Austria’s Elections: A Q&A with Lilibellt

Signs read “No Nazi in Hofburg palace” and “FPO out, refugees in.” CREDIT: LEONHARD FOEGER /REUTERS via the Telegraph

As you’ve probably read, Norbert Hofer of Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ) narrowly lost Austria’s recent presidential election. It was very close. The population of Austria is about 8.5 million; Hofer was defeated by 31,000 votes. The tie-breaking votes were postal votes, and these are now the subject of controversy: the Austrian interior minister has launched a probe into “irregularities” in postal voting. The near-election of Hofer, it has been widely reported, threw Europe into a panic:

There was an audible sigh of relief throughout Europe this week when the far-right candidate very narrowly failed to gain the highest office in Austria.

But the message from Austria is still very clear: Politics have changed, new forces are gaining strength, and there is no immediate turning back. And this applies well beyond Austria’s borders. …

But the reporting on this has been thin in the English-language press, and has failed to explain much about this party’s historical background, what exactly it means to call Hofer’s party “far-right,” and why Austria’s politics have changed.

Lilibellt and her husband in a wine cellar in Vienna.

One of our members, Lilibellt, was born and grew up in Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol. She now lives in Vienna. She reluctantly voted for the FPÖ. Although she says she’s not a typical FPÖ voter, I suspect her perspective will give you more insight into Austrian politics than you’ll find elsewhere in the Anglophone press.

Lilibellt is 42 years old, and she works in the construction industry, as a project manager. In the past week, she and I exchanged an epic series of e-mails about Austrian history and politics, Europe, and immigration, totaling almost 20,000 words. We wanted to share our exchange with Ricochet, although obviously 20,000 words is too long and confusing for a single post.

Exchanging e-mails (even with a well-informed interlocutor) isn’t the same as journalism. The only way I can feel confident in reporting about this is by seeing it for myself and speaking to as many people, of as many different opinions, as possible. I haven’t set foot in Vienna in nearly 25 years. But Lilibellt has generously offered to introduce me to people on all sides of the political spectrum in Austria, and I plan to take her up on it. Austria is in some ways at the heart of the crisis in Europe, both geographically and historically, and spending time there will be especially interesting for the book I’m now researching.

For now, though, we both thought Ricochet would be interested in our e-mail. We’ll be posting the rest of it here, too, in a series, over the coming week. We’ve reorganized and edited the exchange for clarity and brevity.

PART I: THE MIGRANT CRISIS 

Lilibellt: What we’re witnessing right now in Europe – to paraphrase Max Weber – is a battle between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of opinion. Immigration, up to a point, is a very good thing, but we [Austria] have done a very poor job of integrating Muslim immigrants from 10, 20, and 30 years ago. And I think you are with me on the necessity to differentiate between refugees and migrants, if only to help as many traumatized refugees as possible, aren’t you? [I am. — Claire] There is a factual limit to how many people you can let into a country and care for. If the available capacities are used up by migrants (who most likely will be turned away – from Afghanistan, Somalia, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, etc., but only after years of processing them due to our judicial system), there will be no place for real refugees.

After the Yugoslavian war, Austria took in the largest part of the refugees – real refugees – and they overall integrated very well into Austrian society. But this time, three-quarters of the asylum seekers, according to Eurostat, are male. This suggests to me that there is no imminent threat to their parents, wives, and children. They wouldn’t leave them behind unsecured and helpless, would they? [We discuss this statistic and what it means later in our exchange, which we’ll post this week — Claire.]

The official crime statistics show that more than a third of the “asylum seekers” in Vienna are committing crimes. Vienna was one of the safest metropolises in the world, without any no-go areas. When crime reports from the police or in newspapers don’t disclose the nationality or ethnic characteristic of the perpetrators of crime because it would be “racist,” girls and women are kept in the dark. There have been thefts, assaults, rapes (of children and of a 70-year-old woman) and even murders, including the murder of an American woman who was studying in Vienna. The reports that most outrage me are the growing accounts of sexual assault and rape of women and children in refugee camps on Austrian and German soil. How many more unreported cases are there? We can’t even guarantee the security of the weakest and protect the real refugees from the very threats they were fleeing from. It’s a disgrace.

