4603 - Castle Schlaining IV

2019-05-27

The elections for the European Parliament are over. The Freedom Party? Well, almost everybody and I had hoped to see them crushed.

Instead? They are down by 2.2% to slightly more than 17%.

Figure this: you have a party, the leader of which is recorded on video, promising all sorts of corruption to the alleged daughter of a russian oligarch, in exchange for illegal support for his party. He is totally frank about this and it is not the first time in his party.

In Strache’s case he could at least claim that it was all fictitious. Some years ago another leading member of his party was convicted in a similar but real case, known as the “part of the game” affair.

Jörg Haider, the former leader of the party, was involved in a big corruption scandal about Carinthia’s biggest bank. In the end - and with the help of incompetence from all parties - it cost Austrian tax payers 18 billion Euros.

And now that you know all this: would you vote for those guys? Would you feel your money safe? Your country in good hands?

For 17% of Austrian voters the answer seems to be “yes”.

There are 2 comments

joe   (2019-06-08)

Welcome to our world, our president* has a consistent base of 33%. I just don’t get it, a failure of education or just flat out racism?

💬 Reply 💬

Andreas   (2019-06-09)

I think what we see here is the erosion of democracy by capitalism and technology. You are the center of capitalism, the center of the Empire, the biggest prize on the planet, therefore it is only fitting that the erosion has progressed more than elsewhere :)

Well, of course that’s a stupid simplification, but when we look at how campaigns are made these days, then it is clear you need tremendous amounts of money. It is also clear that we are witnessing widest-spread corruption and completely uninhibited lying in real-time.

In a way that is understandable. Throw out a lie, wait for the opponent to try to disprove it, and while he is still at it, attack him for it with another lie. Or use an unrelated lie. It really does not matter, it works always. It’s only immoral, destroys truth and reality, but nobody cares about them anyway.

Throughout the electorate this behaviour causes irritation, but at the same time a big part of it enjoys the spectacle. The less respectful the better. And then they vote for Trump. Or Strache. Believing that they throw a wrench into the despised machine. Which they are not.

People are not so stupid to not recognise when they are being lied to, but when everybody does it, they take the liar with the biggest entertainment value. Maybe people in the US are just more desperate than in Austria, because in the US it has been going like that for a much longer time.

💬 Reply 💬