Wow, it would never ever have occurred to me that our ultra right nationalist party leader is a big admirer of marxists, socialism and people with multicultural migration background. In his current campaign for the Austrian national elections he copies the famous image of Che Guevara to make himself look like somewhat revolutionary and he is using graphic and textual elements (“yes we can”) from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Makes me wonder if he has ever read more about the people he’s trying to imitate than some catchy slogans on t-shirts. Maybe somebody should tell him that Barack Obama’s doesn’t really stand for xenophobia, fear and anger. I guess both of them would have a hard time to find a single point in their politics they could agree on. Nor would Che Guevara throw people, who come and ask for help, out of a safe and wealthy country and send them back, even to war zones, where they came from.
[via helge and rigardi]
Last night we attended a great talk given by Amy Walters (political analyst for CNN) about the upcoming US elections and the ongoing democratic primaries. Because of recent private changes I got somehow involved into US politics. Even though I’m just an observer from outside, it’s interesting to watch the political process and how the political landscape of the US seems to change (oh, there it is, the “c” buzzword!) right now.
Anyways, I found especially one quote of Amy Walters interesting. The discussion was about how many people one politician attracts to come and fill up civic centers compared to the other. It’s often seen as indicator for popularity. But, as polls show, it’s not. At least the number of people going to civic centers doesn’t reflect the polls in any sense. It’s a matter of the target group: civic centers are filled up by the “rally people”. People who have time and money to go there.
It made me think about the hype around Web 2.0, the next big thing to generate millions page views and create so much more awareness about your product.
Most Web 2.0 services still only attract the “rally people”: people who have time to spend online and participate in whatsoever web service or people who are somehow professionally involved (mostly techies and PR guys). Or people who spend their saturday afternoons to write blog posts about themselves instead of doing their weekly grocery shopping.
I think all the countless Web 2.0 services, all the effort, still focuses on a very limited group of society.
Although it’s fascinating to see politicians heavily using Web 2.0, their real business, collecting votes, lies outside the web. That’s what polls teach us. The next president isn’t going to be elected by YouTube views, Facebook friends or Blog subscribers, but by real people with real issues they are concerned about.
Just imagine for a moment how this a video would look like if you exchange Barack Obama with the Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer.
[youtube wKsoXHYICqU]
You know, probably one difference between here and there is that there a politician makes an offensive statement, somebody grabs it, the video finds its way on a platform like YouTube and the politician is in big trouble.
[youtube pL3Q9gUEvtA]
Here, a politician, in fact an elected parliamentarian, explains his admiration and the positive aspects the NAZI regime had for this country (btw, because he was born after 1945 the poor guy didn’t remind that about 6m people had to be robbed and murdered by his heroes to succeed), the interview is brought to every household in Austria over the Austrian public service broadcaster ORF and, basically, nothing happens. The man who still keeps words like “der Führer” (!!) in his vocabulary will happily continue working in the Austrian parliament.
Clearly, a certain percentage of our population is still thinking that way. No problem, a sound democracy can stand it. But it makes a difference if such people own a seat in our parliament and represent with their antiquated way of thinking this country.
The most shocking detail about yesterdays elections in Vienna are the 15 percent of votes gained by our right wing party FPÖ. I think a healthy democracy can stand about 10% extremism, either from the extrem right or left. What I can’t understand is how is it possible to get 15% of votes (100,780 persons!) with that ugly, aggressive and racist campaign?
It’s just unbelievable…
15% of Vienna are accesible with mainly xenophobic arguments,
15% of Vienna seem to prefer to solve certain issues in the good old manner (“it’s not our fault, somebody else has to be blamed!”),
15% of us don’t seem to be capable of learning from the past (neither recent nor long term).
We simply have to face that 15% of us will remain (dangerously) dumb!
Last thursday our beloved right wing party offcially started their campaign for the upcoming local elections in Vienna. Like every year this convention was held at Viktor-Adler-Markt in the 10th district. Just because of curiosity which people will be appear there and still more interesting which topics will their top-candidate H.C. Strache pick out as their central themes I went there. Not surprising his speech was full of untruths (not to say lies) and absurdities.
One of his major topics, crime, is just ridiculous. I think nobody in Vienna would be scared if he would stop telling people that Vienna is insecure because of black or dark-skinned people in the street and subway. In fact, Vienna is one of the safest cities world wide and lately crime rate actually is decreasing.
He tried to refresh some old phrases of former FPÖ leader Jörg Haider like those subliminal anti-Semitic hints towards the US east-coast (unfortunately nobody in the audience got this jokes right, nobody clapped or laughed). Followed by criticizing the efforts to improve the situation for homosexuals and last but not least some quite crude arguments against immigration and asylum. Then I went home, enough is enough. Apart from that I got pretty angry about the things I just heard, I was wondering how people can vote parties like that. What would be the motivation to give them a vote? Pollsters identify those people as protest voters. Protesting against the current political situation. Or maybe unsatisfied with their personal situation and somebody has to be blamed. Parties like FPÖ always offer some easy targets to blame.
Still it’s incomprehensible, rethinking their agenda only for 5 minutes would show that most of their points (well, probably every single point) are simply, sorry, bullshit.
Yesterday walking through the 10th district of Vienna (Favoriten, like bookmarks are called in Microsofts german Internet Explorer) I witnessed an interesting spectacle:
In October we have local elections here in Vienna. During the past 50 years the conservative party never has been powerful, Vienna was and actually is more than ever before a deep red socialist stronghold. The current local government, the “emperor of vienna” Michael Häupl, has an absolute majority (52 seats out of 100) in the municipial council. Anyway, the strategy of the conservative party is to get more votes and to win the so called bourgeois bohemians (bobos) over. Bobos, “young urban tolerant free thinking” whatever people, used to vote the green party because of its certain “young urban tolerant free thinking” whatever politicians. We are not voting for parties, we are voting for personalities.
So the conservative party made some changes to their leadership, you see now younger unknown faces doing the interviews, they even hired a green politician and suddenly, out of nothing they were kind of cool & trendy (“see you at the summer beach” is one of their slogans).
And then I see a completely insane Schlager Karaoke in the middle of Favoriten. Somebody has to tell them that Schlager Karaoke in Favoriten is not the best method to get bobos interested in their politics. No, I guess this might even have some opposite effects.