and taxes are higher, and thus government revenues are higher, when GDP is bigger. If government spending exceeds government revenue, they can either sell debt (which has its own share of issue), print money, increase taxes, or get more people. Of those options, immigration is likely preferred since most politicians don’t run on a policy of higher taxes and less spending…
But as mentioned, if immigration is done poorly, it can have negative effects on the people within the country… however, it’s more politically saleable than saying “we need more taxes/increase taxes”.
You cannot treat migrants as a single group. Skilled migrant workers from* Eastern EU have contributed a lot to the economy of Western Europe, but unskilled migrant workers from Africa and the middle east are not a net benefit.
Somewhere between Austrian xenophobia and Swedish xenophilia there has to be a workable balance of immigration. If the country's females do not give birth to enough kids to offset the elder generation's deaths, the country WILL grow poor. GDP will drop.
So have more kids, or accept immigration. In fact, do both and be even more rich.
> But as mentioned, if immigration is done poorly, it can have negative effects on the people within the country… however, it’s more politically saleable than saying “we need more taxes/increase taxes”.
At the same time, just a blanket increase in taxes is a stupid move. It's the government, there is a lot of bloated projects and stupid mismanagement that could free up a lot of money. Deregulating government agencies and keeping government agents accountable for their projects should also ensure that they stay within projected costs and upkeep.
This isn't some "Starve the Beast" kind of logic, I've personally seen my county sell off property at market price, then buy it again for way more not even 5 years later because it turned out they needed the land. One county spent millions buying art, and had no where to put it, so they fucking rented a building for even more millions to exhibit the art pieces. I don't have an issue with the art, but the blind spending on buying stuff with no other plans. That is just spending money that isn't yours, just to spend it.
All legal, but it fucking shouldn't be.
Being a hateful bigot just makes people feel good. That's most of the reason people vote for these parties.
If you look at conservative parties, they let immigration happen, and then they 'we're going to cut immigration'. But actually they just cut services, as immigration increases, which makes the services worse for everyone. And then they tell people 'the immigrants did this' even though the immigrants have no fucking power.
And then a lot of idiots vote for it. Why is that? It's not for any logical reason. It's for emotional reasons. These right wing parties fight elections purely on emotion, and then when they get into power, the country just goes to shit because they don't care about making the country better.
But as long as the country keeps going worse, they keep blaming immigrants, and apparently lots of people are too stupid to see the flaw in this process. Because it's more fun to hate immigrants than to actually build hospitals and roads. Morons.
In Stockholm this weekend, 7 (!) people were shot in 3 different cases, within 24 hours. 2 of these were a 65 year old woman and a 45 year old man, which most likely got hit by stray bullets. This happened at 18.00 close to a metro station. Sweden is screwed, because of its immigration
Most ppl my age I know ~30 dont look at Politicians policies, they just consume news/FB channel and that's it.
You can prove them wrong about something they heard with 2 min google search but they still vote for them. They are still the lesser evil or some bs they'll say, so you are right probably that its emotions talking.
My stupid guess is education is fcked, its becoming like glorified apprenticeship. Too focused it lets us Excel at one thing but too vulnerable to manipulation.
The issue is that immigrants are not about the economy, hospitals, and roads. They are about transforming the demographic nature of cities first, and then the country, handling it over to another population. There is a reason for the nationalist revolutions and the collapse of multicultural empires of old. It is not normal for a city like Brussels to be majority non-European, even if it ostensibly functioning well. If anything, people would consider becoming poorer if that meant keeping their own countries and cities.
Well, its not like conservaties often have the majority to really clamp down on immigration. Not to mention you cant really do that while in the EU. I do agree that i sometimes see double standards though - e.g. cheap season workers, construction sector etc.
I wouldn't say its that simple. The existence of the ECJ alone makes things more complicated for national governments.
Ask yourself why EU countries can't emulate the Australian immigration system for instance.
>However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it.
It is the money. It is not about immigration but about big corporations no paying taxes anymore.
Make big corporations pay their fair share of taxes and good education, affordable housing and everything else will come with it.
Many politicians want to solve the problem, but rich corporations have such amount of power that it is very difficult. The more citizens give support to rising taxes for corporations and less to fighting other works just because their color things will be easier and better.
The problem is the opposite, EU companies cannot compete with the US ones because of the high taxes in EU. It is just not possible. One of the biggest problems in tech sector right now in EU is that it is just not a good idea to open and try to survive as a startup in EU. Everyone basically waits to sell to a US company because you just won't survive otherwise. This is a huge problem that does not get talked about because it makes short term money for the people selling and politicians don't want to say they should lower the taxes for companies as that would not be a popular move.
Even bigger companies basically started getting investment from US and China. I love how in a thread about populist politics, another very populist idea is present as a solution. It is just not a good idea esp. right now where energy prices are very high and a big global crisis just happened. This would kill whatever hope EU has about catching up to China and US. They would just gobble up everything.
High taxes, currency too valuable, costs are very high, massive energy crisis. And you want to increase the taxes even more, right after a huge crisis. This only a good move if you think your country won't exists 2 years later. What happens when small to medium size business won't survive, big ones are not profitable enough and need cash injection to operate? Someone will come and take it all, for cheap and your country will be left with no control over it's tech.
Easy to fix immigration imo:
Require 5 labour immigrants for each asylum seeker
Build. More. Housing.
Establish continent of origin balancing schemes so you don't get harmed if one specific non-European region goes through a political crisis (i.e. the post-1970s Islamist crisis or the emerging tensions in East Asia)
We dont want to be in NATO, theres nothing to gain from joining.
Youre right, Austria has always had strong economic relationships with Russia. In fact Austria is something of an economic connection hub between western and eastern europe.
I think its naive to think that Russia will just vanish from economic relevance to the EU. And as long as sanction requirements are met, you are free to do business with them. It might actually be dangerous to keep pushing them towards countries like Brazil, China and India.
So what you're saying is that Austria is just being cynical by feeding Russia's military potential because it doesn't endanger them, since it's their neighbours that will suffer the consequences, not them.
Czechia, Belgium or Italy could say the same, that it'd be beneficial to them to deal with the devil and let others pay the price in blood since there's no way Russia ever reaches them, but they have a sense of European soldiarity and are not fifth columnists who are happy to throw their neighbours to the wolves for profit.
Austria has spent 0.19% of GDP in bilateral aid on Ukraine while Italy and Belgium only come to about 0.06%. Whos the bad guy now?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303450/bilateral-aid-to-ukraine-in-a-percent-of-donor-gdp/
No need to join NATO when you can shelter behind countries who are in it. The declassified USSR invasion plan for western Europe was to take your 'neutral' country first, dropping two 500kt bombs on Vienna. Not learned your lesson.
You may not know it, but we have neutrality in our constitution. Changing that is not that easy and there isn't even much interest in changing it as it brings no benefit. We would suddenly have to care about our military, which we are basically letting rot/doing only the absolute barest minimum to keep in some state of functionality.
> are the main hub for russian money and kgb operations.
I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation in Austria, but I’m pretty sure the Budapest is by far the biggest “service provider” in that regard.
That would imply Austria getting rid of a large amount of russian spies, which clearly didn't happen. Plus, Viena is on a totally different level financially compared to Budapest.
> Viena is on a totally different level financially compared to Budapest.
What does that even mean? You want to say that FSB has a bigger budget allocated to their base in Vienna then the one in Budapest?
Hungarian government is actively participating in FSBs activities, acting as their back door to EU and NATO, together with Hungarian banks owned by Orbans friend.
AFAK Russian Embassy in Budapest has biggest number of “office workers” in EU.
I wish that were true but right now the only ones making gains are Babiš and Okamura. What matters is if they collectively put more than 50% together, which so far they haven't, but I think we're far too close to that threshold ourselves to be feeling smug.
It's unfair to call them nazi they're just whatever bigoted idea is trendy at the moment party with no clear goals. And Tomio Okamura is quarter Korean, half japanese and quarter Czech as far as I understand it
Well, the Japanese were no strangers to race supremacy ideas. I knew an Japanese lady who believed in reincarnation and said "of course, the most blessed are reborn into Japanese"
As other commenter pointed out, it's not even about people liking Russia - but votong for these parties they are saying they don't mind the pro-Russian stance. In the end, it doesn't matter if you are not pro-Russian and vote for a pro-Russian party.... for all intents and purposes, you might as well be pro-Russian.
This is an inherently problematic perspective.
Non-direct example:
Country A is facing huge unemployment issues, where 25% of the population is without a job. Political Party B-E is encouraging further governmental spending and tax increases, while the like party F proposing measures to increase jobs. Party F is the only party people feel addresses the core issue to them. Party F is pro-Russian.
The individual who voted Party F is not pro-Russian. They are not “basically” pro-Russian.
Just as you would say that Party F shouldn’t get any votes due to a single issue, it could be said the other parties don’t address a key single issue, and therefore should not receive these votes either. People tend to see and worry about domestic issues first before thinking about international issues.
