AUSTRIA | Far-right ball in Vienna sparks mass protests

From our correspondent Martin Jordan for UNITED in Thursday, 2 February 2012, 15:17

The annual ballroom dancefest of Austria’s pan-Germanist, far right student fraternities in the former Imperial Palace and official residence of the Austrian president in Vienna has again sparked large-scale anti-fascist protests and public controversy. This year’s fascist anniversary waltz, on 27 January, coincided with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and was thus a macabre provocation against the victims of Nazism.

As usual, the ball was spangled with such honoured guests from the right-wing extremist Freedom Party (FPÖ) as party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, Martin Graf (third president of the Austrian Parliament) and main ideologist and MEP Andreas Mölzer. Other illustrious far-right figures up for the Pasodoble at the FPÖs invitation were Front National leader Marine Le Pen, Sweden Democrats MP Kent Ekeroth and Vlaams Belang MEP Philip Claeys.

Opposite to this unwholesome sealed-off spectacle, 6000-8000 people mobilised against the far-right’s latest tail-coated, big frocked happening. The anti-fascists’ main strategy of blocking streets off the sanctioned demonstration routes successfully hindered the arrival of guests and caused the official opening of the ball to be delayed. Central to this strategy were cyclist lookouts and good internal communications that outplayed the less mobile police force in an after-dark cat-and-mouse game.

Strache, one of the main speakers at the event, used the occasion for a display of shameless bravado by comparing the anti-fascist demonstrations with the so-called “Kristallnacht”, the November 1938 Nazi anti-Jewish pogrom that is seen as the historic beginning of the Holocaust. In his warped mind, the ball guests are the “new Jews”. In reaction to this, Austrian president Heinz Fischer is now refusing to give Strache a medal of honour for his "efforts for the Republic of Austria" that is usually given to MPs after 10 years.