Basterds: FPÖ rows back

Unex­pect­ed turn in the Linz cul­tur­al war. After the FPÖ (Free­dom Par­ty of Aus­tria) has vot­ed against the allo­ca­tion of sub­si­dies for the cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tions KAPU, Stadtwerk­statt, Radio FRO, servus.at, qujOchÖ and Medi­en­werk­statt dur­ing the munic­i­pal coun­cil ses­sion on April 18th 2013 they are row­ing back now. In a press release Detlef Wim­mer, dis­trict chair­man of the FPÖ Linz, empha­sizes that his group has made a mis­take: “Actu­al­ly, we want­ed to vote for an increase of sub­si­dies. In the course of the tur­bu­lences regard­ing the neon­azi video of our group chair­man the days before we have com­plete­ly lost the overview. At the end Bas­t­ian sus­pect­ed even that I had to do some­thing with the send­ing of the video to the edi­to­r­i­al office of the Kuri­er. Ridicu­lous! I mean, we were com­rades like Adolf & Ernst, Itchi & Scratchy or Tonya Hard­ing & Nan­cy Kerrigan.

As com­pen­sa­tion the FPÖ Linz has pro­duced a video in which the orig­i­nal­ly antic­i­pat­ed remark for the munic­i­pal coun­cil ses­sion is added.

In this video Wim­mer is self-crit­i­cal at the begin­ning: “Cit­i­zens of Linz! KAPU, Stadtwerk­statt, Freies Radio Oberöster­re­ich, servus.at, qujOchÖ and Medi­en­werk­statt! Regard­ing the polit­i­cal opin­ions, the polit­i­cal views, I have to blame myself: to be out at bad weath­er in the area of cul­tur­al pol­i­cy into a shore­less hori­zon.” Sub­se­quent­ly he crit­i­cizes the envis­aged can­cel­la­tion of the sub­si­dies and promis­es that his group of the BFJ (Fed­er­a­tion of the Free­dom Youth) would “[…] sup­port this sub­si­dies for the asso­ci­a­tions KAPU, Stadtwerk­statt, Freies Radio Oberöster­re­ich, servus.at, qujOchÖ and Medi­en­werk­statt totalling 279.100 Euro per year, that is in total 558.200 Euro for the years 2013 and 2014, maybe fur­ther opti­mized here or there”. His fel­low com­rades of the par­ty Bas­t­ian & Got­tfried back up this posi­tion explic­it­ly once again, look to the future and demand with regard to the cul­tur­al bud­get of the City of Linz: “Und aufi!” (And up and away)

The video was real­ized with the help of exor­bi­tant fund­ings and spon­sor­ing. Thanks go out to the Euro­pean Film­fond Eurim­ages, Direc­torate-Gen­er­al for Edu­ca­tion and Cul­ture (Euro­pean Com­mis­sion), Aus­tri­an Film Insti­tute, bm:ukk, Land Oberöster­re­ich, Stadt Linz, Raif­feisen­bank OÖ, HYPO OÖ, Ober­bank Linz, Erste Bank Linz, Uni­cred­it Bank Aus­tria Linz, BAWAG P.S.K. Linz, Volks­bank Linz, SPARDA BANK Linz and Quentin Tarantino.

(Video/Editing: Take That/qujOchÖ, Audio: Radio FRO/Oliver Jagosch)