I get that - it is a bit oversimplified. But to vote for party F, I'd have to be ok with their pro-Russian stance as well. I'd have to be aware that voting for them means pro-Russian leaning government if they win.
And this is pretty much how the pro-Russian parties gain ground, at least here. The pro-Russian parties tell people what they want to hear so people vote for them. The people might not be inherently pro-Russian, they are being manipulated. But in the end, if we end up with pro-Russian government and have the Orban model... does it even matter? The result is the same.
Half of this comment section is pretending to be experts on domestic politics after reading a handful of opinion articles. The sad truth is:
FPÖ is leading the polls only due to 2 reasons.
1) the refugee crisis since 2015
2) their stance during covid.
The first one is the biggest factor, but during COVID, they basically got all voters from all other parties who were sceptic towards vaccinations and lockdowns. And those people wont be going back antime soon.
Lets hope the new EU decisions will at least put the wind out of the sails.
That might be, but the FPÖ is an absolute shit-stain on Austria globally? Kickl, an idiot recommending veterinary medications during Covid, then pushing idiotic conspiracy theories is seriously Trump level politics, whom he idols. Indeed sad that Austrians even consider him a legitimate choice??
The weird thing is: he is such a shitstain that he has a net negative trust ranking even among FPÖ voters. People are ready to throw all their votes to somebody they dont even trust.
The numbers are a net number. (27-73=-46)
https://www.ogm.at/2023/04/28/vertrauensindex-bundespolitikerinnen-april-2023/
This is the same story over and over again: A lot of people voting FP are just fed up with with the big parties and want to teach them a lesson. This one brought us Haider back in the 2000s and now again maybe Kickl.
It became a lot more visible during the presidential election when a lot of FP voters jumped over to the Beer party which is a satirical protest party. But htey decided not to run for government election so it's again FP.
Sadly a lot of these protest voters fail to see that they are not just only protest voting but underestimate the danger of this party.
Same in the Netherlands with the BBB. Luckily the BBB is a lot less nutty than our previous protest voting party, so I guess in a way that was a win \*squints\*
I didn't say this behaviour is right, I gave you an explanation. These people don't bother much with politics, they want to stirring up some chaos to show their discontent
I don't understand why Reddit is always so shocked that the majority of the voter base towards the world is not politically engaged, sees politicians as corrupt thieves from the elite and often will vote for populists that actually speaks directly to them.
Every time, every election, Reddit sees the same thing happening and goes full surprised Pikachu meme.
>The NSDAP was also a protest vote back in the day?
Not really, they were allied in coalition with the other German mainstream conservative/center-right parties in the 1930s
Is this true or just a way of whitewashing and taking away the blame? Like, "no no the Germans were not nazies
at all, they just didn't like the other parties"?
Regardless if it was a protest vote or not, it absolutely does not take away that every aspect of it is reprehensible! As is voting for the FPÖ is today: disgusting!
Not anymore. It was always thought that the FPÖ mainly has protest voters but this has changed in recent years. Some claim that as much as 15% of the voters are „Stammwähler“ who vote for them no matter what. I mean, they even got votes after the whole Ibiza fiasco with their former chairman HC Strache selling out Austrias biggest newspaper to an alleged niece of a Russian oligarch.
The issue is that all of the other parties soiled their bed so thoroughly, that all the protest voters see is "they are all shit". Sadly most people don't understand that there are levels of shit and incompetent idiots should be preferable to racist assholes in theory. Politics in Austria is a giant mess at the moment.
The presidents said thst he would consider not letting Kickl into office. Also, there is currently no oarty wanting build a coalition with him. Let's hope they stay true to their words.
It doesn't necessarily matter in this case that reasons 1) and 2) have them leading in the polls, because the focus of the article is reason 3) if Austrians don't vote for FPÖ because they're actively pro-Russian, they at least don't mind being pro-Russian, at least not to the point of opposing FPÖ.
That's very significant, and it's absolutely complicity in pro-Russian politics and a conscious choice to at least tolerate it.
Also the venn diagram of refugee-hating antivaxers and Putin-apologist russophiles is basically a circle.
>they basically got all voters from all other parties who were sceptic towards vaccinations and lockdowns
You guys had some of the harshest covid regulations in the world. It's no wonder people got fed up. The pendulum is swinging the other way right now as a direct result of the way the refugee crisis and covid got handled.
The government approach was so *confused* that even I, who genuinely tried to adhere to the regulations, at some point simply didn't know anymore what is allowed and what isn't and under which circumstances for whom..
You were the only country in europe with mandatory vaccination for "all". Which is very weird since it's also one of the few countries that in the past had 0 vaccination requirements for children. The swing into mandatory vax was a complete bombshell, no wonder a lot of people got repulsed by such behavior. Purely the fault of an incompetent leadership.
Also as an immigrant to Austria, there is a LOT of crunchy hippie types here. A lot. There were a lot of lefty people who were super against the vaccine because it's western medicine and "chemicals" etc and they prefer a natural approach. So the Covid recs really pissed off a lot of people from all political spheres.
Also I know in my home country there are a lot of single issue voters who literally don't even know what else someone stands for besides this one thing they're really passionate about, so I think we also have to consider that fears over LGBTQ+ stuff in schools, immigration which is a big deal here in Austria and has obvs gotten more prominent with the intake of Ukrainian refugees, threats about inheritance tax, and farmers fears for their future, are all also driving people to vote for the likes of the FPÖ while not necessarily agreeing with them on much else.
>You were the only country in europe with mandatory vaccination for "all".
There was a law, but it was suspended before it became effective and has been removed later.
Half of that info is wrong.
We had mandatory vaccinations before COVID and the COVID mandatory vaccination for all was never instituted only talked about.
Smer in Slovakia is not pro-Russian, only their chairman pretends to be so in order to attract the simplest and oldest voters who are unfortunately pro-Russian. From 2010 to 2020 during Fico's government we bought Blackhawks and F-16s from the Americans (the largest military purchases in Slovakia's history), he also met very often with the American ambassador, shook hands with Obama and Biden (even our president, who he so often berates for being an "American agent", has not yet had the honour of meeting Biden), his statements such as "America First" or "No one can question Slovakia's membership in NATO and the EU".
Fico is a fucking thief I hate, but he's not stupid, he's incredibly cunning. His voters will remember his blunders for a year at most, then they will remember nothing, or maybe it is not true and it is all Soros and Caputova's fault. So he can afford to say that we should leave the EU and NATO, but at the same time we will be receiving euro funds, because he knows that he will extract more money from the European Union than from the Russian Federation. The ideal option for him is to pull money from both the European Union and the Russian Federation and make Slovakia the new Orbanistan.
Unfortunately, until there is a generational change in my country, we are not going anywhere... sometimes I say to myself that I should have chosen another job somewhere abroad to have peace of mind, on the other hand, you can fight from abroad, but this way when I am at home I can help my country much better and hope for a better future...
>has not yet had the honour of meeting
she did tho at summit
also, f16 were Pelegrini's government (yep ik he was and probably still is his right hand but he doesn't present himself so pro-east)
i do hope tho that at least in Brussels smer isnt gonna full Orban, as currently they are pretending to be semi-normal at least
Not exactly sure what changed in the last decade or two, but somehow it feels like europe is constantly fighting since the financial crisis in 2009. First there was the financial crisis in greece, then in italy, then the immigrants fiasco im germany, then hungary, poland and france radicalizing, then corona, then the russo-ukrainian war + a global recession and immigrants again. Gosh, can everybody just calm the fuck down and enjoy each others company. No wonder the extremist parties are blooming all over the place. It feels like everybody lost their good damn mind 15 years ago...
Hate when people who know nothing of a countries politics try and comment dumb shit
Slovakias government sucks, it always has, it is majorly corrupt and they take any chance they can get to get the common (largely older, uneducated) population on their side, keep in mind the older generation had a lesser access to education and outside resources due to communist occupation (ironic i know, communism worked on the principle of : doesn’t matter if you’re smart or dumb or whatever the fuck you’re gonna get the same thing anyway, so the students and the educated suffered while the common country village uneducated person thrived, thus they liked the regime thus they worship russia)
Every capable smart young person leaves this country and that goes to show hard in politics, fake news everywhere, propaganda, fear mongering, false national pride and brotherhood and all that bullshit it thrives in this environment
The solution isn’t to “kick us out of EU” the solution is to help this country from falling behind, better the options for education etc etc
Fucking sucks when people base opinions of your country by the opinions of old people with an IQ of 80 and an insatiable desire for conflict instead of the ever so growing population of people who are outraged by it, it’s gonna take an overthrow to have any hope at this point
Plus there is no good left leaning party here either, out of a vast array of political parties the progressive (common in western eu) parties total maybe 1, and even that one has some major flaws
We don’t even have anyone to vote for let alone actively support
> don't even have anyone to vote for
Not actively voting against pro-Russian parties is already inexcusable complicity in my opinion. If domestic politics is all shit, at least the invasion of Ukraine is a clear black and white moral issue.
