In 1933, Adolf Hitler wished to kill the Jews. He was a National SOCIALIST, that is, he was a man of the left. It was not that he was a German nationalist that made him the psychopathic madman that he was, but that he wished to kill German citizens of Jewish descent, invade other countries, enslave their citizens and also kill their citizens of Jewish descent. He is unique in European history; no one either before or since has had a program anything like the one he spent twelve years trying to achieve.

Which is why stories like this are so repulsive: Far-right on edge of power as Austria votes for president since the basic premise is that with such parties, the political environment of Europe is returning to the policies of Hitler and the Nazis. This is what is going on in Austria:

Austrians voted Sunday in a key presidential runoff which could usher in the European Union’s first extreme right-wing leader amid the continent’s worst post-war migrant crisis.

A huge influx of asylum-seekers, growing unemployment and frozen reforms have left Austria deeply polarised and driven angry voters away from the centrist ruling coalition toward fringe groups.

For the first time since 1945, the president will not come from one of two main parties, prompting national media to warn of a political “tsunami”.

Instead, the showdown pits 45-year-old Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe) against the Green-backed economics professor Alexander van der Bellen, 72.

This is what democracy is for. Fringe groups move to the centre if they offer policies that voters wish to endorse. No one anywhere in the world believes that Norbert Hofer wishes to murder Austrian citizens or wage war outside Austria’s borders. One is not “right wing” if they wish to see their borders made secure and their country not overrun by citizens who decide to show up and live there. So again, let us look at just how bad Hofer is:

Observers warn that beneath Hofer’s smooth image lurks a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, who has already threatened to seize upon never-before-used presidential powers and fire the government if it fails to get tougher on migrants or boost the faltering economy.

European leaders including European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker have also voiced concern at the turn of events in Austria.

“The prospect of seeing the far-right win forces me to say that I don’t like them,” Juncker told French newspaper Le Monde on Friday.

“The Austrians don’t like to hear this but I don’t care: there is no debate or dialogue with the far-right.”

“No debate or dialogue” with people who do not wish to see their homeland flooded with migrants who do not speak German, have no cultural ties with Austria and have no marketable skills. This chap Juncker is made of the same stuff as Merkel. If they aim to impose their views without debate or dialogue, if they wish to ignore the expressed wishes of the voting public, it is they who are the fascists, the Nazis, the criminal gangs, the right wingers. And it is they who will be the death of Europe for reasons still completely unexplained.

The petty meanness of the left goes hand in hand with its macro cruelty and disregard for human life. Their political views have caused immense harm to hundreds of millions of human beings over the years, and their march through the institutions remains a lasting shame.

The Arts Council has in its envious worm-eaten way decided to withdraw its funding from Quadrant which will cost the magazine $60,000 this year. The letter below was written by Quadrant‘s editor in chief, Keith Windschuttle, to lay out what has been done. You can go to the link and make a donation to help the absolute best political and literary magazine in Australia.

The members of the Arts Council may think of themselves as our “class enemies” but in reality, these people have no class at all. Just petty bourgeois scum.

For the first time in Quadrant’s 60-year history we have applied for a federal literary grant and been completely denied. A savage blow to our modest finances, it is a brazen political decision intended to devalue our reputation and demonstrate that it is the Left which runs and controls the arts.

This is the first time in the magazine’s 60-year history that we have applied for a federal literary grant and been completely denied. This not only leaves a gaping hole in our modest operating budget; it is also a political decision designed to devalue our reputation and demonstrate that the Left remains in control of the arts.

Although the Australia Council itself suffered a loss of government funds in 2015, the Quadrant decision was not taken because of a lack of money for literature. Indeed, while abolishing our grant, the council increased its funding to other literary magazines, all of them left-wing. Instead of the one-year grant of $60,000 that we applied for, the others were awarded grants of four-years, with an annual increase of from $20,000 to $40,000 for each of them. The 2016 grants list for literary magazines looks like this:

Australian Book Review, increase per year $20,000; total grant $560,000
Griffith Review, increase per year $40,000; total grant $400,000
Overland magazine, increase per year $20,00; total grant $320,000

The only leftist literary magazine to miss out this year was Meanjin, but it was teetering on its last legs anyway, with a succession of stop-gap editors since radical feminist Sophie Cunningham resigned in 2010 over plans by its board, Melbourne University Press, to end its print edition and publish it online only.

