The Upper Austrian police broke up a registered rally in Mauthausen on Friday afternoon because the organizer played a speech by Adolf Hitler. The demo should actually have been a rally against the government’s corona measures. However, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution is said to have already started investigations into violating the Prohibition Act.
As police spokesman David Furtner announced, around 30 people took part in the demonstration on a square in the village. Rumors are circulating on social media that the organizer of the demo in Mauthausen also wants to hold an anti-Israel demo in Vienna on Saturday. The Vienna police issued a ban on the area of the Israeli embassy in Währing.
Police seized video footage
The event was also broadcast live on social media. You can see and hear the organizer playing a Hitler speech on a trailer in front of an Israel flag. According to Furtner, the police have secured appropriate video material.
Constitutional Minister Karoline Edstadler (ÖVP) was shocked and spoke of a “low point in a whole series of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months”.
President laid wreath in memorial
More or less at the same time, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen was in the concentration camp memorial on the hill above the town of Mauthausen to lay a wreath in memory of the Nazi victims.
“What did we learn?”
The Green National Council member Ralph Schallmeiner criticized the approach in a broadcast: “If you let such gatherings happen, you really ask yourself: What have we learned?” Obviously, people mean it “in Upper Austria not very seriously about the fight against right-wing extremism” , he also called for “deeds” instead of announcements.
For days the Greens had warned against the planned provocation of so-called “lateral thinkers” and right-wing extremists in the immediate vicinity of the concentration camp memorial. Nevertheless, the rally was approved.