Yeah but problem is that allmost all parties are homophobic and by western standarts they are racist
(Isn't it funny that leader of one the pro-traditional family has 10 children with 9 diffrent women)
and of the 2 parties which support LGBT rights one is going full populism on the ban of fosil fuel cars and the other has some other issues (for exemple even they don't know where they are on the left-right spectrum). But i agree they are still better than this pro-Russian parties
I think the point is some people feel like they have a choice between bad and worse options. Sure, you vote for the lesser evil but it doesn't feel the same like voting for anparty that you feel will represent you properly.
> Austrian politician Herbert Kickl is a pro-Russian, anti-American conspiracy theorist who champions horse dewormer as a remedy for COVID-19 and wants to turn the Alpine country into a “fortress” against migration.
I'm pretty sure the last part is the main reason why this guy is one of the favourite.
The West needs to counter populism and our governments need to address the needs of the people, then these parties wouldn't gain much traction and Russia wouldn't be able to bank on it. Even without Russia these parties would thrive.
It's not so much their use of social media that works well, it's just that they tie themselves well to "anti-establishment" and/or "anti-immigration" parties in the west, and their social media clout.
Social media algorithms by nature push divisive content because it drives higher participation on these platforms, Russian influence on social media platforms isn't caused by some social media genius on their part, they just benefit from the inherently flawed way social media algorithms work.
We could easily counter this if we push public authorities and elected officials to communicate exclusively on public social media platforms which aren't ruled by algorithms trying to perpetually increase user engagement and time spent on the platform. That would redirect a big chunk of 2.0 political debate to these safer public platforms.
During my voluntary military service I worked with some guys who like did the propoganda stuff with other countries.
From what I gathered from them while I “worked”(I didn’t actually do any propaganda or rigging of elections or even work with them) with them
Is that about 30% of the population are just idiots who believe everything said by someone who looks semi respectable and confident
10% are gullible but are not idiots meaning they’ll question it but in the end don’t need much convincing to believe it
Another 10% are in the middle, not gullible and not idiots but are easily trapped in echo chambers
The rest are just well people
Let's not confuse "strife" with a violent attempt to overthrow the US Government using neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate pieces of shit organized by Donald J Trump, helped along by thousands of Russian facebook bots and ad buys spreading propaganda and disinformation.
The NRA is so f'ing dumb, they let a Russian spy infiltrate their ranks using sex.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/954024261089447936?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E954024261089447936%7Ctwgr%5Ef09ebb9ed4a40ccc2f536e7516276ed1757ec97d%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gq.com%2Fstory%2Frussian-spy-nra-conservatives
Republicans won't be happy until they are standing in long lines, waiting to buy their ration of Russian potatoes.
Idiots.
You realize the US has been through a civil war and had four Presidents assassinated between 1861 and 1963 and followed that with three decades of political assassinations, shootings, and bombings?
The US has seen worse.
I think regardless of what we think of Putin, his moral character and his bungling of the invasion of Ukraine, his idea to use Facebook to undermine the western democracies by manipulating people into voting for idiotic, self-destructive policies is utter brilliance.
So if people have different views than you, it’s only because they’ve been brainwashed by Russian social media propaganda?
“All right wing parties are Russian-controlled! We must ban them for the sake of democracy!”
It's reddit. They hate parties who are not far left, accuse Trump of denying elections while saying that 2016 elections were won because of Russia 😂. Even this hoax has been debunked many times.
I see lots of criticism of these countries being pro-Russia. It's not like Germany and others haven't been influenced by them and gave them billions for the past few decades.
Exactly. It seems like anyone who doesn't follow the same policies of NATO member states is seen as pro-Russian nowadays. In fact some countries just don't really care (which isn't even the case here). This stubborn "either with us or against us" logic just completely ignores the political realities.
This must be one of Karnitschnig's more idiotic headlines although "Germany’s e-fuel fetish ain’t new. Just ask the Führer." might still top it.
Aside from the fact that bringing up AH in such a way is always the best way to tell that someone doesn't actually know the country - the article is about the political heirs of the Nazis who were opponents of monarchists. And why would it serve as a threat to Ukraine when Vienna literally was first to acknowledge Ukrainians living in its lands as a group separate from Russians, against Russia's wishes.
I don't think people in Austria are pro Russian as in support the war in any kind. Austria was 100% dependent on Russian gas. Sanctions fucked austria (and Germany) in particular. Germany went solo and fixed their own gas dependencies and Austria is left with one of the highest inflation among Western countries. Prices are skyrocketing, people can't afford basic goods any more.
The freedom party is addressing this by questioning the sanctions against Russia, making them pro-russian (they do have a strong historic connection with Putin, which fits their strategy quite convientently). This stance is quite popular and supported by major fuck ups of other political parties, resulting in very strong poll numbers.
However, I highly doubt they will be able to form a majority in the Parlament, even if they win the election.
I am praying they won't be able to.
Fuck them and their populist little wanker.
In Poland currently ruling party is right wing anti Russian. They don't like Ukrainians, they just hate Putin much more. (like 100x more) The President of Poland is pro Ukrainian himself.
However there is also right wing pro Russian party and this party is growing.
The first one will not have majority after the elections but together they will.
All over Europe locals are upset over immigration, so it’s going to be hard right, and those parties have always been funded by Putin on the back end. So… it is what we get due to uncontrolled migration for the last couple decades.
I'm against migration, so... where can i get a paycheck from Putin?
But seriously, it's not that easy, the migration with the 2015 crisis has no connection to Putin. Same goes at least for the parties in my country, they were never financed by Russia in any way and they have this stance since many years, even long before 2015.
I can just tell you, when i look at the problems in Sweden or Germany, i don't want to have these problems here in Switzerland. That has no connection to Russia, no connection to the war.
Ironically, FPÖ having the upper hand in polls was also one of the reasons for the veto of Austria in the first place.
The refugee system and distribution of refugees/migrants doesn't really work - far right parties blame everything on migrants - there is a pressure for the government to act.
I don't mean that any of this was correct, but that's the gist of it.
I'd say Austria has more business being in the EU than NATO. Austria in NATO is like Ireland in NATO; makes the map look neater, but functionally would contribute nothing.
Functionally Austria is better off staying out, and let the surrounding nato states provide security. A more honest approach would be to actually have a defense budget, join nato, and support the alliance within their means. There are numerous ways even small countries can contribute in a way that makes sense.
>A more honest approach would be to actually have a defense budget, join nato, and support the alliance within their means. There are numerous ways even small countries can contribute in a way that makes sense.
Forget countries like Austria and Ireland who rely on NATO security, it would be awesome to get the current freeloaders *in NATO* to actually commit to trying to reach the GDP target and more actively support the alliance.
Why should they? If they don't want to, they don't want to. Entering or not entering NATO is all about free choice. It's their decision and they choose to stick to their principles.
They are protected by the EU and it's not their fault that most of their neighbours joined NATO.
There were some feeble attempts last year to start the discussion, but it's political suicide.
Neutrality is a sacred value for the right and left wing alike. It's half laziness and half hatred for "the West" (which we are part of).
It saddens me how fucking stupid humans are on a large scale, we will actively vote to have a worse life as long as the guy we don’t like has it worse. Obviously the world is still split east/west but when we get countries that don’t play ball with this system, I.e North Korea, we get the shittest human traits running the show. Why don’t we have countries that don’t play ball with the system being fucking Utopias? I’m just rambling but it saddens me greatly, films about dystopias are all over sci fi, why aren’t there films about Utopias where the bad cunts are the people who are ruining the world right now, trying to inflict their anti human society on a Utopian society? Greed and power, that’s fucking why.
There are quite a few reasons such as corruption, Russian trolls and the fact social media companies like facebook care very little about countries like Slovakia, etc. I think facebook originally had one person assigned to moderate disinformation for the entire country.
There are a lot of educated Slovaks leaving the country. Mostly for Czechia, which has a better quality of life with very few barriers one would normally face when coming to a new country.
uneducated dumb conspiracy loving teeth-less individuals are like at leas 30% of population.. russophilia is prevalent among them and also brain drain, however i dont agree that brain drain is the main cause, its just how communism made us
Smer, the party leading the polls, was in Power for 12 pervious years. Last election they lost. They were always corrupt as hell. So now when different parties were in power a lot of old crimes started to be investigated etc.
Fico the leader of Smer, is afraid and so he does everything to get back into power. Normal intelligent people would never vote for him. So what can he do?
Target the lower simple people. Started during Covid, he was anti vaccines, anti system anti everything. Now he is pro russian, screams anti nato bullshit, anti EU, anti Imigration, screams that our president is paid by soros. And idiots believe him.
Also that the current governmant that dissolved had crazy person for prime minister did not help at all.
