On Going In; The Transnation Right Undermines Democracies
From the US, Brexit, Italy, Hungary, and now in Austria. The alliance between oligarchs and nationalist political parties continues to pull at the threads holding democracies together.
Does Austria finally draw the line, and impose a political cost for openly courting Russian influence?
Austrian government collapses over Russia scandal!
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. [(He resigned on Saturday.)] …
The government crisis was a blow to the youthful chancellor who sees himself as the future of European conservatism and whose international stardom won him a private dinner with Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner in February. …
Given the gravity of the scandal — in the video Strache offered to exchange lucrative government contracts for campaign donations with a supposed Russian millionaire and discussed how to hide the payments from authorities — Kurz appeared to have concluded that pulling the plug was the only way he could shield his own party from the affair.
Kinda makes me wonder what really happened in the Australian elections just now?