‘Finally, Vienna is back to being a theatre hotspot’, writes DER SPIEGEL in its review of the Vienna Festival ´24 and with a look ahead to ´25.
But the FPÖ and the “People's Chancellor” Herbert Kickl are calling for an immediate stop to ‘compulsory state levies’ (i.e. subsidies) for ‘woke events’ such as the European Song Contest and the Vienna Festival in their election programme — just one particularly absurd policy in this manifesto, the title of which ‘Fortress Austria’ openly alludes to Joseph Goebbels' ‘Fortress Europe’ and which calls for the transformation of the Republic of Austria into a kind of corporate state 2.0 with an authoritarian government and radical nationalist ‘Austria first’ ideology.
RESISTANCE NOW!
Appeal against the FPÖ by Elfriede Jelinek & Milo Rau
High time to resist – with the means of civil society activism and art! Together with Nobel Prize laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Milo Rau is preparing the production of her anti-fascist play Burgtheater, which was barred for 45 years, at the Burgtheater itself. Today, Elfriede Jelinek, Mavie Hörbiger, Birgit Minichmayr, Caroline Peters and Milo Rau are issuing an appeal against the far-right FPÖ: ‘Not a single vote for the FPÖ!’.
The consequences of populist parties coming to power were recently demonstrated in Slovakia – our petition for the deposed theatre director Matej Drlička has allready been signed by almost 2,000. However, nationalist parties are on the rise across Europe, from the German AfD to the French Rassemblement National, while in the US, another election victory for Donald Trump cannot be ruled out. Never before have so many countries voted at the same time, never before has so much been at stake!