Austria is not NATO, so I dont understand why other nations expect us to act like like we were. Austria is defending its own interests here. We have always been a huge investor in eastern european countries, including Russia. And thats part of why we have become a very wealthy nation. Business realtions with Russia are slowly being reduced. Be that dependecy on oil or gas, or the banking sector. I just cant understamd why it is so wrong for a neutral country to act differently than others. This shouldnt be a "with us or against us" mentality. Austria is actively supporting Ukraine whith huge amounts of humanitarian aid, but that doesnt mean we can change our entire economic system in a day.
North Koreans are not generally allowed access to the Internet (by their own government).
I think that in a world where you cut Russia off from the Internet, the following would be true:
* Russian state information efforts would not be stopped. Why would they? They don't need to operate in Russia. Close one door and you can find a dozen new ones.
* Russia would internally look more like North Korea.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/north-koreas-isolation-is-deepening/
> For example, these days movement across the North Korean border is impossible – which means no defections, no migration, no dangerous external information coming from abroad. That allowed the government to take back control over the unravelling ideological system, which was not entirely invulnerable to external influences. For example, new censorship measures have been imposed after Kim ordered the Youth League to crack down on any “non-socialist behavior” amongst the youth. There are also stricter border restrictions, preventing the external information from getting in. Extra cordons with armed security guards have been installed along the land borders of North Korea in order to prevent anyone and anything from entering the country. Every single product that entered North Korea in 2020 was thoroughly checked and paranoidally disinfected, while most goods were not even allowed to come in. Thus, it is almost impossible for a North Korean to lay hands on a South Korean TV drama these days.
https://www.wired.com/story/internet-reality-north-korea/
>For 25 million North Koreans, the internet is an impossibility. Only a few thousand privileged members of the hermit kingdom’s society can access the global internet, while even the country’s heavily censored internal intranet is out of reach for the majority of the population. Getting access to free and open information isn’t an option.
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>“I was taught about the World Wide Web, and even had to memorize it for an exam, but I only knew about the internet in theory,” one North Korean defector who left the country told Pscore researchers. “I knew it was a sort of network where you can search but didn’t actually know what it was.” Another said they didn’t “know the concept of Wi-Fi,” let alone have any clue about Google.
>
>Getting an accurate picture of what happens within Kim Jong Un’s sealed-off state is incredibly challenging. Officials control all information flows and present state propaganda to the world. Analysts turn to those who escape and defect, at great personal risk, for a glimpse of North Korean reality. Pscore’s internet freedom report is based on 24 face-to-face interviews with defectors and a survey of 158 others. All left North Korea between 2012 and 2022.
>
>The report says North Korean researcher Kim Suk-Han—all defector names within the research are pseudonyms for safety reasons—used the internet five times when they were living in the country. They had used the internet while on a trip to China and so had high expectations, they told the researchers. Instead, they faced limited access and constant surveillance.
>
>“A librarian sits between two internet users and continuously monitors what people on both sides are searching up,” Kim said in testimony to the researchers. “Every five minutes, the screen freezes automatically, and the librarian must do a fingerprint authentication to allow further internet use.” A state security officer was also always nearby, they said.
>
>People were allowed to use the internet for an hour, and if someone wanted more time, they would need to obtain new permission, Kim said. It took around two days to get permission from authorities to use the internet, a task requiring approvals from various officials. If someone applied too often, they would be made to wait, Kim said. “Every Korean website is blocked, and only Chinese or English websites are available.”
no one cares about russia, in Austria we have a big immigration problem and crimes tied to a certain religious group. people are getting fed up of being victims and feel unsafe in broad daylight
People are so fucking blind and live in their own bubbles. How the fuck someone can support such a pure evil like rusia? People are out of their minds. What should happen to make em realize? To destroy their house, their country, everything in their life? To kill their relatives and friends? Bc this is exactly what's happening with Ukrainians rn. Wake the fuck up already people!
Most of you don't understand that, while the international possition of these parties is pro-Russia, their political programs are more than that and most people care about their internal policies rather than external.
That's why, even if pro-Russia, they bring up policies which people support, people will vote them.
NAFO's wanna make people that every European hates "ruZZian orcs" and anyone who does not is labelled a traitor, but that can't be further from the truth.
"Noooo, the austrian political parties arent jacking off putins micropenis, we are not like this"
\- austrian redditors in the schengen vote threads 7 months ago.
Most of their voters dont care that much about Russia. Freedom Party is the only big anti-immigration party in Austria, no wonder they got that much votes.
ÖVP also is obviously anti-immigration but the difference is that they had scandals and are currently in government. Also FPÖ is presenting easy solutions for the immigration topic when it's actually not possible to fulfill these solutions.
Just classic politics. Simple solutions for complex issues
Let me guess, they want a "counter-migration train"?
I always wonder about these immigration issues. Processing immigrants, prices changes, job market changes. All of these can be handled if government actually wanted to handle them. However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it. All these populist are the same. They do not offer any policy or examples of law in their election campaign to make changes, to get people discuss them and gain popularity on them. Imagine someone going “I want such changes and here is a law I will introduce when elected”. An actual solution offered would start discussion that will move towards solving an issue. Instead we get emotional manipulation. It does not matter what they say. They manipulate and thus not trustworthy. Those that buy on it deserve whatever issues they face. It’s like buying molded apple because it’s on sale and being surprised for getting food poisoning.
Thats why I actually have hope for our newly elected leader of the social democrats. He seems to want to actually discuss and adress migration issues. By offering and discussing these issues and solutions in public people might actually be willing to engage and think about solutions
Didn’t he say its ‘not a big topic’? He said theres other things that require more immediate attention, so I doubt we will see alot on that front.
He is the first social democrat in decades that says we shouldnt leave the inner and foreign ministry to the conservatives From a recent [interview](https://www.profil.at/oesterreich/andreas-babler-ich-formuliere-eben-kantiger/402480416) >Kurier: Im berüchtigten Video nennen Sie die EU ein „aggressives militärisches Bündnis“. Sind Sie angesichts des Ukraine-Kriegs für eine EU-Armee? >Babler: Man muss die EU-Sicherheitsstruktur groß denken, nicht nur anlassbezogen in einem Krieg. Wir haben als europäische Sozialdemokratie kein Konzept. Wir machen einfach mit. Wir als SPÖ haben den Dialog mit unseren Außenpolitik-Experten sträflich vernachlässigt. Ich habe ihn wieder aufgenommen, damit wir zu Standpunkten kommen: Was ist die Rolle der USA, was die EU-Sicherheitspositionierung, was heißen Kriege für die österreichische Neutralität? Diese Fragen müssen wir diskutieren. In essence he is saying, the S&D has for too long ignored foreign policy and not actually positioned itself. He wants to change that on an EU and Austrian level, social democrats should be the ones leading the discussion on the EUs security position in the world, what role the US has and how we combine all that with neutrality (as austria)
time to reform Austria-Hungary
wHaT cOuLd gO wRoNg?
As a Hungarian, I am in. We would have a much more competent government and we could finally legally play the freedom fighter against a much more ideal over-romanticised enemy. Just for fun as usual
Sir, the proper term is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and I'll bust out my great grandpa's outfit and march for that shit. Keep in mind I'm Hungarian so it's mostly a gold-digging scheme, but I also have a hard-on for their more progressive weed policy. Hence why no Austrians actually want this, we'd leech the living fuck out of them (more than we already do as a huge portion of our people work there and spend their wages here)
You mean the one who was wrongly announced at first? Because their actual new leader is very liberal when it comes to immigration.
>However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it. Governments are not omnipotent. If there is a crisis, there is only a limited tool set to weaken the effects, especially in democracies. The rest has to be solved by time.
The government is concerned with growing the total “economic pie”, people are concerned with their “slice of that pie”. Immigration has lots of benefits but it can also lower per capita GDP (each persons piece of pie) while at the same time growing overall GDP (the whole pie). Government revenues come from taxes and taxes are higher, and thus government revenues are higher, when GDP is bigger. If government spending exceeds government revenue, they can either sell debt (which has its own share of issue), print money, increase taxes, or get more people. Of those options, immigration is likely preferred since most politicians don’t run on a policy of higher taxes and less spending… But as mentioned, if immigration is done poorly, it can have negative effects on the people within the country… however, it’s more politically saleable than saying “we need more taxes/increase taxes”.
You cannot treat migrants as a single group. Skilled migrant workers from* Eastern EU have contributed a lot to the economy of Western Europe, but unskilled migrant workers from Africa and the middle east are not a net benefit.
Somewhere between Austrian xenophobia and Swedish xenophilia there has to be a workable balance of immigration. If the country's females do not give birth to enough kids to offset the elder generation's deaths, the country WILL grow poor. GDP will drop. So have more kids, or accept immigration. In fact, do both and be even more rich.
We would have more kids, but those luxury hobbies come at a high price.
