“The Vienna state prosecutor accuses me of being a Hamas member, specifically the military wing Izzal Din Qassam Brigades, since at least July 2024 and working to ‘destroy Israel and establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate,’” he stated.

What an absurdly baseless accusation

  • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.mlOP
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    10 days ago

    They are not going to accuse Austria of suppressing free speech by targeting journalists (as they 100% would if this happened in a country like Russia or China), they are not going to call them authoritarian, repressive, dictatorship or totalitarian.

    Precisely. The USA is waging a second cold war and the parallels to the first can be easily drawn.

    During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.