[The protection of refugees] is a very serious concern for me. My husband and I have helped many people with a migrant background over the years. Our most recent involvement was last year, with a Chechen family. My husband, who speaks Russian, organized a very well-paid security job for the father and also helped to find an affordable flat and a school for the children in Vienna. I don’t want to self-congratulate us too much, but I think I can say with enough confidence that within our means, my husband and I have done more to help migrants than many of the vocal advocates of this “welcome refugee” action. And by all means, even more are welcome, either real refugees or migrants with minimum work skills, but on the crucial condition, yet to be established, that breaking the law (any offence, from battery upward) will result in immediate deportation.

Asylum should not be granted to everybody whose life is in danger. (Criminals like drug dealers, and so forth, who are facing the death penalty for these crimes in their home states should be deported regardless – just think about it: In order not to get deported, you only have to commit a severe enough crime – three years in an Austrian prison and you can never ever be deported!) But asylum should, more broadly, be granted to people who are persecuted because of their religion, politics or race, not only when they are threatened with death. (I would think torture is no walk in the park either.)

It’s okay that things change, even become more difficult, but there is something disturbingly casual about the way that a society gives up on hard-fought achievements (yes, especially for women), on internal security, and on selecting who is allowed to enter the country in order to comply with this quixotic imperative of open borders. It is so much easier to destroy than to rebuild. I am not so much angry as deeply saddened, and I still consider myself – but perhaps in an anachronistic way – pro-immigration.

PART II: THE NAZI PAST OF THE FPÖ

Claire: This makes sense, and certainly doesn’t sound like a “racist” or “xenophobic” perspective. But this is the way FPÖ voters are usually described in the Anglophone media. The FPÖ is also usually described as a “far-right” party. This term isn’t helpful: What does that mean, exactly? What is meaningful, and what alarms me, are the party’s links with Putin [we discuss this in a later email exchange], and that the FPÖ was founded, in 1956, by Nazis. The party’s first leader, Anton Reinthaller, was an SS Brigadeführer. Not a “neo-Nazi,” or “someone so offensive that he was compared to a Nazi,” but an actual Nazi, full stop —

Lilibellt: — I am really not sure if I would put it like this. The FPÖ was founded in 1955 through a merger with the VdU [the Federation of Independents]. The first head of the FPÖ, elected in 1956, was – as you stated correctly – an actual Nazi. But before that, the VdU had been for a decade the third political camp, apart from the socialist and conservative party. It was founded by two liberal-conservative journalists (Herbert Alois Kraus, who was court-martialed by the Nazis, and Viktor Reimann, who was in the resistance and imprisoned between 1940 and 1945). Its members were mainly the displaced and returnees from the war, but also former NSDAP members.

I want to point this out, because up until recently there was a battle between the national(ist) and liberal-conservative wing of the FPÖ. It would nevertheless be absolutely accurate to say that the FPÖ was the only political party in Austria with a Nazi as its leader. But then, we need to note that the SPÖ [the Social Democratic Party] was the only party in Austria with Nazis in the actual government (1971). By the same definition, the UN (1972-1981), and later Austria (1986-1992) had a Nazi as president, remember Kurt Waldheim (ÖVP)? [Austrian People’s Party]

Claire: Yeah, I remember him. I also remember that in 1958, Reinthaller was replaced by Friedrich Peter, another Nazi. He joined the NSDAP in 1938 and volunteered for the Waffen-SS at the age of 17. Simon Wiesenthal revealed that he had served at the western and eastern fronts as an Obersturmführer in the 10th regiment of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade, parts of which were detached to Einsatzgruppe C, which systematically exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews. His unit was almost exclusively engaged in this activity —

Lilibellt: —and he went on to have a long and successful political career, which is typical of the shady resumés of many postwar politicians (in all Austrian parties). In 1966, the extreme right, nationalist members left the party and founded a new, short-lived party, the NDP [National Democratic Party]. In the meantime, Friedrich Peter had become their ideological opponent. He forced them out in order to strengthen the liberal-conservative wing of the FPÖ. This took place five years before the most famous postwar Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky — who was Jewish and the leader of the Socialist Party — was sworn in as Chancellor along with five Nazis as his ministers!

