On today’s Deprogrammed, hosts Harrison Pitt of the European Conservative magazine and freelance journalist Evan Riggs are joined by comedian Leo Kearse, presenter of GB News’s “Headliners”.
Month: March 2024
AP Photographer who accompanied Hamas terrorists during 7 October attack wins award from American journalism institute for photo of naked body of Shani Louk
Freelance photojournalist Ali Mahmud, who contributed to the Associated Press and accompanied the Hamas terrorists during the 7 October attack in Israel, has won the Team Picture Story of the Year awarded by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute in the US. Ali Mahmud has won the award for the photograph of Shani Louk, who was paraded naked by the Hamas terrorists before killing her.
According to the website of the award, the Team Picture Story of the Year award category recognizes the collaborative effort of a photography staff covering a single topic or news story. “It is a narrative picture story that consists of images taken as part of a team effort to cover a single issue or news story,” it states. Shani Louk photograph is the first photograph in the gallery, and it states in the caption “Palestinian militants drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual citizen, during their cross-border attack on Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.”
Several other photographs showing the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack and Israel’s military action in Gaza, mostly taken by AP Photojournalists, have been selected for the award.
The award is handed out annually by the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in the United States.
Ali Mahmud is one of the journalists who travelled with the terrorists into Israel and extensively covered the attack. Media watchdog Honest Reporting had identified six freelance photographers, who had contributed to Associated Press and Reuters. The six photographers were identified as Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih. It is believed that they were aware of the Hamas terror attack before it took place.
The freelancers snapped photos of a burning Israeli tank and of Hamas terrorists kidnapping people, including the German-Israeli woman Shani Louk, who was later found dead. The photojournalists had posted the photos on social media in real time, when the attack was going on. In some posts, the photographers had posted their own photographs from the Israeli territory during the attack. They later deleted those posts, but Honest Reporting had already taken screenshots of those posts.
Unbelievable: Vienna’s mayor invited people to celebrate the Muslim breaking of the fast on Maundy Thursday
Photo: Unzensuriert.at
Yesterday, Maundy Thursday, Christianity commemorated the Last Supper, which Jesus Christ shared with his disciples the day before his crucifixion. The Pope performed the ritual washing of feet in Rome. And what did the mayor of Vienna do yesterday? He invited Muslims to break the Ramadan fast and filled his stomach with them at our expense!
A kick in the teeth for Christians in Vienna
We currently celebrate the holy week of Christianity, Holy Week. It is the week of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. Easter is the highest Christian holiday of the year. On the evening before his crucifixion, Jesus Christ celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples. You would think that even a socialist like Michael Ludwig would show respect for Christian values in the country. But far from it: yesterday he trampled on our Christian traditions and the faith of hundreds of thousands of people living in the city with his fast-breaking feast.
Freedom Party outraged by provocative event
The gorging event took place with selected guests from the Islamic religious community (IGGÖ) in the Rittersaal of the town hall cellar. This disrespect for our Christian traditions was brought to light by Maximilian Krauss, chairman of the Vienna Freedom Party (FPÖ), who published the invitation online. He wrote on X:
Ludwig and the Social Democrats’ attitude towards our Christian culture is demonstrated once again by the fact that he is organising a fast-breaking event with the Islamic Association of Austria on “Holy Thursday”, one of the most important Catholic days.
But what else is to be expected from a mayor who promotes Islamisation in Vienna by attracting immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan or Chechnya and spoiling them with our social benefits ?
Unfassbar: Wiener Bürgermeister lud am Gründonnerstag zum moslemischen Fastenbrechen – Unzensuriert
Judge Granted Asylum to Clapham Chemical Attacker Despite Multiple Lies and Lack of Christian Knowledge After ‘Conversion’
A British judge decided to grant asylum status to the Clapham chemical attacker and accepted his supposed conversion to Christianity as genuine, despite determining that he had lied about numerous aspects of his life and failed to demonstrate a basic understanding of Christianity.
In January, Abdul Ezedi, a 35-year-old from Afghanistan who had illegally entered the country on the back of a lorry in 2016, attacked a mother and her two children with a corrosive alkali chemical in the Clapham area of South London. The attacker successfully fled from the scene but is said to have later thrown himself into the River Thames, where police said his body was discovered weeks later.
Now court documents provided to several British news outlets revealed how the illegal migrant was granted asylum in the country in 2020 after being rejected by the Home Office twice before. The Home Office also questioned the validity of Ezedi’s conversion to Christianity, with the department concluding that the migrant was attempting to use “religion for his own ends”, with false conversions being a common tactic among asylum seekers, who then argue that they would face persecution for their newfound faith if deported back to their homeland.
