As the far Right surges in Austria, neo-Nazis are marching in Dresden, Germany
(Hat tip: Drudge)
Maybe it's something in the Teutonic soul, but extreme right-wing nationalist parties are staging a strong comeback in the land of Hitler's birth, little, quaintly picturesque Austria. Austria has been a prosperous democratic state with a big social safety net of benefits for more than 50 years, but quite a few Austrians still look to various neo-fascist and even outright Nazi outfits for new leadership:
Last September, Austria’s far right gained massive political influence in an election that saw the FPO along with another far right party – Alliance For The Future (BZO) – gain 29 per cent of the vote, the same share as Austria’s main party, the Social Democrats. The election stirred up terrifying memories of the rise of the Nazi Party in the Thirties.
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The FPO wants to legalise Nazi symbols, while its firebrand leader has been accused of having links to far right extremists.
Elsewhere in the Fatherland, just last month, thousands of neo-Nazis flexed their muscles and marched in Dresden supposedly to complain about the Allied bombing of that city in 1945. And last summer, others marched in Bavaria to mark the anniversary of the death of one of their favorite guys, Rudolph Hess, Hitler's Deputy Fuhrer.
It's easy to dismiss some of these developments as grumbling by tiny powerless minorities -- but not when far-right parties win nearly a third of the vote in the country that produced Hitler, and openly neo-Nazi groups in Deutchland proper are boldly marching, spitting at the wartime Allies, and making demands.
Something is up.
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