FPÖ as a Party of Prohibition

The Freedom Party often labels the Greens as the party of bans. If they, meaning Herbert Kickl and Co., were to look in the mirror and reflect, they might reconsider. They support the ban of a Pride Parade by Hungarian authorities in Budapest, which will likely take place this Saturday regardless. The local mayor, Gergely Karacsony, is in favor and states: "This ban decision has no validity."

Not only left-wing but also conservative politicians across Europe are outraged by the ban. Not so the right-wing like the Freedom Party: Their EU representative Petra Steger welcomes the expression of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's course. The "protection of children and families" is thus placed "above an increasingly aggressive woke values agenda."

Even at the Pride or Rainbow Parade a few weeks ago in Vienna, the Blues took offense. It is "a scandal" that participants "parade through the streets in latex suits, dog masks, or cages," and that this is partly labeled as "family-friendly," complained representative Lisa Schuch-Gubik. Her colleague Michael Gruber from Upper Austria would ban such parades altogether following the Hungarian model: It is an "exceptional state" that he does not want anywhere, according to Gruber in the "Kurier."

More intolerance is not possible: "Away with rainbow cult, gender & woke madness," Kickl and Co. have already demanded in their program for the recent national election. They would have liked to clear this up by establishing in the constitution that there are only two genders. And that transgender athletes, for example, are not allowed in sports, in a certain way, therefore, are banned. They still struggle with marriage for all, including same-sex couples. In 2019, they demanded a ban or a return to old conditions.

In the past, the ÖVP might have gone along, but it has evolved. Marriage for all has become a matter of course for them, their Secretary General Nico Marchetti has just married a man and made it public. They have no (more) problem with the rainbow or LGBTQ movement.

And that's a good thing: What the FPÖ derogatorily calls wokeness is progressiveness. It stands for vigilance and respecting other people as they are; it stands for eliminating discrimination and viewing different lifestyles and identities as a matter of course.

Is that bad? It is enlightened humanism, which includes self-responsibility and autonomous life design. On the other hand, wanting to ban a Pride Parade means, among other things, wanting to impose one's ideals on everyone and banish differing views from public perception. Which is equivalent to the oppression of affected people. In the sense of a party of bans indeed.

Johannes Huber runs the blog dieSubstanz.at – Analyses and Backgrounds on Politics

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.