Despite claiming to have read the Bible every day for years, Ezedi was unable to answer basic questions about Christianity, stating for instance according to The Times that the Old Testament was about “Jesus Christ” and that on the third day, God created “Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Resurrection Day.”
Nevertheless, Judge William O’Hanlon ruled that there was “compelling evidence” of Abdul Ezedi’s conversion being genuine and therefore granted him asylum in the UK. In addition to the illegal migrant’s limited understanding of the religion he supposedly believed in, Judge O’Hanlon was also aware of Ezedi demonstrating a lack of “honesty of the appellant in relation to certain aspects of his account”.
For instance, the would-be attacker was found to have lied during his initial asylum request, claiming that he was a Shia Muslim when in reality he was a follower of the Sunni branch of the faith. He also gave radically different accounts about the death of his brother, in one instance claiming the Taliban killed him in a bombing attack on their home while telling others that he was shot outside of a Mosque. The migrant also tried to claim that he had never worked in the UK after previously telling immigration officials that he had worked as a mechanic.
However, Judge O’Hanlon, based on evidence provided by retired Baptist minister Roy Merrin decided that Ezedi was telling the truth about his conversion. Merrin provided the court with various pieces of evidence, including pictures of them handing out leaflets during a “street ministry” in Newcastle as well as evidence of him having gone through a baptism.
The minister also provided the court with a contract drawn up by Baptists Together after Ezedi’s conviction of exposure and sexual assault in 2018 — which was apparently not enough to have him deported — which meant to safeguard other members of the church, stating that “Ezedi will stay in the vicinity of at least one of the male supporters named in this contract”.
Baptists Together denied sponsoring or “corporately supporting” Ezedi’s asylum application, and said that the safeguarding contract showed “the church had sufficiently risk assessed Abdul Ezedi’s attendance at church, ensuring the safety of the congregation and considering if it was appropriate for him to attend.”
In addition to the lax legal system, churches in England have come under heavy criticism for appearing to help illegal migrants game the system with false conversions to increase their chances of being granted asylum.
Crunching on Critters: Swedish Striving for Sustainability Puts Bugs on the Table
The Swedish city of Södertälje, just outside Stockholm, has decided to be at the forefront of “climate smart” and “sustainable” eating habits—apparently in particular when it comes to tacos.
The cafeteria in city hall, in an effort by the city to “support businesses that develop sustainable foods,” recently tested the waters by serving its patrons tacos with mashed larvae instead of the customary beef.
According to Sara Seing, the city’s dietary manager, the mashed larvae—no joke—taste like chicken.
“It’s environmentally friendly and sustainably produced,” Seing said, adding that, while larvae-mash will not be part of the regularly offered fare for right now, maybe in the future, “when people have added it to their culture and can accept insects, then it may be possible.”
Lunch guests at city hall were informed of the unusual (to put it mildy) ingredient and able to elect not to indulge if they found the prospect unappealing.
That was not the case a couple of weeks ago when state television was invited to a high school in the same city to record the reactions of unsuspecting students who had unwittingly been fed tacos made with—you guessed it—larvae.
Students, state television SvT reported, “get to learn that insects are both climate smart, healthy, and that the little animal has lived a good life.” (Yes, both three.)
In the case of the high school, enlightening the students on the environmental virtues of consuming bugs was only part of the scheme. At least as important—in line with recent Swedish government hype of what to do “if the war comes”—was finding answers to the question of how institutions like schools and retirement homes would be able to feed their clients during a war or other crisis.
In a country where the number of animals harvested in the annual moose hunt has dropped from almost 100,000 to 57,000 in the past ten years, hunter education would seem like an obvious solution to feared food shortages—but no, the go-to protein is, once again, larvae. (Which, admittedly, are quite easy to hunt and kill and turn into something that the apostles of the new environmentalist religion consider ‘food.’)
During “Science Week” in February this year, Södertälje was home to other food experiments with the stated aim of “limiting the climate footprint”:
“Everyone who wants to will have the opportunity to taste this delicious combination—crispy mealworms and a tasty soft-serve ice cream! This is a way to highlight new types of food and emphasize the need for innovative thinking about food,” said Eva Helén, responsible for Science Week.
The Swedish bug-eating vanguard may be sad to find themselves somewhat behind the curve. Already in 2022, hundreds of state-funded primary schools in the Netherlands offered students lunches of worms and insects under the pretext of “saving the planet.”
