"Wir gegen, nach Vienna..."

The recent Austrian elections have seen a jump in support for far right political parties. Oh dear, oh deary, deary me. Its not the first time a large number of Austrians seem to favour right wing nutters most civilised people would find hideously offensive in recent years, previous such support earned the land of mountains and schnapps sanctions from the EU. And then there was the unfortunate Kurt Waldheim affair and the disputes over certain parts of his war record before that. And then going back several decades there is, of course, a rather more extreme example of Austrian support for mad right wing lunatics. Its nice to see that Austria doesn't feel it has to tiptoe around its rather unfortunate mid-20th century history. While right wing nutters are everywhere (disgustingly some people even voted for them in some local English councils; those self same people pretend they aren't supporting racism and bigotry but they ain't foolin' anyone) in a country with the still fairly recent history Austria has you would think they'd be keen not to be seen as the sort of people who love a good, strong, right wing orator. Listen to that sound? Is that the sound of many brushes polishing jackboots?

All at sea

I came to this story by Johan Hari of the Independent via Boing Boing - Hari joined a regular cruise organised by the ultra right wing National Review in the US, a cruise ship full of rich, white, right wing Americans. I have no problem with the fact that people hold different views from what I would consider reasonable (not to mention humane and moral), but these people are off the scale for willful ignorance, arrogance, bigotry, stupidity and an ability to tune out real events in a manner that would make even Fox News blush in shame.

If they lived in their own little warped world that would be fine, but cry for the world because these are the sorts of shagwits who have urged on the foreign policies of the current US administration and if anyone disagrees they are obviously communist-liberal-muslim-sand-nazis out to destroy The American Way Of Life (TAWOL), which obviously for them includes freedom of expression as long as you express nothing but agreement with them. Warning, reading this article may make you very angry and demand the public disembowelling of Rush Limbaugh.