Letters from Vienna #28
My professor, the brilliant but sadly since deceased Nicholas T. Phillipson, once said that if we travelled back in time and spoke with someone from the past: we might think the words we used meant the same but we would err. Sometimes they become redundant (“leerläufige Räder” (Wittgenstein)) but their meaning frequently changes. This slip-sliding of meaning has, if anything, accelerated in recent years.
The term: “left” and “right” dates from the French Revolution and was used to denote one’s position in the National Assembly. Those who sat to the right of the president supported the king, those who sat to his left: didn’t. In the course of the revolutionary terror the National Assembly was forever shifting to the left as more and more moderates were denounced as traitors and guillotined.
Remaining independent and switching position wasn’t necessarily an option: “I tried to sit in different parts of the hall and not to adopt any marked spot, so as to remain more the master of my opinion,” one right-wing baron wrote, “but I was compelled absolutely to abandon the left or else be condemned always to vote alone and thus be subjected to jeers from the galleries.”[1]
Should we still hold onto this paradigm or rather abandon it? After all: the last thing the mind needs is shackles. Independence of spirit, fantasy and freedom of thought are essential if humanity is to survive.
I personally would argue that one of the reasons for the ongoing Scamdemic and Genocide by Jab is the fact that we suffer from wrong-thinking: it is an intellectual error if not a sin to still cogitate, in this time, in these terms. A new paradigm is needed.
Recently an Austrian wrote on social media: “Who betrayed us??? THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS!!! I have been a SPÖ party member since 1994; I was a leftie and also member of the council. I resigned in November. The SPÖ is a SHAME for Austrian democracy!!! I joined the FPÖ because it is the only party (besides the MFG) that is fighting for us against this dictatorship. A few months ago, I could NEVER have imagined that I would one day join the FPÖ. I did it out of gratitude because they are FIGHTING FOR AND WITH US, FOR REAL FREEDOM!!! THANK YOU, HERBERT KICKL, THANK YOU FPÖ!!!”
I too would never in my wildest dreams have ever imagined that I could one day vote for the FPÖ, the “Freedom Party”, but I am now seriously considering doing so. After all: the presidential election is just around the corner. How is this possible?
In the 1990s I, who have a deep and abiding hatred of Fascism, took part in a demonstration against the FPÖ and the drift toward the “right” and even tried to affect events by writing a play about Claus Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg on behalf of the then director the Burgtheater. My aim was to persuade conservatives that they should ally with the left rather than those I considered to be on the “extreme right”. I failed in that particular endeavour and in 1999 the ÖVP (People’s Party) formed a coalition with the FPÖ. I immediately wanted to leave the country and started teaching English as a means of doing so.
For months there were demonstrations, continual discussions in the Burgtheater about what was to be done and the country seemed positively paralysed. One diplomat said that everything depended upon whether the government abided by the constitution. Where, I ask myself, is he now, when it has patently failed, for nearly two years, to actually do so?
Yet the government (ÖVP/FPÖ (Schwarz/Blau)) that I feared was not as bad as I expected. Austria didn’t turn into the Fourth Reich. In fact: it was very much a case of business as usual. The sleazy corruption continued in much the same way it had before while I simply looked away and ignored it all; after all: I was too busy teaching English or writing plays which nobody ever produced.
Under Sebastian Kurz the ÖVP, “shifted to the right” and adopted the “hard line” of the FPÖ toward foreigners. In reality it let foreigners in, just as the FPÖ had done beforehand, while deporting a few poor women and children in the full glare of the media.
At first the FPÖ supported the “Lockdown” and the harsh Covid measures but has, over the years, become increasingly critical. Now its leader: Herbert Kickl is demanding consequences for the disastrous and unjustified policies on the part of the government.[2] If there are signs of hope: it is because the intellectually, morally and politically bankrupt chancellor, health minister and the “establishment parties” have been boxed into a corner.
According to one opinion poll, which is to be (as all opinion polls need to be) treated with considerable caution: only 4.66% of Austrians would vote ÖVP, only 5.92% support the SPÖ, while a whopping 38.67% are pro FPÖ and 33.66% are in favor of MFG (see letter #4). The government, one has to bear in mind, is a coalition of Greens and ÖVP (which seems to have a grand total of just over 5% of popular support!). It is no surprise that they are panicking, declaring “Freedom Days” and that the population is justly mocking them.
Recently a modern-day fairy tale was posted on social media: “Hans walks through his village in Austria with a spray gun and sprays a liquid on the streets, on the houses, on the fields, on the gardens.
The residents are surprised and call the police. Surprised, the police ask: “Tell me, what are you spraying there?”
Hans answers: “I spray something against crocodiles.”
Police: “But there aren’t any crocodiles here!”
Hans: “Yes, of course there aren’t any crocodiles here because I spray something against them!”
Police: “That’s great, then we’ll make sure that everyone sprays this substance, because we don’t want crocodiles to come here and eat our children!”
A little time passes before everyone in the area is terrified, buys the substance from Hans and sprays it all over the place.
Hans becomes the richest man in the area and even gets an award for working to keep our children safe.
A sign is even put up at the entrance to his village: “Hans’s village, friend of the children”.
The substance has various effects on people and their animals. For some, the corn crops die, for others the cows die in agony and children develop rashes and terrible diseases.
But all that is far less serious than the fact that a crocodile could have eaten our children.
No one dares to ask “why” or even to doubt Han’s sprayed substance, because the fact is:
Since Hans has been spraying in the village, no crocodile has ever been sighted.”
A crisis, famously, should be put to use. This particular crisis ought to be used by us, as a society, to rethink the paradigms we have grown accustomed to. What might have been valid two hundred years ago is no longer valid today.
[1] https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-political-labels-left-wing-and-right-wing-originate
[2] https://www.unzensuriert.at/content/143407-kickl-regierung-muss-sich-fuer-das-leid-der-menschen-verantworten/?fbclid=IwAR29idL90a8TjX3Xa3MabI1zC_SCj1cPhFvvjhymsrQRsj3hesr0azmHIKU