But we’d all apparently better get used to the idea. The first insect-additive was approved by the EU in 2021, with the bloc passing another law allowing ground insects in food products in January 2023 (lesser mealworms and powdered house crickets, if you were curious). And the push for more insect-based food-like products is ongoing. The International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) is actively lobbying the EU for “the use of insects and insect derived products as a top tier source of nutrients for human consumption and animal feed.”
Making your own food from scratch never felt more appealing.
Is Easter being replaced with the ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’?
Two observances — Easter and the recently contrived “International Transgender Day of Visibility” — fall on Sunday, March 31 this year, causing some to wonder “Is Easter being replaced with the ‘Transgender Day of Visibility?’”
It’s a valid question. For more than a few, it certainly will.
Others might dismiss this as nothing more than a coincidence. That would be a mistake.
On the last day of this month, we will witness a clash of religions as a demonic, cultish secular religion dares to intrude on the greatest feast day in Christendom, using a lie to distract the attention of lost souls from the most significant truth known to man: the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Depravity on the rise, starving humanity of the truth of the Gospel
This collision of religions appears to be a climactic Romans 1 moment. St. Paul explained:
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools… They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator… they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind.
Do not underestimate the will and force of Satan to supplant Christianity with this perverse woke religion through which he seeks to eclipse truth. His aim is to starve humanity of the truth of the Gospel.
This is, perhaps, a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, one that reveals the determination of many social influencers — including national and local governments — to reject reality and embrace delusion in the name of totalitarian power under the dominion of Satan.
This attack on the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is nothing new, although this current effort is more brazen and far less subtle than previous demonic forays. Go online and check out all the March 31 “holidays” with which Easter will be shared this year. It is just one of many, with no particular importance assigned to it. It’s given no more weight than “International Taco Day” or “National Bunsen Burner Day.”
Even NBC’s Today Show has Easter wedged between “Crayola Crayon Day” and “Eiffel Tower Day.”
For many, Easter means colored hard boiled eggs and bunny rabbits, hardly life-changing truths.
Secular society has long been happy to treat Easter as nothing special, disparaging it by assigning it as just one of many PR-created observances.
But International Transgender Day of Visibility is different from all these others, because it’s a holy day for a societal movement that is increasingly revealing itself to be a religion, a cult that is trapping more and more souls who disfigure their bodies to display their allegiance to the cult.
If Ba’al and Moloch failed to inspire parents to sacrifice their kids to evil via abortion, at least now those demon generals can drive parents to offer their children up in a different way, handing them over to the high priests of Big Pharma and Big Medicine who willingly carve, mutilate, and chemically disfigure their bodies. In a way, this can be seen as a demonic ridicule of the wounds Christ endured during His scourging.
Government is ‘intentionally trying to offend Christians on the holiest of days’
As if to prove the point that secular governments want to replace the truth about the Resurrection of Christ with the cult of transgenderism, Fairfax County, Virginia — a wealthy close-in suburb of Washington, D.C. — proclaimed March 31 as “Transgender Day of Visibility” while offering no such declaration concerning Easter.
The county’s Board of Supervisors voted 9-0 in favor of the proclamation.
“By voting to make Easter this year Transgender Visibility Day, they are intentionally trying to offend Christians on the holiest of days by forcing gender ideology down their throats,” Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Virginia mom and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network, told Fox News.
William E. Wolfe, executive director at the Center for Baptist Leadership, described the county’s move as “the new state-enforced religion.”
Yet the Fairfax Board of Supervisors is only doing what President Joe Biden did a year ago when he declared, “(I), by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2023, as Transgender Day of Visibility.”
What an amazing contortion of our founders’ original intent when they authored the U.S. Constitution!
A coup against reality
We are witnessing a coup against reality — against science and nature, and, above all, spiritual truth — as liberal elites seek to establish and enforce a false construction of reality, an ideological pseudo-reality to replace observable, knowable truth.
This moment is as absurd, evil, and brazen as when in January 2021 U.S. House Democratic leadership proclaimed at the opening of the 117th Congress that terms such as “father, daughter, mother, and son” as well as gendered pronouns would be banned.
And as if to make the depravity of their obsession with gender inclusiveness abundantly clear, Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri ended Congress’ opening prayer by declaring “Amen, and Awoman.”
‘Wonderfully Made’ movie promotional poster’
Wonderfully Made’ website screenshot
LGBT forces at work to undermine cross, Resurrection of Christ within the Church
It gets worse: The concerted attack against the cross and Resurrection of Christ is real, both in the secular world and within the Catholic Church.
