Building Red Vienna
Danny Bee celebrates Red Vienna, when workers’ land occupations led to a left-wing city council developing a new vision for public housing and working-class communities.
Review: The Order of the Day
The unfolding catastrophe of the 1930s is illuminated in new ways in a disconcerting new book by Éric Vuillard, writes Brian Parkin.
Appeal: support Austrian antifascists sued by fascist Freedom Party leader
Austria’s new far-right Vice Chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, is suing anti-fascists for ‘slander’. We are republishing Linkswende Jetzt’s appeal for financial support, as they fight to defend themselves against this charge. Additional reporting by Nick Evans of rs21. Heinz-Christian Strache has long-standing connections with Neo-Nazi organisations. His far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) came third in the recent Austrian general […]
Exposing the far-right in Austria’s Freedom Party
Austria prepares for elections on 15 October which are likely to result in the far-right Freedom Party helping to form the next government. Nick Evans reviews a new book documenting the extremist groups that now dominate the party. Review of: Hans-Henning Scharsach (with Christa Eveline Spitzbart), Stille Machtergreifung: Hofer, Strache und die Burschenschaften [Silent Coup: […]
#M18: Vienna protests against racism and attacks on the right to protest
Report and photos by Nick Evans. “Stop instrumentalising us. Muslim women are fed up with being told what to wear. We want freedom to wear what we want.” The #M18 demonstration in Vienna began with speeches by Muslim women, Afghan and Syrian refugees and socialists, condemning the recent ban on the full-face ban and attacks […]
Interview: on the resistible rise of Norbert Hofer
Today (4 December), Austrians go to the polls again to elect their president. Earlier this year, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, was narrowly defeated by the former Green candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. However, the Freedom Party successfully challenged the vote in the courts, and there is now a re-run. The […]
Austria: The rise of respectable fascism?
Joe Sabatini reflects on the social, demographic and ideological issues behind the Austrian Presidential Election, and considers strategies to oppose the far right. On 22 May the Austrian electorate came within a percentage point of electing Europe’s first fascist head of state since the 1930s. On 1 July, the results of the second round of […]
Vienna: 8,000 march against Nazi ball
www.linkswende.org reports: Holocaust survivors, former partisans, trade unionists, local Social Democrats and Greens, and students on 24 January turned out in a 8,000 strong march against the German nationalist student corporations and the fascist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Young and old, people with their babies, homemade banners and a great portion of anger took […]