Austrian government collapses over Russia scandal

[PupCamo]

Source: Politico

Turns out Russian collusion isn’t a "witch hunt hoax" after all. At least not in Austria.

The country’s government collapsed on Saturday after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was pulling the plug on his ruling coalition after just 17 months in office.

The move came barely 24 hours after the release of a bombshell video showing Heinz-Christian Strache, the far-right leader of his junior coalition partner, trying to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman he believed to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch.

“Enough is enough,” Kurz said in a brief statement to the press from his baroque office in Vienna, describing the many challenges he faced in recent months in dealing with Strache’s Freedom Party, which despite its alignment with the chancellor’s center-right People’s Party on policy issues remained a lightning rod for criticism with its racist comments and other controversies.

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/sebastian-kurz-triggers-austrian-election-after-far-right-scandal/

[empedocles]

1. Strache seems like he could be on of trumps

[saidsimplesimon]

2. sorry Austria, you need

to step into reality. (Disclaimer: I have an acquaintance (claims to have been a die-hard Dem) who relocated.)

[IndyOp]

3. Excellent news! Bad article title

This is mainstream conservative politicians kicking racist, Russian-loving, populists out of government

“A spontaneous protest by thousands of Austrians in front of his office on Saturday may have helped focus his mind.

“I hope that this government is going to fall and that we can return to being a democracy," said 62-year-old Gerda Brüchner.

“I’m here because the entire Freedom Party is intolerable,” said Florian Gantner, a Vienna resident who was carrying his six-year-old son on his shoulders, whistles in their mouths. “The entire government should step down. We need a new election.”

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Okay, but thread is about Austria.

[Traildogbob]

6. Admit.

Watching sunset at near dark and glanced at the post. Feel trumpIan now.

[sop]

7. Maria Butina's still in jail, right?

n/t

[ancianita]

8. Thanks for this post. It's reassuring to know we're not the only country going through a neofascist

Russian ambush.

I'm glad the country is small enough for people to unify and change what they see endangering them.

This create US allies, not critics, and helps the rest of US critics to see the how Russian hybrid warfare strategy probes its way into Western governments relentlessly. It's just that the smaller countries can rid themselves of their pests more easily than we big ones can.

[Sanity Claws]

9. We have the Freedom Caucus

Austria has the Freedom Party.
Are all of the extreme right wingers across the world adopting the same name?

[marybourg]

10. Yes. They've all read George Orwell.

[Farmer-Rick]

11. Yeah, and they didn't realize it was a warning NOT an instruction manual.

I wish our executive government would collapse too.

[The Liberal Lion]

12. Why wish when we can quite easily make it happen

All we have to do is only look to ourselves as all the hero we need. No one else is going to save us from this monstrosity, this is a job only we can do.

[tenderfoot]

13. more from DW

[hatrack]

14. English-language coverage from Der Spiegel - far better than Politico

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/strache-caught-on-camera-in-ibiza-secret-recordings-a-1267959.html