Last year, Jesuit-run America Magazine’s LGBT-targeting publication, Outreach, promoted a play with a graphic that demeaned and desecrated the cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In the illustration, LGBT — “Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Questioning” — dislodged the greatest title known to man: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” It was an attempt to simultaneously erase every superlative by which Our Lord and savior is known: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, who has triumphed by His blood.
The cloth draped over the empty cross — meant to symbolize Christ’s resurrection — was replaced with a garish rainbow cloth, together with “LGBTQ” replacing “INRI.” It was and is a hideous revelation of Satan’s dark, grandiose intention and an admission of how he, the father of lies, has used the political power amassed by woke LGBT Marxist forces to corrupt society in general and the Church in particular from within.
To Satan, this was a priceless work of art, a symbol of victory, pretending to triumph over the cross of Christ. It was perhaps his ultimate mockery of Christ.
We witness that same intention displayed as “International Transgender Day of Visibility” stands in defiance of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ this year.
You have to love the truth
“Nobody joins a cult to join a cult,” activist James Lindsey wrote recently. “People join a cult because they are suffering in some way, and the cult offers them a resolution to their suffering. Virtually everyone who has escaped a cult tells the same story: They wanted to belong, they wanted a social circle, they wanted understanding, and they wanted purpose. The cult preys upon these people and slowly locks them in.”
He offered excellent advice to those who know the truth and don’t want to see deceptive cults ruining lives and deforming society. His words apply to those who don’t want to see Easter forgotten and replaced with horrific demon-inspired cults:
It’s important to say the truth, but you actually have to do more. You have to love the truth. You have to love the truth with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength, and then you have to love your neighbor enough as you would yourself to tell him the truth that you love. These are basic commandments.
But you have to love the truth. If you love the truth, you’ll say it. You’ll also seek it and defend it. You’ll defend other people saying it. You have to love the truth because if you don’t, when the pressure mounts, you’ll eventually buckle. You’ll be asked to care and affirm, but there’s no caring and no affirmation that isn’t built upon the truth first. So you must love the truth. Every time you tell a lie to be nice or to fit in, you’re selling a piece of your soul. You have to stop doing that. That takes loving the truth.
France: A Muslim in Reims beats up his entire non-Muslim family over a sausage found in the fridge
Unlike the other members of his family, he is Muslim and couldn’t bear to spot a sausage in the fridge. He beat up his wife and children.
Female Inmate Sexually Assaulted By Violent Trans-Identified Male At Washington Women’s Prison
A female inmate at the Women’s Correctional Center in Washington has come forward to reveal that she was sexually assaulted by a violent transgender sex offender who was transferred into the women’s prison in 2021.
For the purposes of this article, the female inmate will be referred to as “Mary” in order to protect her privacy and prevent her from experiencing institutional repercussions.
Reduxx was provided Mary’s testimony through letters she passed on to an internal source, who then relayed the information out of the institution on her behalf.
Mary explains that the incident occurred in April of 2022 after a transgender inmate named Christopher Williams asked to be moved into her cell. Williams had previously been serving his sentence at a male facility, and has a criminal history including sex offenses and violent assault.
“Christopher asked if he could move into my room because he said his current roommate was bullying him … I had no issues with him being a transgender. But then he would make weird comments like ‘it hurts when it fills up with blood,’ like he wanted me to know when he was having an erection.”
Mary says that she became increasingly uncomfortable with Williams’ behavior towards her, which had a near-constant sexual undertone. At one point, Williams appeared to become frustrated with Mary’s lack of interest in him, and started issuing disturbing threats of sexual violence.
“He said to me, ‘I don’t know why you don’t want [my dick]. Everyone else does.’ Then he started to follow me into the bathroom. And one time he told me, ‘Just so you know, I can get you wherever I want.’”
Mary says she was voicing her concerns to staff, but was “pretty much being ignored.”
The situation took a turn for the worse after Mary was prescribed sleeping medication to help with her restless nights. She says she noticed that Williams began to sit next to her bed at night after she took her medication. One night, she was woken up to the sound of an officer pounding on their cell door, demanding to know why Williams was sitting next to her bed. Mary speculates that the officer likely saw Williams touching her during her rounds.
“I’m not sure how many times he touched me because of my [meds]. But one day I came back to my cell from a work shift and he had two strap-on dildos and asked me to use them on him. I refused. That night, I was woken up to him touching me.”