If you value Quadrant, go to the link and provide a donation.

None of these publications match the output, the quality, or the readership of Quadrant. With a circulation of more than 6000 buyers/subscribers per month, it is easily the best read of these publications. Quadrant is also the most prolific publisher of poetry in Australia, in either magazine or book format, with up to 300 poems published per year for the past decade. Our Literary Editor, Les Murray, has worked on every edition since 1990, that is, for 256 of the magazine’s 518 editions. He is not only widely recognized as Australia’s greatest living poet but also Australia’s foremost poetry anthologist. He has made an outstanding and enduring contribution to the literary arts in this country, unmatched by anything achieved by the minions funded by the Australia Council.

Griffith Review and Overland are only published quarterly and each struggles to find 1000 purchasers per edition. Australian Book Review and Griffith Review publish no poetry at all. Yet all three are also heavily subsidized by universities and other government agencies. And the contents of all three have long been dominated by left-wing academic literary fashions of postmodernism and critical theory. They are little more than production lines for the Left’s limitless appetite for identity group politics of gender, race and sexual preference, and its support for any national culture, no matter how violent or barbaric, except our own.

In contrast, since its founding in 1956, Quadrant has consistently defended high culture, freedom of speech, liberal democracy and the Western Judeo-Christian tradition. Apart from the grant we have now lost, we have no other public subsidies or major patrons. We survive entirely through the honest market revenues of subscriptions, newsagent sales, and donations from subscribers.

The Australia Council’s decision to end our funding is plainly an act of revenge by its bureaucrats and advisers. It is designed to punish us for being on the same side of the political fence as the Abbott government’s Minister for the Arts, George Brandis, who himself was responding to an act of arts-funding bastardry by Julia Gillard.

Faced with the certainty that Labor would lose the 2013 election, Gillard pushed the Australia Council Act 2013 through parliament with her partners, the Greens. This was intended to both entrench the existing bureaucracy and ensure a Coalition Minister for the Arts could no longer do what all his predecessors had been able to do since 1975, that is, make his own appointments to the Literature Board and other sub-boards within the organization. George Brandis decided to circumvent this Act by cutting some Australia Council funding and placing the money saved with a new organization, Catalyst, run from within his Ministry.

However, funding for literary magazines such as Quadrant remained with the Australia Council. In response to Brandis’s action, the Australia Council cancelled last October’s round of funding applications and made us apply in February this year, announcing results last week.

Our Australia Council funding has always gone to the writers of Quadrant’s literary content, that is, our poetry, short fiction, book reviews and essays on literature, film, theatre and the arts. We had to account for every dollar of this expenditure. The Australia Council did not fund our opinion pieces, political commentary, printing, Quadrant Online, or Quadrant Books.

The decision by the Australia Council is a blatant breach of its public duty to be politically even-handed. Throughout the eleven years of the Howard government, its appointees to the Council never reduced the funding of any of the overtly left-wing literary magazines.

Despite this latest blow, we are determined to maintain the quality of our literary output. We are also determined to preserve the volume of our content and the rates we pay the authors who write for our literary pages. We intend to show adversity can bring out our best.

In the second half of 2016, Quadrant’s marks its sixtieth anniversary. We have planned a program to make this a memorable year, with a number of innovations already in the pipeline. We will be sending out invitations and placing advertisements soon.

To do this, however, we need the help of our subscribers, readers and supporters to recover the funding we have lost. Please send us a donation (tax deductible), however modest. Please print the form below, fill it in and return it ASAP. Donations can also be sent directly to the Quadrant Foundation Thank you.