That would be the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course, or rather its modern-day major components. Fresh on the heels of Hungary’s Viktor Orban causing trouble with the Muzzies in Budapest comes this news from just over the border:
Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut down seven mosques and expel up to 40 foreign-funded imams in crackdown against Islamist ideology
Austria said today it could expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families and would shut down seven mosques as part of a crackdown on ‘political Islam’ that was described as ‘just the beginning’, triggering fury in Ankara.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the government is shutting a hardline Turkish nationalist mosque in Vienna and dissolving a group called the Arab Religious Community that runs six mosques.
His coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and clamp down on benefits for new immigrants and refugees.
In a previous job as minister in charge of integration, Chancellor Kurz oversaw the passing of a tough ‘law on Islam’ in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim societies to have ‘a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society’.
‘Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country,’ Kurz told a news conference outlining the government’s decisions, which were based on that law.
‘This is just the beginning,’ far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache added.
I love that the Austria’s (democratically-elected) government is branded “far-right”, when a cursory examination of the parts of their platform not to do with immigration reveals that they’re about equivalent to centrist Democrats (if any such thing still exists) — i.e. closer to the sainted John F. Kennedy’s political philosophy than to anything truly rightwing.
And incidentally, please note the recent electoral victory by an anti-immigrant party in Slovenia (also once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
Anyway, needless to say that this attitude is pissing off the Muzzies, especially the Turks, who’ve been sponsoring these Islamist Fifth Columnist mullahs for decades. Too bad, fuck ’em. You’d think the “Gates Of Vienna” would have warned them, but they’re idiots.
Somebody pass the popcorn…
P.S. If any person of the Disney-lawyerly-persuasion wants to take issue with the title of this post: fuck you. The expression predates Star Wars — and for that matter the entire Disney corporation — by over a thousand years (check Cicero’s writings), so if you think you have a copyright beef with me: you don’t.
When I translate news-talk into normal speech, “far-right” = probably still has some respect for Western civilization and isn’t actively trying to destroy it.
The more I watch this, the more I’m becoming resigned the the certainty of escalation to an all out shooting cultural war between extremist religions and secular modernism.
And it sucks.
Because, for the most part, as someone who lives in the ballpark of secular classical liberalism and libertarianism, I just want to be left alone and to leave others alone. But even if we were to just “leave them alone” and get the hell out of the middle east, Africa, and whatever other rotting cesspools we’re running our troops around (and have been for hundreds of years) — they’d still come for us, and they would be coming even if we’d never been there. Mainly, this isn’t just because of what we’ve done to them, but because part and parcel of being a religious extremist — regardless of which religion — is that you have a duty to bring your shit to others
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” While I’ve often considered Heinlein as infantile as Rand, he hits it out of the park with this one.
Given the foregoing, I don’t see any response to extremist religion other than to fight it tooth and nail right now. Because they’re coming, and they’ll keep coming with every generation, regardless of whether you respect their rights or give them their reservations in the hopes they’ll leave yours alone.
Everything remotely sane and to the right of Hillary! has been “far-right” since the election. It’s how they deplatform. As a wise man once said: Fake news.