Peter was subsequently the cause of the Kreisky-Wiesenthal conflict [the feud with Nazi hunter Wiesenthal]. He negotiated a coalition between the SPÖ and FPÖ in 1983, and he condemned the subsequent leader of the FPÖ, Jörg Haider, for his remark that the Third Reich at least had produced a good employment policy, unlike the SPÖ. Finally, Peter even left the party in 1992 over disagreements about the FPÖ’s new-found opposition to Austria’s EU accession —

Claire: — You used to be a leftist who protested against having the FPÖ in government. How did the party come to speak for you?

Lilibellt: I voted FPÖ, first, for reasons of political hygiene: For a parliamentary system to work, it is vital to be able to vote a government out of office every once in awhile. But that seemed more and more unlikely in a country where the major parties have been bound together in a coalition for decades, with few interruption. Now, as they’re losing more votes from election to election, the Green Party and the Neos [The New Austria and Liberal Forum] are preparing to jump in to ensure the continuation of the status quo in exchange for one or two ministerial posts. So I went from being a protester against the government because of the participation of the FPÖ to being a supporter of the very party that I opposed years ago. The only opposition party left is the FPÖ.

Claire: Has the party changed to allow you to be more comfortable voting for it? Is your view, “Their history is unpleasant and embarrassing, but they’ve changed, and if they’re the only ones willing to address [the migration crisis], what choice do we have?” or do you think, “Of course we don’t really want them in power, this is a protest vote to show how desperate and angry we are that there’s no proper opposition party?”

Lilibellt: Actually, both. Just to clarify, it is impossible to vote for any party in Austria that never had any Nazi members, except probably for the Green Party and other small parties, because they were founded much later. But even then you can’t be a 100-percent sure. That is the proverbial ambiguity of the Austrian soul. The numbers of Austrian resistance fighters were modest. The FPÖ still has some members with contacts on the [hardcore nationalist] far right, just as there are classical liberals in their ranks. I am not deluding myself. I was nevertheless determined to vote for the FPÖ in the presidential elections no matter what, because all other parties were indistinguishable in their stance on the so-called refugee-crisis —

Claire: — The participation of the FPÖ in the Austrian government in 2000 was an international scandal —

Lilibellt: — Yes. Basically, after WWII the two major parties, ÖVP and SPÖ, split Austria up between them. You can call the coalition between ÖVP and FPÖ with Haider, from 2000-2007, an interregnum. Haider had to give up on becoming vice-chancellor because he was such a controversial figure. International protests had already started, and the Austrian president was reluctant to inaugurate this government at all. There were weekly protests on the streets, as you mentioned earlier – what fun it was, I never felt so self-righteous again in my whole life.

Claire: The sanctions were finally lifted. Remind us what happened to Jörg Haider?

Lilibellt: So Haider, whose personality wasn’t suited for standing in the second tier, split the party and founded a new one – the BZÖ [Alliance for the Future of Austria]. A very interesting turn of events indeed. In the ‘80s, Haider — with the help of the nationalistic faction of the Freedom Party — staged a coup against then FPÖ-leader Norbert Steger. Steger represented the classical-liberal wing of the party; he ousted the more nationalistic members and was, contrary to Haider, vice-chancellor of a SPÖ/FPÖ coalition (1980-1984) and vice-president of the Liberal International.

Then, 20 years later, Haider staged another coup, but this time against the nationalist wing of the party. His political star was rising again, but then he was killed in a car accident (under – depending on who you ask – more or less suspicious circumstances). After his death, there were rumors that he had been having a homosexual affair with his assistant. He was a political talent of a lifetime – a very sharp mind, with a deep knowledge of history and rhetorical skills. He was a man of means, too, and not dependent upon holding political office for income. Politically, he was an opportunist if not a cynic. He was surely one of the last Austrian politicians to read von Mises, Friedman, Schumpeter, et al., and I think the liberal way of thinking was closer to his heart. But when it came to power he chose whichever side was more likely to win. He had no reservations at all about extreme nationalists and revisionists, though! What disgusted me the most were his connections to the Gaddafi family. He was very close to one of the Gadhafi sons. It would have been hard for me to vote for the FPÖ if he’d still been on top of the ticket, even for the above-mentioned political hygiene reasons. I think you can relate in light of the Trump candidacy —

Claire: What exactly happened to the FPÖ after its separation from the BZÖ?

