lundi 29 septembre 2008

Austrians to the rescue!

Nationalism is garbage. One should never allude to a country as having characteristics. Scots aren't mean. Irish people are certainly not stupid, the French aren't arrogant etc. As commies, we shouldn't really even acknowledge the existence of countries at all. There is simply working people and leech bosses, the latter who do their utmost to divide and coquer the far superioir former.

But sometimes. Sometimes, the people in a country do rubbish tihngs. All the time. Again and again. I mean, Austria. You'd have thought that given the last radically right-wing person to come from the place, that they would think again about voting extreme right. But no! Amidst a profound economic crisis, war in the middle east and the Caucases, unemployment on the rise and international tensions that mount by the day these are the results: votes/%/seats

Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)
1,316,091/ 29.7 /58
Austrian People's Party (ÖVP)
1,134,837/ 25.6 /50
Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)
797,993/ 18.0 /35
Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ)
486,397/ 11.0 /21
The Greens - The Green Alternative (GRÜNE)
433,810/ 9.8 /19
Liberal Forum (LIF)
84,764/ 1.9 /0
Citizens' Forum Austria - List Fritz Dinkhauser (FRITZ)
78,119/ 1.8 /0
Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ)
34,107/ 0.8 /0

This is shit news. Ok, it's good that the mainstream social democratic and conservative parties get their worst results since 1945, but, obviously, the combined 29% score for the the far right dickheads is a depressing result. Remember, last time this happened the EU imposed sanctions against Austria. But do not despair - it is easy to look at the sorry little blip at the foot of the poll and think once more, along with the likes of Linsey McGoey in a truly rubbish article, that Marx is dead.

The true operations of the social world are kept hidden from the people. The media, especially at times like this, will do their best to conceal the brutual mechanisms that keep the status quo. It has always been like this. The challenges that revolutionaries face today are not different in kind to those faced by revolutionaries in the past. We must plough on, organise, inform yourself and others and never despair. After all Austria is a small place - the working class is four, five billion strong.

(This is not being aggressive toward any individual Austrian of course and REL sends comradely greetings to the working class forces in Austria itself).