Mary says she went to correctional staff immediately and told them what had happened. A search was conducted of the cell, and the sex toys were found. Mary then filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) report, which was determined to be substantiated. Williams was taken into segregation, and eventually moved out of Mary’s cell.
“In October or November [2022], we were both in the medical clinic waiting room and he was glaring at me. Then he blocked the only exit and was just staring at me, like he was trying to intimidate me.” Mary goes on to note that the facility appeared to want to keep the incident under wraps.
“They acted weird about it… like they wanted to keep it secret, but the [PREA] was founded.”
Williams, who has not changed his legal name or sex, was reportedly transferred into WCCW around the same time the facility saw a wave of transgender males being moved into the female estate in 2021.
Prior to being transferred to WCCW, Williams was incarcerated at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington, where he was serving a sentence for assaulting another inmate.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Williams was charged in 2012 after brutally attacking a man named Christopher Barrett while serving a sentence for failing to register as a child sex offender.
The attending officer wrote that he had been called by Williams’ cellmates after they heard the confrontation. Barrett was found covered in blood and with a “gash in his head,” and Williams immediately admitted to the assault, stating: “I did it. It’s me, it’s me.”
Williams admitted to having struck Barrett multiple times with his fists and elbows without any apparent provocation, stopping when Barrett let out a “death scream.”
The victim’s injuries included damage to his ear, which reportedly had to be cut open in order to relieve the severe swelling occurring under the skin.
Barrett also had broken bones under his eye, a gash on his cheek requiring “extensive stitching to close,” a missing tooth, and a nose that had been so damaged that he required emergency reconstructive surgery.
Speaking to Reduxx, a source within WCCW has said that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is largely in denial about the issues surrounding trans-identified male inmates being housed with women.
“They present it as a historic and successful arrangement. They did a trial run on some new bras they want to make available to order and they picked as many trans inmates as women. They have hired a ton of expensive staff to help the trans population and created a special orientation packet for them,” he says.
“They hint that there have been ‘some challenges’ but mostly present this as a success. Staff and inmates are in agreement that it’s a horrible thing.”
The source has previously informed Reduxx that there are currently almost one dozen male inmates at the facility. Of the 11 names provided for review, 9 were convicted of crimes against women or children. The source states that this reveals the extent of the problem.
“These incidents further show the women at WCCW that they don’t matter, and that their safety isn’t as important as making the trans inmates happy,” he says. “DOC is clearly running scared of groups like Disability Rights Washington that are always threatening a lawsuit. Meanwhile the trans inmates are playing DOC for fools.”
He continues: “The women and staff at WCCW do whatever they can to quietly fight back but constantly fear retaliation. Current housing policy and practice allows the individuals to pick their cell mates so the trans ones usually befriend more vulnerable women and pick them as cellmates and exploit them and end up in relationships full of domestic violence and control.”
One such instance of “exploitation” was committed by Princess Zoe Andromeda Love, a biological male with a criminal history that included the rape of a 12-year-old girl.
Love was transferred into WCCW in 2021 where he reportedly sexually assaulted a developmentally disabled female inmate just prior to his release. According to a former correctional officer at WCCW, many of the files associated with the incident were “erased” from the system.
Reduxx reached out to the Washington Department of Corrections for more information on the precautions being taken to protect women from trans-identified male inmates. In a statement from the Media Relations Manager, the DOC stated it “strongly emphasizes the importance of inclusion and representation by recognizing the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender incarcerated people face. DOC takes allegations of crimes seriously and any person incarcerated at DOC suspected of committing a crime, is subject to the same laws and investigations regardless of where they are housed or their gender.”
The statement continued that “a common myth perpetuated about people who are transgender is that they will commit crimes of assault against vulnerable populations. This is not the case.”
Is Austria becoming a country of beer addicted communists? The rise of two fringe parties might suggest so – but disillusionment with the mainstream Left is a better explanation
It is often forgotten, but when it comes to populist politics, the small country of Austria is a bellwether.
Almost everything we hear nowadays from politicians like Trump, LePen, Orban and others was already said in the early 1990s by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).
Between 1992 and 1993 the party initiated a petition supported by almost half a million people that demanded a more restrictive immigration policy, stricter citizenship laws, and more money for the police. The name of said petition was – unsurprisingly – “Austria First.”
It is therefore worthwhile taking a fresh look at what is going on in Austria, for it might offer us a glimpse of what is to be expected in future elections throughout Europe.
In recent months, two new parties have begun to mix up the political scene in Vienna.
