Free Republic

This week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen imposed new Covid restrictions that require all adults in the country to be fully vaccinated and boosted or risk being fined. The new authoritarian law runs through January 31st, 2024, and will go into effect next month. Beginning on March 15th, law enforcement authorities will begin checking people’s vaccine status by conducting random traffic stops, and spot checks, in order to find dissenters. Anyone caught violating the mandate can be fined “up to four times a year,” with the penalty increasing with each violation. An individual’s first offense will result in a...

In what should be a new low for women rights in Europe, Austria’s leftist President Alexander van der Bellen has called on “every woman to wear headscarf” in order to fight growing “Islamophobia,” Austrian media reported today. Going by the Austrian media coverage, the otherwise perpetually-offended feminist groups in Austria and Europe have failed to respond to this outrage. “[I]f it goes on like this, with the rampant Islamophobia, a day will come when we will have to ask every woman to wear a headscarf,” President Van der Bellen, Austria’s recently elected Head of the State could be seen saying...

BERLIN – The center-left candidate handily defeated his far-right challenger in Austria’s presidential election on Sunday, boosting the political establishment in Europe as it sought to contain the fallout of Donald Trump’s victory in the United States and thwart the spread of nationalism. The far-right Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer conceded defeat on his Facebook page less than 30 minutes after polls closed and following projections showing a surprisingly strong lead for Alexander Van der Bellen. The 72-year-old statesman and former Green Party politician was winning by 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent with nearly 100 percent of the votes counted. The...

Austria’s constitutional court has annulled the result of the country’s presidential elections a week before the winning candidate was due to be sworn into office. The court president, Gerhart Holzinger, announced on Friday that the run-off vote between Norbert Hofer of the populist rightwing Freedom party and Green-backed Alexander Van der Bellen would have to be repeated across the whole country after an investigation had revealed irregularities in the count of the vote in several constituencies. In May, Hofer had lost out to Van der Bellen in a knife-edge election, with a majority of only 30,863 votes. While the Austrian...

As the days go by, the results of the Austrian presidential election get more suspicious. According to the official results, the far-left candidate Alexander Van der Bellen defeated Norbert Hofer from the Freedom Party of Austria by just 31,000 votes, 50.35% to 49.65%. The lights were already blinking red on the day the results were being released. Writing for Breitbart soon thereafter, James Delingpole didn't mince words and called the election a sham: We were continually assured by the left-liberal media how awful it would be if the (supposed) "far-right" candidate Norbert Hofer won. But actually the victory of Green...

Five voting districts are being investigated in Austria over postal vote irregularities in the close-run presidential election, the interior minister has announced. Allegations of fraud arose from the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) of defeated candidate Norbert Hofer, after the Green candidate Alexander Van der Bellen just scrapped ahead with 31,000 votes when the postal ballot was counted. The Villach branch of FPÖ lodged a complaint with the country’s corruption prosecutor over the Carinthia council counting votes on Sunday and not Monday like in the rest of the country. Speaking on Austrian TV, Freedom Party leader Heinz Christan Strache said, “The...

They called it an “election gimmick” and a “campaign gag”, but the new president-elect of Austria once presided over his party’s campaign that declared: “Anyone who loves Austria must be shit”. Alexander Van der Bellen – who appears to have defeated the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer by around just 30,000 of nearly five million votes – has a track record of opposing the nation state as a concept, and his own as a reality. In 2007, while he was leader of the Austrian Greens, the party published a picture of a dog with the Austrian flag in its mouth. The...

<p>Vienna (AFP) - Austrian far-right hopes of winning a presidential runoff remained on hold Sunday as the candidates were neck-and-neck in a battle closely watched by the EU, which is struggling to contain a surge of anti-immigrant parties.</p> <p>A win would see Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) become the European Union's first far-right head of state.</p>

Initial results showed the presidential election run-off was neck and neck Independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen has 'emerged as winner' Norbert Hofer, from the Freedom Party, is said to have conceded defeat Hofer used a pre-election event to deliver an anti-Muslim message to voters Austria's Far-Right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer has conceded defeat in his election bid to become the EU's first anti-immigrant leader. The EU had been on tenterhooks this morning as Austria waited to see whether Hofer had won an election run-off against Independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. Projected results last night had put both...

Mr Hofer led narrowly after Sunday's election but postal votes gave Mr Van der Bellen victory by 50.3% to 49.7%. Mr Van der Bellen campaigned on a pro-EU platform, backed by the Green Party. Mr Hofer, of the Freedom Party, tapped into anti-EU sentiment and fears about rising numbers of asylum seekers. He conceded victory on his Facebook page. Mr Hofer said it was a sad day and that he would have gladly served as president.