Re: <nettime> Ars Electronica and its political context

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Simon Biggs <simon@babar.demon.co.uk> wrote about Austria:

>This is a naturally right wing country, where
>difference is hardly tolerated. Haider is no surprise. Hitler was from
>Linz.

>Personally I think Timothy Druckrey was overly diplomatic. He should call
>a spade a spade. Austria and all things Austrian should be boycotted until
>Haider and his fascist party is disallowed power. Germany has banned such
>parties, as has the UK and most civilised countries.


this is not only an utterly stupid thing to say, it is also wrong (the
FPOE is probably not much worse than the Tories in the UK would like to
be, and they are certainly not as blatantly bad as the still legal,
neo-nazi NPD in Germany; it is interesting how we leftists tend to return
to calling such countries 'civilised' in a selected situations, though we
would happily denounce the uncivilised nature of capitalism in others, and
rarely consider the fact that many of the socalled uncivilised nations do
not know the same kind of brutal nationalist extremism); the logical
conclusion biggs suggests is detestable: from the first statement (a
naturally right wing country) should not follow the second (be boycotted
until Haider and his fascist party is disallowed power), as this is
against the 'nature' of biggs' austria; they should be nuked (gassed?) -
oh no, they - that is 'Austria and all things Austrian' can now simply be
genetically modified (isn't the 21st century great ...), and then we will
play with them again.

yuk!





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