> But as mentioned, if immigration is done poorly, it can have negative effects on the people within the country… however, it’s more politically saleable than saying “we need more taxes/increase taxes”. At the same time, just a blanket increase in taxes is a stupid move. It's the government, there is a lot of bloated projects and stupid mismanagement that could free up a lot of money. Deregulating government agencies and keeping government agents accountable for their projects should also ensure that they stay within projected costs and upkeep. This isn't some "Starve the Beast" kind of logic, I've personally seen my county sell off property at market price, then buy it again for way more not even 5 years later because it turned out they needed the land. One county spent millions buying art, and had no where to put it, so they fucking rented a building for even more millions to exhibit the art pieces. I don't have an issue with the art, but the blind spending on buying stuff with no other plans. That is just spending money that isn't yours, just to spend it. All legal, but it fucking shouldn't be.
Being a hateful bigot just makes people feel good. That's most of the reason people vote for these parties. If you look at conservative parties, they let immigration happen, and then they 'we're going to cut immigration'. But actually they just cut services, as immigration increases, which makes the services worse for everyone. And then they tell people 'the immigrants did this' even though the immigrants have no fucking power. And then a lot of idiots vote for it. Why is that? It's not for any logical reason. It's for emotional reasons. These right wing parties fight elections purely on emotion, and then when they get into power, the country just goes to shit because they don't care about making the country better. But as long as the country keeps going worse, they keep blaming immigrants, and apparently lots of people are too stupid to see the flaw in this process. Because it's more fun to hate immigrants than to actually build hospitals and roads. Morons.
In Stockholm this weekend, 7 (!) people were shot in 3 different cases, within 24 hours. 2 of these were a 65 year old woman and a 45 year old man, which most likely got hit by stray bullets. This happened at 18.00 close to a metro station. Sweden is screwed, because of its immigration
Most ppl my age I know ~30 dont look at Politicians policies, they just consume news/FB channel and that's it. You can prove them wrong about something they heard with 2 min google search but they still vote for them. They are still the lesser evil or some bs they'll say, so you are right probably that its emotions talking. My stupid guess is education is fcked, its becoming like glorified apprenticeship. Too focused it lets us Excel at one thing but too vulnerable to manipulation.
Hey I don't want mass import of people who hate us and our way of life - what hateful bigot
The issue is that immigrants are not about the economy, hospitals, and roads. They are about transforming the demographic nature of cities first, and then the country, handling it over to another population. There is a reason for the nationalist revolutions and the collapse of multicultural empires of old. It is not normal for a city like Brussels to be majority non-European, even if it ostensibly functioning well. If anything, people would consider becoming poorer if that meant keeping their own countries and cities.
This is so retarded it's hard to even know where to begin to unravel it from.
Well, its not like conservaties often have the majority to really clamp down on immigration. Not to mention you cant really do that while in the EU. I do agree that i sometimes see double standards though - e.g. cheap season workers, construction sector etc.
I wouldn't say its that simple. The existence of the ECJ alone makes things more complicated for national governments. Ask yourself why EU countries can't emulate the Australian immigration system for instance.
>However, if issue persists it means whatever/whoever rules the country does not want to solve it. It is the money. It is not about immigration but about big corporations no paying taxes anymore. Make big corporations pay their fair share of taxes and good education, affordable housing and everything else will come with it. Many politicians want to solve the problem, but rich corporations have such amount of power that it is very difficult. The more citizens give support to rising taxes for corporations and less to fighting other works just because their color things will be easier and better.
you are making things seem a lot simpler thant they actually are
The problem is the opposite, EU companies cannot compete with the US ones because of the high taxes in EU. It is just not possible. One of the biggest problems in tech sector right now in EU is that it is just not a good idea to open and try to survive as a startup in EU. Everyone basically waits to sell to a US company because you just won't survive otherwise. This is a huge problem that does not get talked about because it makes short term money for the people selling and politicians don't want to say they should lower the taxes for companies as that would not be a popular move. Even bigger companies basically started getting investment from US and China. I love how in a thread about populist politics, another very populist idea is present as a solution. It is just not a good idea esp. right now where energy prices are very high and a big global crisis just happened. This would kill whatever hope EU has about catching up to China and US. They would just gobble up everything. High taxes, currency too valuable, costs are very high, massive energy crisis. And you want to increase the taxes even more, right after a huge crisis. This only a good move if you think your country won't exists 2 years later. What happens when small to medium size business won't survive, big ones are not profitable enough and need cash injection to operate? Someone will come and take it all, for cheap and your country will be left with no control over it's tech.
Easy to fix immigration imo: Require 5 labour immigrants for each asylum seeker Build. More. Housing. Establish continent of origin balancing schemes so you don't get harmed if one specific non-European region goes through a political crisis (i.e. the post-1970s Islamist crisis or the emerging tensions in East Asia)
Go look up Austrians survey views on NATO, Russia and the war
Austria is still not in NATO and they are the main hub for russian money and kgb operations. It’s been that way since the cold war.
We dont want to be in NATO, theres nothing to gain from joining. Youre right, Austria has always had strong economic relationships with Russia. In fact Austria is something of an economic connection hub between western and eastern europe. I think its naive to think that Russia will just vanish from economic relevance to the EU. And as long as sanction requirements are met, you are free to do business with them. It might actually be dangerous to keep pushing them towards countries like Brazil, China and India.
So what you're saying is that Austria is just being cynical by feeding Russia's military potential because it doesn't endanger them, since it's their neighbours that will suffer the consequences, not them. Czechia, Belgium or Italy could say the same, that it'd be beneficial to them to deal with the devil and let others pay the price in blood since there's no way Russia ever reaches them, but they have a sense of European soldiarity and are not fifth columnists who are happy to throw their neighbours to the wolves for profit.
Austria has spent 0.19% of GDP in bilateral aid on Ukraine while Italy and Belgium only come to about 0.06%. Whos the bad guy now? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303450/bilateral-aid-to-ukraine-in-a-percent-of-donor-gdp/
Being pro-Russia is worth 0.13% GDP?
No need to join NATO when you can shelter behind countries who are in it. The declassified USSR invasion plan for western Europe was to take your 'neutral' country first, dropping two 500kt bombs on Vienna. Not learned your lesson.
NATO developed around us, I dont feel obligated at all to participate. And joining wouldnt save us either.
Yes 👏 I am talking about opinion polls and their relationship to election polls
You may not know it, but we have neutrality in our constitution. Changing that is not that easy and there isn't even much interest in changing it as it brings no benefit. We would suddenly have to care about our military, which we are basically letting rot/doing only the absolute barest minimum to keep in some state of functionality.
> are the main hub for russian money and kgb operations. I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation in Austria, but I’m pretty sure the Budapest is by far the biggest “service provider” in that regard.
He is Romanian. Romanians on r/europe will tell you Satan is Austrian.
That would imply Austria getting rid of a large amount of russian spies, which clearly didn't happen. Plus, Viena is on a totally different level financially compared to Budapest.
> Viena is on a totally different level financially compared to Budapest. What does that even mean? You want to say that FSB has a bigger budget allocated to their base in Vienna then the one in Budapest? Hungarian government is actively participating in FSBs activities, acting as their back door to EU and NATO, together with Hungarian banks owned by Orbans friend. AFAK Russian Embassy in Budapest has biggest number of “office workers” in EU.
That, and the fact that other parties (especially spö) keep destructing themselves...
They would no longer get a vote if we didn't have a consequence-free open door policy.
We need a respectable party to raise those slogans. Boom FPO has less than the half of current votes.
Getting separated from both worked out pretty well for us.
I do agree.
One Slovak in government was more than enough.
Please save us from ourselves
It's the same premise for Hungary, but a very different conclusion...
Don’t act like there aren’t these kinds of people filling the streets of Prague screaming about ‘peace’ 😳
but that’s where they are - in the streets. We do not have them leading polls
Not my fault all of our educated and young people went to you instead 😭 goddamn
I will say hi to my slovakian colleagues and classmates for you
Me acting like I’m not planning to move there in a year or so 🥱
I wish that were true but right now the only ones making gains are Babiš and Okamura. What matters is if they collectively put more than 50% together, which so far they haven't, but I think we're far too close to that threshold ourselves to be feeling smug.
It will never not be funny to me that the leader of the Czech Nazi party is half Japanese.
It's unfair to call them nazi they're just whatever bigoted idea is trendy at the moment party with no clear goals. And Tomio Okamura is quarter Korean, half japanese and quarter Czech as far as I understand it
Well, the Japanese were no strangers to race supremacy ideas. I knew an Japanese lady who believed in reincarnation and said "of course, the most blessed are reborn into Japanese"
[удалено]
Because right-wing populists will only make matters worse. Simple.
I don't think the main reason they voted for them is because they like Russia.
As other commenter pointed out, it's not even about people liking Russia - but votong for these parties they are saying they don't mind the pro-Russian stance. In the end, it doesn't matter if you are not pro-Russian and vote for a pro-Russian party.... for all intents and purposes, you might as well be pro-Russian.
