A crack in the edifice?

One very encouraging aspect of the Austrian Rights success in last weekend's elections was that for the first time in an European Union country, 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote. We are often told that the next generation will be far more conservative than ours, could it be that the future might be brighter than it some times seems.

It is early days, even in coalition, it is unlikely that Heinz-Christian Strache's Freedom Party or the Alliance for the Future of Austria headed by Jorg Haider will have a role in government, however this result will have shaken the establishment parties, and was certainly a morale boost for European Nationalism.

From a PR perspective Austria is not the ideal country for such a result, her past makes it easier for the left wing to dismiss her people as unreconstructed Nazis in a way that a similar result in Sweden or the Netherlands could not be. Austria has after all been the victim of of a campaign of poisonous propaganda for decades, as we saw recently when the international media attempted to present a deranged pervert, who had imprisoned his daughter and her subsequent offspring in a basement as being somehow representative of a nation.

However, in other ways, Austria is the perfect setting for the opening salvos of the fight to restore Europe, as it is a nation which represents so much of what is great about Europe. Over the centuries Austria has been the souse of great art, music, literature, architecture and of culture in general. Beyond art, Austria was the birthplace of many great scientists, and philosophers, it has a great and noble history.

Let us not forget that some four centuries ago the armies pf Islam were defeated at the gates of Vienna, let us hope that history is about to repeat itself.

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Click here to read the Green Arrow's take on the Austrian election