{"id":20394,"date":"2016-05-04T05:34:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T10:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20394"},"modified":"2016-05-04T05:34:31","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T10:34:31","slug":"may-day-mayhem-discontent-on-the-continent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20394","title":{"rendered":"May Day Mayhem \u2013 Discontent on the Continent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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May Day Mayhem \u2013 Discontent on the Continent\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Europe\u2019s Political Class Under Fire<\/strong><\/div>\n
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All over Europe not only religious and national holidays are observed, but also a\u00a0socialist<\/em>\u00a0holiday, which we always thought was a bit strange \u2013 and in a way quite telling (as far as we know, there is no holiday celebrating the free market). Traditionally the rank and file comrades tend to gather around their leaders on May Day, waving their party-approved banners\u00a0 and dutifully applauding at the appropriate moments.\u00a0Not anymeure<\/em>, as Clouseau would say.<\/p>\n

\"einig-in-der-ablehnung-auf\"The sign says: \u201cLying press, system of lies, scandal\u201d \u2013 in Germany these demonstrators are somewhat condescendingly referred to as \u201cWutb\u00fcrger\u201d in the mainstream press (i.e., \u201cangry citizens\u201d). The term essentially implies that while they\u2019re momentarily irate, they have no plan anyway, and can be expected to calm down again soon enough. This seems to have succeeded in making them even more angry. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Photo credit: IMAGO<\/p>\n

In several European countries the political situation is deteriorating at warp speed lately. We say \u201cdeteriorating\u201d not because we commiserate with the establishment figures that have come under pressure, but because the alternatives are usually not exactly appealing either (more on developments on this front in a follow-up post).<\/p>\n

Here is a scene from May Day celebrations in Austria, that must surely have shocked the country\u2019s political elite. Socialist chancellor Werner Faymann and the bigwigs of his fast-shrinking party found themselves confronted with a rather unusual May Day crowd. This was actually the second shock for the establishment in a very short time \u2013 the first was delivered on occasion of the\u00a0recent presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The video shows Faymann delivering his traditional May Day address, which is essentially a sequence of socialist platitudes like every year \u2013 only garnished with occasional references to \u201cdifficult times\u201d this time around.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May Day Mayhem \u2013 Discontent on the Continent\u00a0 Europe\u2019s Political Class Under Fire All over Europe not only religious and national holidays are observed, but also a\u00a0socialist\u00a0holiday, which we always thought was a bit strange \u2013 and in a way quite telling (as far as we know, there is no holiday celebrating the free market). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5728,13701,281,5143,6170,657],"class_list":["post-20394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-acting-man","tag-discontent","tag-europe","tag-may-day","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20395,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394\/revisions\/20395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}