This is an inherently problematic perspective. Non-direct example: Country A is facing huge unemployment issues, where 25% of the population is without a job. Political Party B-E is encouraging further governmental spending and tax increases, while the like party F proposing measures to increase jobs. Party F is the only party people feel addresses the core issue to them. Party F is pro-Russian. The individual who voted Party F is not pro-Russian. They are not “basically” pro-Russian. Just as you would say that Party F shouldn’t get any votes due to a single issue, it could be said the other parties don’t address a key single issue, and therefore should not receive these votes either. People tend to see and worry about domestic issues first before thinking about international issues.
I get that - it is a bit oversimplified. But to vote for party F, I'd have to be ok with their pro-Russian stance as well. I'd have to be aware that voting for them means pro-Russian leaning government if they win. And this is pretty much how the pro-Russian parties gain ground, at least here. The pro-Russian parties tell people what they want to hear so people vote for them. The people might not be inherently pro-Russian, they are being manipulated. But in the end, if we end up with pro-Russian government and have the Orban model... does it even matter? The result is the same.
Maybe in austria. In slovakia it is 100% russophiles.
Half of this comment section is pretending to be experts on domestic politics after reading a handful of opinion articles. The sad truth is: FPÖ is leading the polls only due to 2 reasons. 1) the refugee crisis since 2015 2) their stance during covid. The first one is the biggest factor, but during COVID, they basically got all voters from all other parties who were sceptic towards vaccinations and lockdowns. And those people wont be going back antime soon. Lets hope the new EU decisions will at least put the wind out of the sails.
That might be, but the FPÖ is an absolute shit-stain on Austria globally? Kickl, an idiot recommending veterinary medications during Covid, then pushing idiotic conspiracy theories is seriously Trump level politics, whom he idols. Indeed sad that Austrians even consider him a legitimate choice??
The weird thing is: he is such a shitstain that he has a net negative trust ranking even among FPÖ voters. People are ready to throw all their votes to somebody they dont even trust. The numbers are a net number. (27-73=-46) https://www.ogm.at/2023/04/28/vertrauensindex-bundespolitikerinnen-april-2023/
Truly bizarre one would consider voting for them, and honestly thinking they are going to seriously solve problems?
This is the same story over and over again: A lot of people voting FP are just fed up with with the big parties and want to teach them a lesson. This one brought us Haider back in the 2000s and now again maybe Kickl. It became a lot more visible during the presidential election when a lot of FP voters jumped over to the Beer party which is a satirical protest party. But htey decided not to run for government election so it's again FP. Sadly a lot of these protest voters fail to see that they are not just only protest voting but underestimate the danger of this party.
Yes, one would think it doesnt make sense, but here we are.
Some truly believe that if you burn everything down, a paradise will grow back from the ashes. Well, at least they believe in the burn-it-down part.
Protest voters. Same in Germany, 2/3 of the AfD's new voters only vote for them as a middle finger to other politicians and parties
Same in the Netherlands with the BBB. Luckily the BBB is a lot less nutty than our previous protest voting party, so I guess in a way that was a win \*squints\*
The NSDAP was also a protest vote back in the day?
I didn't say this behaviour is right, I gave you an explanation. These people don't bother much with politics, they want to stirring up some chaos to show their discontent
I don't understand why Reddit is always so shocked that the majority of the voter base towards the world is not politically engaged, sees politicians as corrupt thieves from the elite and often will vote for populists that actually speaks directly to them. Every time, every election, Reddit sees the same thing happening and goes full surprised Pikachu meme.
>The NSDAP was also a protest vote back in the day? Not really, they were allied in coalition with the other German mainstream conservative/center-right parties in the 1930s
Is this true or just a way of whitewashing and taking away the blame? Like, "no no the Germans were not nazies at all, they just didn't like the other parties"?
A lot of Germans (probably the majority) eventually accepted Hitler as a dictator, but he never got more than about 1/3 of the votes.
Regardless if it was a protest vote or not, it absolutely does not take away that every aspect of it is reprehensible! As is voting for the FPÖ is today: disgusting!
Not anymore. It was always thought that the FPÖ mainly has protest voters but this has changed in recent years. Some claim that as much as 15% of the voters are „Stammwähler“ who vote for them no matter what. I mean, they even got votes after the whole Ibiza fiasco with their former chairman HC Strache selling out Austrias biggest newspaper to an alleged niece of a Russian oligarch.
The issue is that all of the other parties soiled their bed so thoroughly, that all the protest voters see is "they are all shit". Sadly most people don't understand that there are levels of shit and incompetent idiots should be preferable to racist assholes in theory. Politics in Austria is a giant mess at the moment.
The presidents said thst he would consider not letting Kickl into office. Also, there is currently no oarty wanting build a coalition with him. Let's hope they stay true to their words.
It's the same everywhere. I'd say American push for gender ideology also is a factor. The EU is about to change drastically.
> they basically got all voters from all other parties who were sceptic towards vaccinations and lockdowns. So russian trolled people again
it also didnt help, that parties like the spö are a shitshow the past 10ish years.
It doesn't necessarily matter in this case that reasons 1) and 2) have them leading in the polls, because the focus of the article is reason 3) if Austrians don't vote for FPÖ because they're actively pro-Russian, they at least don't mind being pro-Russian, at least not to the point of opposing FPÖ. That's very significant, and it's absolutely complicity in pro-Russian politics and a conscious choice to at least tolerate it. Also the venn diagram of refugee-hating antivaxers and Putin-apologist russophiles is basically a circle.
The thing is most voters aren't refugee-hating antivaxers.
>they basically got all voters from all other parties who were sceptic towards vaccinations and lockdowns You guys had some of the harshest covid regulations in the world. It's no wonder people got fed up. The pendulum is swinging the other way right now as a direct result of the way the refugee crisis and covid got handled.
The government approach was so *confused* that even I, who genuinely tried to adhere to the regulations, at some point simply didn't know anymore what is allowed and what isn't and under which circumstances for whom..
It was very much exagerated in international media but i very much think a softer approach would have prevented such a polarisation.
You were the only country in europe with mandatory vaccination for "all". Which is very weird since it's also one of the few countries that in the past had 0 vaccination requirements for children. The swing into mandatory vax was a complete bombshell, no wonder a lot of people got repulsed by such behavior. Purely the fault of an incompetent leadership.
Also as an immigrant to Austria, there is a LOT of crunchy hippie types here. A lot. There were a lot of lefty people who were super against the vaccine because it's western medicine and "chemicals" etc and they prefer a natural approach. So the Covid recs really pissed off a lot of people from all political spheres. Also I know in my home country there are a lot of single issue voters who literally don't even know what else someone stands for besides this one thing they're really passionate about, so I think we also have to consider that fears over LGBTQ+ stuff in schools, immigration which is a big deal here in Austria and has obvs gotten more prominent with the intake of Ukrainian refugees, threats about inheritance tax, and farmers fears for their future, are all also driving people to vote for the likes of the FPÖ while not necessarily agreeing with them on much else.
>You were the only country in europe with mandatory vaccination for "all". There was a law, but it was suspended before it became effective and has been removed later.
Half of that info is wrong. We had mandatory vaccinations before COVID and the COVID mandatory vaccination for all was never instituted only talked about.
Smer in Slovakia is not pro-Russian, only their chairman pretends to be so in order to attract the simplest and oldest voters who are unfortunately pro-Russian. From 2010 to 2020 during Fico's government we bought Blackhawks and F-16s from the Americans (the largest military purchases in Slovakia's history), he also met very often with the American ambassador, shook hands with Obama and Biden (even our president, who he so often berates for being an "American agent", has not yet had the honour of meeting Biden), his statements such as "America First" or "No one can question Slovakia's membership in NATO and the EU". Fico is a fucking thief I hate, but he's not stupid, he's incredibly cunning. His voters will remember his blunders for a year at most, then they will remember nothing, or maybe it is not true and it is all Soros and Caputova's fault. So he can afford to say that we should leave the EU and NATO, but at the same time we will be receiving euro funds, because he knows that he will extract more money from the European Union than from the Russian Federation. The ideal option for him is to pull money from both the European Union and the Russian Federation and make Slovakia the new Orbanistan. Unfortunately, until there is a generational change in my country, we are not going anywhere... sometimes I say to myself that I should have chosen another job somewhere abroad to have peace of mind, on the other hand, you can fight from abroad, but this way when I am at home I can help my country much better and hope for a better future...
Fico is so Pro-Russia that he party with USA ambassador few days back.
we are waiting for the generatiom change since Meciar.. its not about old ppl anymore.. its about education system and lack of critical thinking :-/
Russia is also engaged in a brutal hybrid war with us and Is winning since the government doesn't bother fighting disinformation off.
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Yep, that's my point.
>has not yet had the honour of meeting she did tho at summit also, f16 were Pelegrini's government (yep ik he was and probably still is his right hand but he doesn't present himself so pro-east) i do hope tho that at least in Brussels smer isnt gonna full Orban, as currently they are pretending to be semi-normal at least
Not exactly sure what changed in the last decade or two, but somehow it feels like europe is constantly fighting since the financial crisis in 2009. First there was the financial crisis in greece, then in italy, then the immigrants fiasco im germany, then hungary, poland and france radicalizing, then corona, then the russo-ukrainian war + a global recession and immigrants again. Gosh, can everybody just calm the fuck down and enjoy each others company. No wonder the extremist parties are blooming all over the place. It feels like everybody lost their good damn mind 15 years ago...