Lilibellt: Haider went back to being governor of Carinthia until his death. Many members of the FPÖ joined Haider’s BZÖ, which was still in a coalition with the ÖVP. H.C. Strache picked up the pieces that were left of the FPÖ. There were and are hardly any liberals left in the party; but on the other hand, the hardcore nationalists disappeared too. (Mostly, they died.) Strache is no Haider — not even a miniature version of him. He’s a descendent of Sudeten Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia after WWII, raised by single mother in Vienna. But in 2006, pictures surfaced of him at the age of 19, showing him the uniform of a Wiking-Jugen [German neo-Nazi youth organization, banned in Austria in 1994]. That lent credibility to allegations that he had been intimate with neo-Nazi-circles until his mid-twenties.

Haider had invented a very distinct, snarky speaking style; many FPÖ-members – including Strache – imitate him to this day. Strache worked very hard to lead the FPÖ back to its glory days by broadening its base and bringing in new members without problematic backgrounds. The FPÖ is now at its core a social democratic party, concentrating on Austrian problems — and it’s critical of immigration.

Claire: We’ll get back to that, but what do you think about the other parties and candidates in the recent election?

Lilibellt: I didn’t bother to watch any of the other candidates. I already knew them from previous elections or from political offices they had held. I had already made up my mind to vote FPÖ, and they run, for the most part, rather dull candidates, so I wasn’t even very interested in Norbert Hofer. I knew he was the third president of the Austrian parliament, but nothing else about him was memorable to me. Then he initiated a signature campaign to protect the use of cash. [After the EU decided to withdraw the 500 Euro bill, rumors circulated in Austria that the EU planned to completely abolish the use of cash.] So I listened to the man for the first time and – imagine my surprise! – I was really impressed. Hofer wasn’t your typical FPÖ candidate. He didn’t display the aggressive, provocative, vindictive, snotty demeanor common to protest candidates (just look at Trump).

Twenty years ago, Hofer would have been a candidate for the conservative party. He’s from a deep black (equivalent to deep red in America) family in a little town called Pinkafeld. He joined the FPÖ early on. He emphasized his positions in a calm, self-confident manner; they were common sense, and would have been proposed in exactly the same way by any conservative politician only a decade ago.

So I looked him up: He had no known connection to any neo-Nazi organization. He was raised in a politically Christian, socially conservative family. He’s the co-author of the new FPÖ-program. He’s remarried to a geriatric nurse and he has three children. He’s a practicing Christian. After a paragliding accident almost left him paralyzed, he can now only walk with a stick. I see Norbert Hofer more in the tradition of Norbert Steger, but this remains to be seen and perhaps is only wishful thinking on my part.

In conversation with journalists and political opponents he came across conciliatory, but not obsequious, never apologetic. That impressed me the most. For example: When he was asked about his firearms in a shrill, almost hysterical tone by a female reporter he explained to her – not in a condescending way, he was very earnest and friendly – how focusing on the shot is almost meditative. The expression on the face of the reporter was priceless. He was good-natured overall. This is a conservative man through and through, with a conservative temperament and demeanor. If he’s a co-author of his party program, it means he is not only the front-man, with a friendly face, but also one of the brains behind the party. “I have to take a closer look at the FPÖ as they are now,” I thought to myself. That’s what I’ve been doing in my spare time since when I am not writing emails to you explaining why I voted FPÖ.

Do you see the difference?

*************

I asked Lilibellt many more questions — about the migrant crisis, human trafficking, Turkish immigrants in Austria, Merkel, Putin, and other issues in Austrian and European politics. We also discussed the similarities and differences between the Austrian and the American electoral campaign. We’ll post these exchanges in the coming days.

In the meantime, please do ask her any questions you have about what things look like from Vienna. And please contribute if you’d like me to get out of my armchair and do my own reporting from Austria: Lilibellt and I are in complete agreement that far too few journalists are doing this, particularly along the migrant trail.

France Mobilizes Emergency Fuel Stocks

FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Riot police watch as a wall of flame separates them from refinery workers blockading the oil depot of Douchy-les-Mines, via Huffington Post

Now things are getting interesting.

We’re on the eighth day of “industrial action” here to protest changes to France’s cherished, preposterous labor laws. This morning dock workers stormed the port city at Le Havre. Striking workers have cut off roads and bridges and blockaded a nuclear submarine base. Today, workers at nuclear power plants joined the strike. The almighty CGT — a trade union that descends directly from communists — has been blocking oil refineries, causing fuel shortages and endless lines at gas stations. France has mobilized its strategic oil reserves for the first time since 2010.

