"We want power. We want to be number one. Austria first!” Nearly hoarse after a two-hour speech, Heinz-Christian Strache ended the new year’s gathering of the Austrian Freedom party (FPO) on a high note. The party is one of the rising forces of Europe’s far right, credited with 22% to 24% support in the polls, twice as much as the Greens. Above all, the party once led by Jörg Haider is catching up with its main rival among working-class voters, the Social Democrat party (SPO), which has fallen below 30% in voting intentions. In the Vienna Congress Centre last week, some 4,000 supporters waved Austrian flags. The better to defend western civilisation, FPO militants are demanding a ban on the construction of minarets, as in Switzerland. Strache got a round of applause when he referred to playgrounds where the few Austrian kids “no longer even dare speak German”. It was time, he said, to put an end to this “counter-society”, which the city council, led by Social Democrat Michael Häupl, had allowed to flourish for 16 years. A third of the capital’s population comes from abroad, mainly Turkey, central Europe and the former Yugoslavia. Should we be worried about this so called Austrian Freedom Party, like many far right groups on the rise is not as it try’s to appear?
Obviously they have an anti-Islamic ideology (all the far right groups in Europe have jumped on this issue) but they also have a desire to legalise Nazi symbols and Strache has links to far right extremists. The fact that Lutz Weinzinger, a leading member of Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO) attended a candle light vigil at a fallen SS officers grave which is eerily on the same date of Kristallnacht, the ‘night of broken glass’ that in 1938 the Nazi’s notoriously attacked property held by Jews and also killed 92 who happened to be in their way.
And its no accident that Former Waffen SS officer and unrepentant Nazi Herbert Schweiger was a leading founder in the political party is a friend of Strache.Yet at a time in Austrial when Muslim graves are being daubed with Nazi symbols and a group of Neo Nazi’s hoisted the Swastika (banned in Austria) in Hilter’s birthtown as a tribute to their fallen Idol, Nick Griffin leader of the BNP has created a friendship with the Strache.
After the FPO’s election victory, Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nationalist Party (BNP), sent a personal message to Strache.
‘We in Britain are impressed to see that you have been able to combine principled nationalism with electoral success. We are sure that this gives you a good springboard for the European elections and we hope very much that we will be able to join you in a successful nationalist block in Brussels next year.’
Little do they know as the majority in Britain know, the BNP are really a joke and as the saying goes “couldn’t organise a pi** up in a brewery”
