The Austrian government has purged itself of would-be far-right Nazis, who were diligent enough to resign en masse. Every far-right Freedom Party minister in the Austrian government has resigned. Austria’s Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was the first to go. He resigned on May 18 over a scandal he caused while colluding with Russia to subvert his nation’s government. They caught him on a sting tape.
Unfortunately for Mr. Strache, his transgression appeared over the weekend in a video from 2017. He probably wasn’t very happy to be watching it. It showed him on the Spanish island of Ibiza, offering government contracts to a woman who claimed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. Strache’s party has a cooperation agreement with Russian president Vladimir Putin, just like Marine Le Pen of France did.
These countries, in our opinion, should not just let the Russians do whatever they want in their electoral system, which I have always disliked, but it does seem to help them not get taken off guard by this kind of thing. They’re used to it, and it’s not unexpected.
Strache is gone, which is both positive and sadly ironic. It’s sad he was allowed in that position in the first place. Austria is where Adolf Hitler was actually from, not Germany. It’s positive because, well, anytime there are fewer Nazis someplace, that’s positive. This, we can accept on faith as an axiomatic statement. But it’s sad at the same time, because, well, how quickly we forget! In Germany proper, you’re not allowed to go around spouting Nazi filth anymore. They’ll stick you in a cell for that, although it’ll be in a prison, not a death camp. Why not in Austria? In fact, why not everyplace? A prison is a great place for Nazis in any country.
They should be very grateful that not all of the rest of us are just like them. If we were they’d all be dead.
Getting back on topic, my guess is that what we saw Strache doing on that tape is something he knew full well was illegal, not just something “dumb”, like he tried to say on his way out the door. It was for the same reason I think Paul Manafort never left America, although of course, that is speculative.
He didn’t think his alt-right team was going to lose.
Keep in mind, this was 2017. The alt-right had it all back then. Trump was in office over here, having just begun his term. German chancellor, the interim head of the free world Angela Merkel was being severely attacked by that nation’s alt-right primarily by the Free Democratic Party(FDP). These were the chief culprits, of course. But Merkel was also besieged from a different angle, through Martin Schulz, a far-left, Putin-backed and financed candidate who was called the “Bernie Sanders of Russia“.
The list goes on. Marine Le Pen was still giving Macron a hard time in France. and Austrian far-right leader Norbert Hofer came closer to winning a major election than any far-right candidate has since the end of World War II. All over Europe and elsewhere, far-right militarists who were friends of Putin began taking power. Jinping Xi of China, whose state capitalist system is a more efficient version of the Russians, back then called Putin his “most closest, most dearest friend”.
Certainly, the momentum was there, and they were, for a day, riding the crest of a swastika’s black, white, and red wave. The colors were to replace those of America. They wanted this and dreamed about it, and they thought Putin would be able to get it for them. They even manipulated unwitting dupes of the far left on board with ripping up Democrats
Viewed in this context, of course members of Austria’s far-right would be open to cooperating with Russia. Why wouldn’t they be? They thought he was going to build them a new world, one they’d be on top of. Le Pen summed up their viewpoint very well, hailing him as the herald of what she said was a “stone in the building of a new world destined to replace the old one.” She flicked her wrist around the room with the utmost contempt, as if to indicate what Trump would soon be washing away.
Not long after, one of their guys, a nameless trash can killed a girl named Heather Heyer at a now-infamous rally in Charlottesville, Virginia by running her down with a van, and they all cheered about it, and marched around afterward harassing those who prepared a quiet candle vigil for her. It made them feel strong, to murder a woman. Trump told them they were “very good people” and said not a word about what he had done.
How strong do you chumps feel now?
That was all before the FBI arrested George Papadopoulos and kicked in Michael Cohen‘s door, though. Once they arrested Paul Manafort, and still Trump used his pardoning power on no one but Joe Arpaio, the sadistic Arizona sheriff who built concentration camps in the desert for the prisoners of Phoenix, they must have gotten to thinking.
Every time a member of the alt-right has second thoughts about putting their ideology higher in their value system than their behinds and bails, they inspire a few more of their buddies to join them. One by one, and finally in droves, their “brothers” and them all disappeared. Every one of them was a crack in the reservoir for Putin. Now that guys like Strache are actually resigning because of things he made them do, we can look for that crack to widen rapidly.
Sooner or later, that levee’s going to break.
As soon as the incels and other alt-rightists all see that he can’t protect them, they’ll realize they only have three choices, like in the Choose Your Own Adventure books we millennials read as little kids. There are all kinds of different ways to go at first, but sooner or later they all run together, and then there’s only a few, leading to the same three options every time.
Failure, success, or death.
All those guys are thinking about this and weighing the equation in their minds. The jig is up, and they know it. Putin was a long shot from the first, but for a while all his rubles made them forget what they now are remembering in earnest- that it’s not going to happen for them and they know it. Now they’re remembering something else, too, something that people in mobs tend to forget.
Sooner or later, this is going to backfire horribly on Putin, who has been a disaster for Russia. The country is in poverty while he and his pals fly around on private jets holding rallies on American soil. He got them sanctioned heftily, they can’t do business in America, and there’s only so much borscht you can eat.