President François Hollande says there are supplies sufficient to last 115 days. Keep that number in mind.

The situation is particularly fraught because Prime Minister Manuel Valls pushed the so-called El-Khomri law (named after Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri) through the National Assembly without a vote. This is, technically, permitted under the constitution of the Fifth Republic, and the power has been used about 50 times since 1958. But it’s obviously problematic to have a constitution that permits this. Just as it’s obviously problematic to have an unelected, radical labor union violently holding the country hostage.

Hollande and Valls probably went the Article 49-3 route — neo-Louis XIV style — because they didn’t think they had the numbers to get the law through parliament. And if so, they were probably right. MPs from their own party are now trying to pass motions of censure against the government; yesterday, they failed — by just two votes — to initiate a vote of no-confidence. This is their own party. Libération described the scenes in the parliament as “grotesque,” which sounds about right.

The CGT would appear to be betting that the party is divided, that it can readily make life a misery for everyone in France, and that this will force Hollande and Valls to back down. They know Hollande’s not a brawler. He’s never had the stomach for an all-out fight with the unions, and nor has any French president, for that matter. Traditionally, the government caves or compromises in the face of this kind of pressure. Strikes like this usually aren’t viewed as unacceptable, anarchic, and undemocratic, as they would be in the US. They’re seen as a vehicle for democratic expression and even a normal prelude to negotiation.

But this time might be different. For one thing, a psychological barrier, or several of them, really, have been crossed. France is already under emergency rule. The EU is on the verge of a crack-up. France’s inability to get its house in order is a part of the problem and everyone knows it. If the government can’t make even these sensible, modest changes to its absurd labor laws, France’s future is grim. If France’s future is grim, so is Europe’s.

I’m not sure how these circumstances will affect public opinion or Hollande’s psychology. It seems to me it might stiffen his resolve. It certainly should. The CGT only represents three percent of France’s workforce, and it has its own vulnerability: It’s in a power struggle with the other unions. Its main rival, the CFDT, backs the new labor law. Union elections are ahead next year. The CFDT is betting Hollande will stick it out, and if he does, it will give them credibility to campaign against the CGT as the antediluvian, job-killing, radical dinosaur it is. That could mean the end of the CGT as a major force in French politics.

The CGT is putting pressure on the country’s strategic nodes — petrochemicals, ports, and railways — which is illegal under French law. Philippe Martinez, the head of the CGT, is justifying this by saying the passage of the law itself is so obviously anti-democratic as to warrant uproar, given that first, it contravenes the Socialist Party’s manifesto; second, it hasn’t been approved by parliament; and third, polls show that public opinion is against it.

Hollande and Valls seem to be betting that the CGT doesn’t have the support to expand the strikes to the level of a genuine strategic threat, and that public opinion will swing against them if the fuel shortages and the violence continue. I don’t know if they’re right, and they probably don’t, either.

The European football championship starts on June 10. Valls has made a huge point of stressing that the championship will go on despite terrorist threats. The unions are betting that he’ll do anything to avoid the embarrassment of disruptions to the event and will cave to them before facing that humiliation.

Hollande and Valls seem to me to be in the right in every way except one: They truly don’t have a democratic mandate. As Sylvain Attal puts it,

Hollande is not just facing opposition to the labour bill, he is also confronting a fundamental, systemic opposition held by a growing fringe of the parliamentary majority. He has broken promises made on the campaign trail and does not have public opinion on his side. What’s more, he has barely a year more in office. Therefore, he must face the hard fact that to break the current impasse, he needs to go back to the voters.

He can do this in two ways: either the French leader calls for a referendum, thereby putting his job on the line; or he dissolves parliament. This is the spirit of our democratic institutions.

If Hollande decides to do neither it’ll be because he knows the results would be fatal in both cases and he’ll then instead be hoping for some sort of miracle before the 2017 presidential election. …

We’re going to be stuck in this climate of confrontation and violence in the weeks, and perhaps months, to come. Between the two sides sticking to their guns (the government with Article 49-3, the police brutally suppressing protesters), and the CGT trying to take the country hostage by attacking public transportation and refineries – and behind them, the anarchists and thugs they no longer control – France is in a mess. This is distressing because France will be lagging behind and the world will not wait for the country to play catch-up.

