European Election · 1:15pm May 23rd, 2019
It's European Parliament election time. Today in the UK, on Sunday for most other countries. Europeans: please get out and vote for nice candidates and parties that support international friendship.
Six weeks ago the news the UK would participate in the European parliament elections after all was very welcome. A chance to show our enthusiasm for being part of Europe-wide democracy! This enthusiasm is now somewhat dampened by the Labour party's failure to adopt a sensible Brexit policy (or indeed any coherent policy), the failure of the sensible parties to cooperate, and the depressing poll predictions showing Nigel Farage's private limited company doing rather better than it has any right to. Just hoping that potential Brexit-party voters in South East England will look up at the sky on their way to the polling station, and decide that they don't really want cripple industry through a No Deal exit, exacerbate the health service recruitment crisis, and threaten peace in Northern Ireland after all.
But the UK is only one country. The Far Right is unfortunately a growing threat across Europe, and the more support they have, the harder it becomes to stand up for human rights and tackle urgent issues like the climate emergency.
As a near bystander who can't vote in these elections, please all the rest of you, do it.
Cue Ibizagate:
https://www.politico.eu/article/austria-far-right-freedom-strache/
Back in 2017, Strache conspired with the supposed niece of a russian oligarch, who offered him to buy Austria's biggest and most influential newspaper for him, so that it will be in control of his party and only write positive things about his party anymore. In turn, he promised her to give her all the state contracts that the #1 construction company of Austria gets now for an own construction company she should found in Austria for that purpose. And someone filmed everything with a hidden camera and the footage was sent to two major newspapers in Germany whose journalists gladly took it and revealed everything on Friday. A day later, Strache took his hat and stepped down from all political positions.
) and all other ministers of Strache's Freedom Party followed him in solidarity and stepped down together.
Two days after that, Kurz (Chancellor since 2017) kicked the Interior Minister Kickl (Yes, that's actually his name! How fitting now.
That's a major thing. Normally, I'm not interested in anything political, but this is a major thing. Strache is a pure neo-nazi, with plenty of reasons why he shouldn't be involved in anything political. Yet, somehow, he managed to get liked by the people and to work his way more and more to the top, in a way that eerily reminds me on Adolf Hitler (as in, it was always obvious that he is a threat, but the people followed him like puppets), until his party formed a coalition with the winner of the 2017 general elections and he became Vice Chancellor of Austria.
That guy was getting more and more extreme in the last few years and the more successful his party became, the more daring its members became. First they pushed for a law that threatens to punish everyone who covers their face in public and managed to get it established, then Interior Minister Kickl strongly advocated concentration camps for immigrants and had the full intent of establishing those. And, yes, he used the word "Konzentration" to describe these camps!
Strache as Vice Chancellor also established that immigrants have to do charitable work for little to no money and Kickl, a mere few hours before he got kicked, issued a law that now lowers the income for immigrants to 1,50€ per hour.
He and his Freedom Party even attacked Austria's national TV channel, the ORF, after critical journalism about the party and threatened the general manager of the ORF, with the goal to take over the channel and bring it under their control, and demanded that the most well-known moderator of ORF's news, who tends to ask politicians a lot of provocative and inconvenient questions, gets fired.
They got worse by the day and I feared for years that Strache will eventually, especially if he should manage to become chancellor with one of the next general elections, become so bad that he turns Austria into a completely totalitarian neo-nazi country in a way that it would make Hitler proud.
And now all those worries are gone. Just poofed, with one video filmed in a moment when Strache committed something that borders on high treason and that was an attempt to completely control Austria's press freedom.
We were so close to Nazi Austria 2.0, but now all of that is averted.
His party is pretty much in ruins after that scandal. And helpless like a baby without him, because it was mainly him who led that party to new heights (or, lows) and got it to the point where it was until last Friday. And his party works even harder now to further dig its own grave by being as loud and shouty and aggressive as ever, demonstrating they haven't learned anything. No one's going to vote for that party for a VERY LONG time.
I never felt more satisfied and relieved in my entire life.
Here's the video, with english subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz6BeEVVCjc
Already advance voted, for a very much pro-EU party and candidate.
The best thing about the Brexit Party is that Farage said, with that trademark smirk of his, that the party's policies will only be revealed after the election. Still polling in the top spot.
So yeah. Get out and vote for international friendship and cooperation!
But more important than that, go and vote for those MEPs who are against Article 13 (now Article 17). And vote those out who are in support of it.
There is still a chance to influence the EU's plans and to save us from this horrendous new attempt to censor the Internet. Lots of MEPs across all the EU countries are against Article 13 (now Article 17) and if they are voted into the European Parliament, they can create a new legislation that gets rid of Article 13 (now Article 17) again.
Here is a list of MEPs that voted for amendments to Article 13 (now Article 17) and who are against upload filters:
https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/copyrightvote.pdf
And here is a spreadsheet specifically for the UK, that shows all UK MEPs that voted for Article 13 (now Article 17):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k0qLyfcc6CEu0uDsFQfQXNHnh0p1a__qUoUPqDUIoYU/edit#gid=0
Explanation for the first link: + contains the names of those against Article 13 (now Article 17). Search for your MEPs under + and vote for them and their parties to make it into the EU parliament where they can crush and destroy the EU's plans to censor the Internet!
Good luck guys!
5063158
Voting we can do.
5063159
Having watched political developments in Austria with concern. Let's hope this latest twist will weaken the Far Right across Europe.
5063166
5063169
No policy information from the Brexit party. Brexit means Brexit. Credit to Led By Donkeys for writing one for them: https://thebrexitparty.com/
5063217
I agree this issue is not over. There will further arguments in the years ahead and it would be good to write to new MEPs to tell them what they should be doing. I have not done this as this is a complicated issue and I've not had the time to research it to the level I would like. The party which is best engaging with this is the Greens. See this statement from Molly Scott Cato (South West England). Julia Reda's blog is indeed an interesting source of information on this.
5063225
We will try.
5063325
Heh. Nice. In a sane world, this would be a kind of breaking point...
I also like the fact that he can just sell the party if he tires of it, since it's not registered as a political party but as a business.
The problem I had with voting, is the candidates are divided into two camps. The idiots who got us into this state, and the poor ignorant sods who dont realise theyre heading for catastrophe.
I voted, I hope for a party that can get the useful stuff through while being hammered on what populist recent vote theyre aiming for.
To them, how dare the machines claim to know better.
5063159 The thing is, that party had massive support until the payola scandal came out. That means the people voting for them KNEW about the neo-Nazi policies... and voted for them ANYWAY (and probably in support of said policies).
5063693
Yes and Austria is a country with a lot of rascist people. How do you think Adolf Hitler managed to come to power? The nazis didn't invent rascism. But now Strache has done more than being rascist, he showed that he was willing to sacrifice the country's integrity and the people's freedom to come to supreme power. No one's going to trust him anymore after that and the eyes of a lot of people will get opened now that they know who they have supported all this time. His party will have to go on a different course if it ever wants to get somewhere again.
5063714 The thing is, there are always more Straches. Just like there are always more Trumps. They're not the disease; they're the symptom, and so long as racism and ethnic cleansing have a political base, such people will continue to threaten the destruction of liberty.
5063803 BTW, I normally don't get this political here. But right now what I'm seeing is a global trend towards dictatorship and racism, and it worries me one hell of a lot...