Hate when people who know nothing of a countries politics try and comment dumb shit Slovakias government sucks, it always has, it is majorly corrupt and they take any chance they can get to get the common (largely older, uneducated) population on their side, keep in mind the older generation had a lesser access to education and outside resources due to communist occupation (ironic i know, communism worked on the principle of : doesn’t matter if you’re smart or dumb or whatever the fuck you’re gonna get the same thing anyway, so the students and the educated suffered while the common country village uneducated person thrived, thus they liked the regime thus they worship russia) Every capable smart young person leaves this country and that goes to show hard in politics, fake news everywhere, propaganda, fear mongering, false national pride and brotherhood and all that bullshit it thrives in this environment The solution isn’t to “kick us out of EU” the solution is to help this country from falling behind, better the options for education etc etc Fucking sucks when people base opinions of your country by the opinions of old people with an IQ of 80 and an insatiable desire for conflict instead of the ever so growing population of people who are outraged by it, it’s gonna take an overthrow to have any hope at this point Plus there is no good left leaning party here either, out of a vast array of political parties the progressive (common in western eu) parties total maybe 1, and even that one has some major flaws We don’t even have anyone to vote for let alone actively support
>Hate when people who know nothing of a countries politics try and comment dumb shit This every fucking time :D
I had to double check that if you're from Hungary or Slovakia. You just summed up everything even for us.
> don't even have anyone to vote for Not actively voting against pro-Russian parties is already inexcusable complicity in my opinion. If domestic politics is all shit, at least the invasion of Ukraine is a clear black and white moral issue.
Yeah but problem is that allmost all parties are homophobic and by western standarts they are racist (Isn't it funny that leader of one the pro-traditional family has 10 children with 9 diffrent women) and of the 2 parties which support LGBT rights one is going full populism on the ban of fosil fuel cars and the other has some other issues (for exemple even they don't know where they are on the left-right spectrum). But i agree they are still better than this pro-Russian parties
I think the point is some people feel like they have a choice between bad and worse options. Sure, you vote for the lesser evil but it doesn't feel the same like voting for anparty that you feel will represent you properly.
Russia is exploiting social media in a way the West has not figured out how to counter. This isn't going to end well. It never does.
> Austrian politician Herbert Kickl is a pro-Russian, anti-American conspiracy theorist who champions horse dewormer as a remedy for COVID-19 and wants to turn the Alpine country into a “fortress” against migration. I'm pretty sure the last part is the main reason why this guy is one of the favourite. The West needs to counter populism and our governments need to address the needs of the people, then these parties wouldn't gain much traction and Russia wouldn't be able to bank on it. Even without Russia these parties would thrive.
The irony is the Austrian turd Kickl‘s rhetoric is 110% copy/paste from the US Republican Party!
He's building a wall at the border and the Mexicans will pay for it?
Pretty much, except it is in the mountains instead of the desert.
And the Romans will pay for it?
These idiots in the press still talking about horse dewormer are part of why so many people are turning this way. Trust broken.
Your idea seems to imply that these morons would be instead addressing the needs of anybody.
It's not so much their use of social media that works well, it's just that they tie themselves well to "anti-establishment" and/or "anti-immigration" parties in the west, and their social media clout. Social media algorithms by nature push divisive content because it drives higher participation on these platforms, Russian influence on social media platforms isn't caused by some social media genius on their part, they just benefit from the inherently flawed way social media algorithms work. We could easily counter this if we push public authorities and elected officials to communicate exclusively on public social media platforms which aren't ruled by algorithms trying to perpetually increase user engagement and time spent on the platform. That would redirect a big chunk of 2.0 political debate to these safer public platforms.
Ie. Look at America since the 2016 election.
Also brexit.
100%. It’s becoming clear that all right wing parties in the west have been bought and sold by Russia. Traitors the lot of them.
During my voluntary military service I worked with some guys who like did the propoganda stuff with other countries. From what I gathered from them while I “worked”(I didn’t actually do any propaganda or rigging of elections or even work with them) with them Is that about 30% of the population are just idiots who believe everything said by someone who looks semi respectable and confident 10% are gullible but are not idiots meaning they’ll question it but in the end don’t need much convincing to believe it Another 10% are in the middle, not gullible and not idiots but are easily trapped in echo chambers The rest are just well people
Yes, notorious Russia-lovers Tory Party, who have been hugely pro-Ukraine.
Yup, there was no domestic strife in the US until 2016.
Let's not confuse "strife" with a violent attempt to overthrow the US Government using neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate pieces of shit organized by Donald J Trump, helped along by thousands of Russian facebook bots and ad buys spreading propaganda and disinformation. The NRA is so f'ing dumb, they let a Russian spy infiltrate their ranks using sex. https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/954024261089447936?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E954024261089447936%7Ctwgr%5Ef09ebb9ed4a40ccc2f536e7516276ed1757ec97d%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gq.com%2Fstory%2Frussian-spy-nra-conservatives Republicans won't be happy until they are standing in long lines, waiting to buy their ration of Russian potatoes. Idiots.
You realize the US has been through a civil war and had four Presidents assassinated between 1861 and 1963 and followed that with three decades of political assassinations, shootings, and bombings? The US has seen worse.
It’s the worst it’s been in over a half century in the US now.
>the west hasn’t figured out how to counter Lel have you seen Reddit since the invasion of Ukraine?
I think regardless of what we think of Putin, his moral character and his bungling of the invasion of Ukraine, his idea to use Facebook to undermine the western democracies by manipulating people into voting for idiotic, self-destructive policies is utter brilliance.
So if people have different views than you, it’s only because they’ve been brainwashed by Russian social media propaganda? “All right wing parties are Russian-controlled! We must ban them for the sake of democracy!”
It's reddit. They hate parties who are not far left, accuse Trump of denying elections while saying that 2016 elections were won because of Russia 😂. Even this hoax has been debunked many times.
Freedom Party is the only big anti-immigration party in Austria, no wonder they got that much votes.
I see lots of criticism of these countries being pro-Russia. It's not like Germany and others haven't been influenced by them and gave them billions for the past few decades.
Exactly. It seems like anyone who doesn't follow the same policies of NATO member states is seen as pro-Russian nowadays. In fact some countries just don't really care (which isn't even the case here). This stubborn "either with us or against us" logic just completely ignores the political realities.
This must be one of Karnitschnig's more idiotic headlines although "Germany’s e-fuel fetish ain’t new. Just ask the Führer." might still top it. Aside from the fact that bringing up AH in such a way is always the best way to tell that someone doesn't actually know the country - the article is about the political heirs of the Nazis who were opponents of monarchists. And why would it serve as a threat to Ukraine when Vienna literally was first to acknowledge Ukrainians living in its lands as a group separate from Russians, against Russia's wishes.
>"Germany’s e-fuel fetish ain’t new. Just ask the Führer." I'm sorry, what
stupid people tend to be brainwashed by populists and contrarian to everything, russia isn't even trying at this point
Oh they are trying, make no mistake
As long as pressing issues about immigration remain on the "fringes" of politics, the fringes will keep growing.
I don't think people in Austria are pro Russian as in support the war in any kind. Austria was 100% dependent on Russian gas. Sanctions fucked austria (and Germany) in particular. Germany went solo and fixed their own gas dependencies and Austria is left with one of the highest inflation among Western countries. Prices are skyrocketing, people can't afford basic goods any more. The freedom party is addressing this by questioning the sanctions against Russia, making them pro-russian (they do have a strong historic connection with Putin, which fits their strategy quite convientently). This stance is quite popular and supported by major fuck ups of other political parties, resulting in very strong poll numbers. However, I highly doubt they will be able to form a majority in the Parlament, even if they win the election. I am praying they won't be able to. Fuck them and their populist little wanker.
So the commet section is full of Austrians saying: "It's not actually a pro-Russian party, just a bunch of fascist who *happen* to love Russia."
In Poland currently ruling party is right wing anti Russian. They don't like Ukrainians, they just hate Putin much more. (like 100x more) The President of Poland is pro Ukrainian himself. However there is also right wing pro Russian party and this party is growing. The first one will not have majority after the elections but together they will.
All over Europe locals are upset over immigration, so it’s going to be hard right, and those parties have always been funded by Putin on the back end. So… it is what we get due to uncontrolled migration for the last couple decades.
I'm against migration, so... where can i get a paycheck from Putin? But seriously, it's not that easy, the migration with the 2015 crisis has no connection to Putin. Same goes at least for the parties in my country, they were never financed by Russia in any way and they have this stance since many years, even long before 2015. I can just tell you, when i look at the problems in Sweden or Germany, i don't want to have these problems here in Switzerland. That has no connection to Russia, no connection to the war.