Hollande and Valls have vowed to stand firm, but we’ll see.

I can’t help but be put in mind of the miner’s strike. Arthur Scargill’s fatal mistake was to call a coal strike in the spring. It’s springtime in Paris, and if the government really has supplies to last 115 days, and if they have the willpower, they might — finally — be able to break the CGT and enforce this law. There really is no alternative.

But Thatcher had her party on her side, and Hollande doesn’t. Thatcher faced a weak, divided political opposition, the Labour Party having suffered one of its worst-ever defeats in the 1983 election. Hollande’s party is itself weak and divided, and Hollande is the one who’s apt to face crushing defeat in 2017.

So who knows. It’s a nail-biter.

Meanwhile, France’s kung-fu cop has gone viral on Twitter:

Interesting times. I wish I could tell you how this book will end. All I can say for now is that the plot is getting more dramatic:

Welcome to Castle Pontourny!

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Greetings, Ricochet, and welcome to Castle Pontourny! Marie-Alphonse Gréban de Pontourny, who lies in repose in the sepulchre of the chapel, bequeathed the chateau to the cause of charity and public works. For the next ten months, this majestic chateau in the pastoral Loire valley could be yours, all expenses paid! Are you stressed? Depressed? A staff of full-time counsellors and psychotherapists will be on hand to support you. Dissatisfied with your job prospects? You can study a new trade. Out of shape? There will be daily sports and fitness activities. Having a spiritual crisis? The staff is trained to help. And to keep your mind active, there will be daily discussion groups about current events, French history, geopolitics, and theology. Doesn’t that sound nice?

It does to me, which is why I’d like you to call the French government hotline and tell them you’re worried I’m about to join ISIS.

Apparently, I could be offered — if I’m willing to take it — a chance to reintegrate myself into French society at Castle Pontourney.

I haven’t seen it for myself. So I can’t assure you that it is not, as reported in this most-read story on The Daily Beast, an Orwellian re-education camp:

Marseille — Young men from the northern districts of this most Muslim city in France are expected be among the first to be called up when the government in Paris kicks off its Orwellian new plan to fight the so-called Islamic State.

The idea is to herd suspected extremists into mysterious “deradicalization centers” all over the country. There are an estimated 9,000 radicalized—or “potentially radicalized”—jihadis believed to be in France, officials say. Another 2,000 French nationals are thought to have gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for the Islamic State.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week that France will establish as many as 13 centers all over the country—picture an odd mix of halfway house, prison, and sleepover camp—where Islamist radicals or those who show signs of wanting to join the jihad in Syria and Iraq will be housed and “re-educated.” Oh, and they’ll be monitored “day and night” for 10 months while wearing special uniforms, Valls said.

But from what I can tell so far, there’s no connection between this description and reality.

You can download and read the new Action Plan Against Radicalization and Terrorism on the Interior Ministry’s website. There are 80 measures in total. Most of them are what you’d expect: The government will be bombing ISIS in Syria, reinforcing nuclear plants and other potential targets, increasing the budget and staff of the intelligence and security services, sharing intelligence more widely within the Schengen zone, and yes, creating regional centers for at-risk youth.

But “herding suspected extremists into mysterious” camps? No, there are no plans to “herd” young men anywhere. Or to herd women, for that matter, since the center will be open to them, too. Participation in the program is voluntary, a salient detail omitted from the article. The plans are not mysterious; in fact, they’ve been widely reported, as has been the point that participants can leave anytime. This is precisely why the residents of Pontourny aren’t sure that they want it there. 

Since 2014, France has had a toll-free number for people call if they’re worried that a friend or a family member is behaving oddly. If you call the number, you’ll be interviewed by specialists who will assess the situation; if the person in question is a minor, he or she will be prevented from leaving the country.

If someone is assessed to be “at risk,” but has not committed a crime, he or she will be encouraged to spend time at a “weird, Orwellian re-education camp” like this one:

There he or she will receive counselling, education, mentoring, therapy, and job-training. Staff will lead group discussions about geopolitics and religion. Participants will be eligible for a two-month job internship. Afterward, they’ll be followed up by psychologists and psychiatrists.

