Right-wing extremist gathering in Linz: MKÖ demands immediate cancelation

Press release 09 Nov. 2017

Right-wing extremist gathering at Linz community center:
Mauthausen Committee demands that Mayor Luger immediately pull the emergency brake
MKÖ’s Mernyi: "Anti-Semitic incitement and call for lynch-mob justice cannot be tolerated!"

On 22 November 2017, a "readers’ meeting" of the far-right magazine Info-Direkt is scheduled at a community center in Linz. In the names of Mauthausen survivors, Chairman of Mauthausen Committee Austria (MKÖ) Willi Mernyi demands that Linz mayor Klaus Luger and the city councilor responsible for community centers, Regina Fechter, (both Austrian Socialist Party SPÖ) immediately revoke approval of the event: "Anyone who permits such a thing in public space shares the guilt for dissemination of racist conspiracy theories and the vilest anti-Semitism! To lay wreaths once a year at concentration camp memorials, and then to close your eyes to the current far-right scene out of consideration for the Austrian ‘Freedom’ Party FPÖ – that is simply impossible," insists Mernyi.

With Nazi rhetoric, Info-Direkt denounces Jews and calls journalists "writing whores"

The MKÖ chairman advises Luger and Fechter not to divert the evaluation of Info-Direkt to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is all too tolerant of brown-tainted machinations, but themselves to examine the content of the magazine and come to their own conclusion. "Here in Nazi fashion, Jews are denounced as 'masterminds of globalization' – 'The House of Rothschild or George Soros personally’. They are accused of 'systematically flooding Europe with foreigners’ in order to create a 'heterogeneous, uprooted human race'", explains Mernyi. "For Info-Direkt, no conspiracy theory is too absurd. For example, they claim that US leadership staged the terror attack of 11 September 2001 themselves, or that the Ebola epidemics disguise 'American interests'. Naturally they offer not the least proof for all their inciting nonsense."

It hardly surprises the MKÖ chairman that the publisher of Info-Direkt not only has a very good relationship with the FPÖ, but also served as co-organizer of the right-wing extremist conference "Defenders of Europe" in Linz. In autumn last year, this conference triggered weeks of broad protests; concentration camp survivors from many countries took a stand along with numerous prominent persons politics, churches, art and science.

“Intolerable” was Mernyi’s assessment of an open incitement by Info-Direkt to lynch-mob justice: In case of a break-in, in case of doubt, it is better to shoot: "Rather a weapon in your hand than the police on the phone". Info-Direkt writes derogatorily about democratic media, which they call the "lying press" whose journalists are "writing whores". Yet this does not prevent the magazine from plagiarizing articles or excerpts from the "lying press" verbatim, without citing sources.

The chairman of Mauthausen Committee summarizes: "The content of Info-Direkt and its planned 'readers’ meeting' are undeniably anti-Semitic, racist, contemptuous of human rights and antidemocratic. Linz does not deserve this – and least of all within a city facility!"