One is a satirical project by the physician and musician Dominik Wlazny – who campaigns under the name Marco Pogo – that runs as “The Beer Party,” borrowed from the name of Pogo’s rock band, “Turbo Beer.”
It is already a well-known voice in local Vienna politics with slogans like “make Vienna drunk again” and the promise to build fountains dispensing beer instead of water. Mr Pogo managed to get a respectable 8.3 per cent in the 2022 presidential elections, coming in third place after the two main party candidates.
The second “new” party that has begun to make waves is the reformed Communist party (KPÖ), calling itself “Communist Party Plus.” The plus stands for the Young Greens, a radical wing of the Green Party that has been ejected from the mother party and now forms a unity bloc together with the communists.
The Communists had a major electoral victory in Austria’s second largest city, Graz, where they won mayoral elections in 2021. In March 2024, the party’s candidate made it into the run-off election for mayor of Salzburg, another urban centre and the country’s fourth largest city.
All of these successes have to be taken with a grain of salt. Austria has not all of a sudden become a country of beer addicted communists, and the fact that new parties did well in local elections is due to the charisma of the party leaders and often very specific regional issues like housing or welfare.
Whether any of this can be translated into a bigger role in national politics remains to be seen, and according to the most recent polls it does not seem particularly likely.
The Communists are at three per cent (below the required 4 per cent threshold for parliamentary representation) and the Beer Party at 6 per cent, cannibalising votes of each other.
Furthermore, both parties lack a nationwide infrastructure and reliable candidates – something that will be difficult to address before the next federal elections this fall.
The Austrians favorite protest party of choice remains the FPÖ, which continues to lead the polls with almost 30 per cent.
The significance of the Beer and Communist parties is less their programme but the fact that they reflect a dissatisfaction with existing options not just on the Right, but also on the Left.
The Greens (currently polling at eight per cent) have been neutered as a protest party due to their junior membership in the coalition government with the conservatives (the ÖVP). The Social Democrats are a party without a programme or identity, continuing their march into irrelevance like their sister party in Germany.
The main take away reflects the broader political sentiment we can observe all over the West: People are dissatisfied with the existing parties, allowing newcomers a realistic chance to gain seats in national and regional elections.
We saw this too with the limited success of the Pirate Party in Germany or the more impactful Five Star Movement of Giuseppe “Beppe” Grillo in Italy.
What all these parties share in common is that they are less defined by a cohesive party programme or a clear-cut ideology, but their quality as protest parties.
If, as in the past, Austria is a first mover when it comes to populist movements and their chances for success, the elections in the autumn should be watched carefully all over Europe.
Spanish Prosecutors Seeking 2.5-Year Jail Term for World Cup Kisser
Prosecutors are gunning for a former Spanish Football Federation chief, seeking a two-and-a-half year prison sentence after he grabbed a female footballer and kissed her on the lips. With Spanish laws allowing terrorists to avoid prosecution and rapists to walk free before serving their sentences, a conversation on proportionality might not go amiss.
Last year, football captain Jenni Hermoso led the Spanish team to an August World Cup victory, culminating in an unwelcome kiss from Luis Rubiales, The event led to an outraged discussion on sexism across the West. Hermoso said the kiss was both unwanted and demeaning. Rubiales has denied any wrongdoing.
If he is convicted of kissing Hermoso against her will, he could spend 30 months in jail.
Some might wonder why, if this is deemed fair, Spanish lawmakers have been so keen to let certain violent offenders off the hook; in particular, Catalan separatists who have carried out terrorist acts. Provided these have not caused “a serious violation of human rights”—which leaves a fair amount of scope for interpretation—they can live without the fear of prosecution.
Separately, the Socialist coalition government recently enacted a law, supposedly designed to better protect women against sexual violence, which saw hundreds of rapists, sex offenders, and paedophiles released from Spanish prisons before the completion of their full sentences.
Feminist writer Jean Hatchet argued that some time behind bars was justified in Rubiales’ case, not least because it will send a “clear message”; that “if you’re a man in a position of power over a woman and you are sexually aggressive,” you will “get in jail.”
He won’t get anywhere near that but yes …. Put a marker down. If you’re a man
— Jean Hatchet (@JeanHatchet) March 27, 2024
in a position of power over a woman and you are sexually aggressive = get in jail. Clear message #LuisRubiales https://t.co/LIs8nLjMsg
While it is hard to find a public figure who has queried 30 months’ imprisonment as potentially a step too far, the lenient treatment of predators and terrorists suggests a loss of all sense of proportion.