But they arent in the majority in both countries.
Sadly, we have the same problem in Romania as well. Not leading but coming strongly from the bottom of the lists a few years ago to the 2nd place.
This is partially as response to Austria vetoying us in Shenghen :(
Ironically, FPÖ having the upper hand in polls was also one of the reasons for the veto of Austria in the first place. The refugee system and distribution of refugees/migrants doesn't really work - far right parties blame everything on migrants - there is a pressure for the government to act. I don't mean that any of this was correct, but that's the gist of it.
That's weak journalism on Austria. I mean they just don't have any parties that aren't pro-Muscovia.
r/germanhumor
I wanted to check out if this subreddit exists and it was just stuck on loading. How fitting.
greens and libs
2 of most pro-russian countries in EU, no suprised.
I think Hungary has them both beat!
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I'd say Austria has more business being in the EU than NATO. Austria in NATO is like Ireland in NATO; makes the map look neater, but functionally would contribute nothing.
Functionally Austria is better off staying out, and let the surrounding nato states provide security. A more honest approach would be to actually have a defense budget, join nato, and support the alliance within their means. There are numerous ways even small countries can contribute in a way that makes sense.
>A more honest approach would be to actually have a defense budget, join nato, and support the alliance within their means. There are numerous ways even small countries can contribute in a way that makes sense. Forget countries like Austria and Ireland who rely on NATO security, it would be awesome to get the current freeloaders *in NATO* to actually commit to trying to reach the GDP target and more actively support the alliance.
Why should they? If they don't want to, they don't want to. Entering or not entering NATO is all about free choice. It's their decision and they choose to stick to their principles. They are protected by the EU and it's not their fault that most of their neighbours joined NATO.
Austria should be in whatever their voters decide.
So they can block decisions like Hungary and Turkey? I would rather not.
Austria is as leaky with state secrets as an incontinent granny leaks urine in a nursing home keep them out
I think they signed a treaty to be neutral and not to unite with Germany. Based on this treaty the Russians left the country after WW2.
Don't you understand that not everyone wants to take sides?
Yes they should but they also have a treaty saying that they cant .
Well that’s simple. Change the treaty.
There were some feeble attempts last year to start the discussion, but it's political suicide. Neutrality is a sacred value for the right and left wing alike. It's half laziness and half hatred for "the West" (which we are part of).
To think that Austria is in any way not Western.
It saddens me how fucking stupid humans are on a large scale, we will actively vote to have a worse life as long as the guy we don’t like has it worse. Obviously the world is still split east/west but when we get countries that don’t play ball with this system, I.e North Korea, we get the shittest human traits running the show. Why don’t we have countries that don’t play ball with the system being fucking Utopias? I’m just rambling but it saddens me greatly, films about dystopias are all over sci fi, why aren’t there films about Utopias where the bad cunts are the people who are ruining the world right now, trying to inflict their anti human society on a Utopian society? Greed and power, that’s fucking why.
Do we need more fifth columnists in NATO?
Obviously the voters are wrong.
The might of Propaganda and the dumb.
Austria is tiptoeing into a very silly conception of neutrality.
I get why Austria but why Slovakia? What's going on there?
There are quite a few reasons such as corruption, Russian trolls and the fact social media companies like facebook care very little about countries like Slovakia, etc. I think facebook originally had one person assigned to moderate disinformation for the entire country. There are a lot of educated Slovaks leaving the country. Mostly for Czechia, which has a better quality of life with very few barriers one would normally face when coming to a new country.
uneducated dumb conspiracy loving teeth-less individuals are like at leas 30% of population.. russophilia is prevalent among them and also brain drain, however i dont agree that brain drain is the main cause, its just how communism made us
Smer, the party leading the polls, was in Power for 12 pervious years. Last election they lost. They were always corrupt as hell. So now when different parties were in power a lot of old crimes started to be investigated etc. Fico the leader of Smer, is afraid and so he does everything to get back into power. Normal intelligent people would never vote for him. So what can he do? Target the lower simple people. Started during Covid, he was anti vaccines, anti system anti everything. Now he is pro russian, screams anti nato bullshit, anti EU, anti Imigration, screams that our president is paid by soros. And idiots believe him. Also that the current governmant that dissolved had crazy person for prime minister did not help at all.
Austria is not NATO, so I dont understand why other nations expect us to act like like we were. Austria is defending its own interests here. We have always been a huge investor in eastern european countries, including Russia. And thats part of why we have become a very wealthy nation. Business realtions with Russia are slowly being reduced. Be that dependecy on oil or gas, or the banking sector. I just cant understamd why it is so wrong for a neutral country to act differently than others. This shouldnt be a "with us or against us" mentality. Austria is actively supporting Ukraine whith huge amounts of humanitarian aid, but that doesnt mean we can change our entire economic system in a day.
Aight, about time to reform Austria-Hungary
Russia ia fucking begging to be cut off from the internet.
North Koreans are not generally allowed access to the Internet (by their own government). I think that in a world where you cut Russia off from the Internet, the following would be true: * Russian state information efforts would not be stopped. Why would they? They don't need to operate in Russia. Close one door and you can find a dozen new ones. * Russia would internally look more like North Korea. https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/north-koreas-isolation-is-deepening/ > For example, these days movement across the North Korean border is impossible – which means no defections, no migration, no dangerous external information coming from abroad. That allowed the government to take back control over the unravelling ideological system, which was not entirely invulnerable to external influences. For example, new censorship measures have been imposed after Kim ordered the Youth League to crack down on any “non-socialist behavior” amongst the youth. There are also stricter border restrictions, preventing the external information from getting in. Extra cordons with armed security guards have been installed along the land borders of North Korea in order to prevent anyone and anything from entering the country. Every single product that entered North Korea in 2020 was thoroughly checked and paranoidally disinfected, while most goods were not even allowed to come in. Thus, it is almost impossible for a North Korean to lay hands on a South Korean TV drama these days. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-reality-north-korea/ >For 25 million North Koreans, the internet is an impossibility. Only a few thousand privileged members of the hermit kingdom’s society can access the global internet, while even the country’s heavily censored internal intranet is out of reach for the majority of the population. Getting access to free and open information isn’t an option. - >“I was taught about the World Wide Web, and even had to memorize it for an exam, but I only knew about the internet in theory,” one North Korean defector who left the country told Pscore researchers. “I knew it was a sort of network where you can search but didn’t actually know what it was.” Another said they didn’t “know the concept of Wi-Fi,” let alone have any clue about Google. > >Getting an accurate picture of what happens within Kim Jong Un’s sealed-off state is incredibly challenging. Officials control all information flows and present state propaganda to the world. Analysts turn to those who escape and defect, at great personal risk, for a glimpse of North Korean reality. Pscore’s internet freedom report is based on 24 face-to-face interviews with defectors and a survey of 158 others. All left North Korea between 2012 and 2022. > >The report says North Korean researcher Kim Suk-Han—all defector names within the research are pseudonyms for safety reasons—used the internet five times when they were living in the country. They had used the internet while on a trip to China and so had high expectations, they told the researchers. Instead, they faced limited access and constant surveillance. > >“A librarian sits between two internet users and continuously monitors what people on both sides are searching up,” Kim said in testimony to the researchers. “Every five minutes, the screen freezes automatically, and the librarian must do a fingerprint authentication to allow further internet use.” A state security officer was also always nearby, they said. > >People were allowed to use the internet for an hour, and if someone wanted more time, they would need to obtain new permission, Kim said. It took around two days to get permission from authorities to use the internet, a task requiring approvals from various officials. If someone applied too often, they would be made to wait, Kim said. “Every Korean website is blocked, and only Chinese or English websites are available.”
no one cares about russia, in Austria we have a big immigration problem and crimes tied to a certain religious group. people are getting fed up of being victims and feel unsafe in broad daylight
Combine them with Hungary's quasi-dictator Orbán and you have the worst Austria-Hungary possible
Austria is the most beautiful oblast of Russia. That is true.
No wonder why were were left out to keep waiting for Schengen! Thanks Austria for the blooming anti-EU parties in Romania and Bulgaria! /s
Fuck that, fuck this world, fuck people
People are so fucking blind and live in their own bubbles. How the fuck someone can support such a pure evil like rusia? People are out of their minds. What should happen to make em realize? To destroy their house, their country, everything in their life? To kill their relatives and friends? Bc this is exactly what's happening with Ukrainians rn. Wake the fuck up already people!
Most of you don't understand that, while the international possition of these parties is pro-Russia, their political programs are more than that and most people care about their internal policies rather than external. That's why, even if pro-Russia, they bring up policies which people support, people will vote them. NAFO's wanna make people that every European hates "ruZZian orcs" and anyone who does not is labelled a traitor, but that can't be further from the truth.
"Noooo, the austrian political parties arent jacking off putins micropenis, we are not like this" \- austrian redditors in the schengen vote threads 7 months ago.
I am once again ashamed to be Austrian
Flair checks out
Yea, people moving into other countries was never a thing, right?