'Reich Mother’ bids for power

[cali]

A woman with 10 children who is nicknamed “the Reich mother” and has called for the right to question the historical truth of the Holocaust, is expected to win up to 25% of the vote in Austria’s presidential election next Sunday.

Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-feminist ticket as the political heir to Jörg Haider, the far-right politician who died in 2008. Germany’s Central Council of Jews has described her political ascent as an example of the “terrifying shift to the right” in Europe.

Her husband Horst Rosenkranz, 67, publishes an extremist magazine and raises funds for imprisoned neo-Nazis. He also sometimes speaks at his wife’s Freedom party rallies.

A veteran critic of Austria’s laws criminalising Holocaust deniers, Rosenkranz had to sign a sworn statement that she rejects Nazism. Upon being asked if she believes the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, she gave the evasive answer that freedom of expression meant allowing people to hold “bizarre” opinions.

<snip>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7100880.ece

[DFW]

1. I'm just surprised she hasn't called her movement "Die Teepartei"

After all, in the 1980s, a tiny neonazi movement got started in Germany by a former SS officer. As the Nazi party
is outlawed in Germany, he had to call his movement something else. He found his inspiration for a name back in
the good old USA. He called his party "Die Republikaner." His party went nowhere. His American namesake, on the
other hand, seems to be experiencing better fortunes, I'm sad to say.

When I mention "Die Republikaner" to American Republicans, they indignantly ask me if I'm saying all Republicans
are Nazis. I say that I only find it highly interesting that a neonazi movement should find our Republicans to be
their biggest inspiration when looking for a name to call themselves.

[47of74]

2. And as usual

They come out of the woodwork to comment on the article.

[Turborama]

3. Judging by the title I thought this was a thread about Palin n/t

[enuegii]

4. Is Guildenstern is running, too? n/t

[sudopod]

6. lol nt

[JackintheGreen]

5. I wonder how you can square this:

being anti-feminist while running for political office, a privilege that would have been impossible without feminism. She isn't the first, and won't be the last, so can somebody please explain this to me without resorting to cognitive dissonance?

[Stuckinthebush]

7. On the same page with you, JackintheGreen

I thought the same thing when I read that.

Go back to Alabama in 1967 to get an idea of how one can square such incongruent ideas. George Wallace could not run for Governor again due to a state law that made it impossible for him to have consecutive terms. So, instead, he enlisted his wife, Lurleen, to run in his place. In any other situation Lurleen would have zero chance to be Governor of Alabama in 1967. Frankly, a woman would have a hard time being elected in 2010. But everyone "knew" that Lurleen would have the title in name only and George would run the state. She was elected and served until her death in 1968. George did run the state while Lurleen was dying of cancer.

So, I'd assume one can make the argument that the Reich mother referenced in this article is very anti-feminist but knows that a woman can win. Once in office, she could say that her husband will make decisions for her because, being a woman and all, she has no ability to do that.

[JackintheGreen]

8. I did not know that about Wallace

Thanks for the lesson! :hi:

(Now whether that is the case here or not...well, it's still a good lesson.)

[Arkana]

9. Congratulations, Austria, you've got your very own Sarah Palin!

[Ikonoklast]

10. To all those DU'ers planning on leaving the U.S. for the Socialist Heaven of Europe:

You really think that what happened there on more than one occasion; i.e. the origin of every major world-wide conflict of the last three hundred years cannot happen again?


Please re-read your history books.