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Austria has declared permanent neutrality, meaning that like Switzerland we do not get involved in international conflicts. We are a partner of NATO, but not a member. In another weird foreign policy detail is that we are expressly prohibited from ever reuniting with Germany. This is somewhat odd now though because since Austria and Germany are both members of the European Union, the Schengen agreement and the Eurozone the border is more or less a formality these days.
Austria unfortunately is also currently fighting a bit of a right-wing rise as has happened throughout europe and america in recent years. In fact this year were presidential elections which happened in two runs. The First run eliminated both the center-right ÖVP and center-left SPÖ candidate, the only two parties every President so far had been a member of, as well as two independent candidates. This lead to a runoff election between the Green Party candidate and the candidate of the nationalist FPÖ, who received the plurality of votes in the first run. The Green Party candidate won very narrowly but after a court challenge the election was annulled and will be repeated at the beginning of December.
On a different note: A majority of austrians speak at least rudimentary english as it is a mandatory foreign language from grade school to grade 9 (the end of mandatory education in austria). There are also a number of english-language Kindergartens.
Sample extract:
“This whole question about sub-ordination to the United States in a sort of broad policy terms, this society of ours is a better society than the United States.
It’s more even, it’s more fair, we’ve had a 50% increase in real incomes in the last 20 years. Median America has had zero, zero.
We have universal health protection, from the cradle to the grave.
We have a retirement income system, with superannuation.
We have high participation rates in schools.
We don’t shoot our children in schools and if they were to be shot we’d take the guns off the people who shot them. The Americans do not do this.
This is a better society than the United States.
Therefore the idea we should get around like Uriah Heep as we are some sort of subordinate outfit that has to get a signal from abroad before we think for ours is a complete denial of everything we have created here."
And oh shit, that withering response to how we should handle Trump's attitudes.
Xenophobia and isolationism, here we come!
Stay tuned.
That said I totally respect what groups try to accomplish, though this half of their methods feel distasteful.