From what I can tell, it’s standard cult deprogramming. As Le Monde reports,

“About thirty candidates, age 18 to 30, can stay there seven days a week or 24 hours a day if they want. [My emphasis.] They will be welcomed and supervised by 25-27 people,” specified the Prefect. The aim of the centers, each of which will cost an average of one million euros, is to “permit these individuals to rebuild, restructure, to have new projects, and find a job.”

But the headline “France’s Weird Jihadi Re-Education Camps Could Become ISIS Incubators” leads to what’s now the top story on The Daily Beast.

Pontourney isn’t that far from Paris. Thanks to you, I can go there when it opens this summer and see what’s really happening there. It sounds as if it might be quite an interesting story — although I’m pretty sure it’s not the story reported in The Daily Beast.

The KGB Never Forgets and Never Forgives

In 1977, Tom Stoppard wrote a play dedicated to Soviet dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky and Viktor Fainberg. It is set in a Soviet mental hospital. Two men, both named Ivanov, share a cell. Alexander Ivanov is a dissident who cannot be released until he admits that he is mad and agrees that all of his statements against the government were the product of his mental illness. His cellmate is mad. He believes he is conducting a symphony orchestra, which he hears in his mind.

In 2009, the play was revived at the National Theatre, in London. It received lukewarm reviews. “Unpacking the setting,” wrote critic Mark Espiner, “leads you into the heart of the problem — that it is dated.” Ian Shuttleworth dismissed it on similar grounds. “To put it harshly, this bleak, fantastical indictment of the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatric hospitalisation against dissidents is a play for yesterday.”

If only that had been true.

Shortly after I wrote about Vladimir Bukovsky’s hunger strike, a few days ago, I received to my surprise a phone call from Viktor Fainberg. I had not known he lived in Paris. He asked me to visit him as soon as I could.

So I went to his home, in the Latin Quarter, and he embraced me at the front door, as if I was his granddaughter. He led me up the stairs to a small apartment with slanting light and wooden beams. His wife Françoise met us at the door. She had prepared a table, a meal with good red wine, but she declined to join us for lunch. She spoke to Viktor in in Russian, and then implored me, in French, to eat.

They had spoken to Vladimir, or Volodya, as they call him, the day before. He had sounded strong. He had said he was fine. His doctor had visited and his EKG was normal. I asked Françoise to stay with us, but she refused: “It is very important that you eat with Viktor,” she said. I suddenly gathered, from her face, that Viktor — out of anguish, or solidarity with his friend — had not been eating properly.

We sat down. “L’chaim,” I said. When he didn’t reply, I realized he was hard of hearing. I tried shouting. “L’chaim! L’chaim!”

“L’chaim!” His face broke into a smile. “To Volodya.”

“To Volodya.”

He downed his glass of wine in one swallow. “This is the first wine I drink since Volodya made his declaration.” He apologized for forgetting his English. I tried speaking French, but he said he’d never studied French. “I never intended to stay here for so long,” he said.

He had trouble hearing me, or perhaps understanding my American accent. Françoise was napping in the room next door, so I didn’t want to shout. In the end, I just listened, even when I wasn’t sure what he meant.

I recorded a few fragments of our conversation and spliced them (badly) together:

This is what he told me, although in places I didn’t understand the words he used, and wasn’t quite sure if he was speaking of himself or of Bukovsky.

“In 1972, Volodya went on a hunger strike, for 81 days. In the end, all of the demands were met. He had demanded the guards stop beating the patients who were genuinely psychiatrically ill. Of the 700 people in the psychiatric hospital, a dozen were there only for political reasons.

“The political prisoners, like the mentally ill people, were given tablets, injections. It was causing them brain damage. This is what made [a name I could not understand] give up — she felt so ashamed, that she had betrayed us, but she had to choose between losing her mind and doing what they said.

“I was in Leningrad psychiatric prison. I was there for [his role in] the 25 August protest in Red Square.”

He described to me the psychiatric prisons. He had been in solitary confinement for two years. He had kept his mind occupied by practicing the English he’d studied in school. He was frustrated that the words he’d practiced for so man hours were now deserting him. The phrase “I am a bad machine” flitted through my mind as he spoke, although I couldn’t remember where it was from. Only when I left his apartment did it come back to me. It is from Midnight Express:

Viktor is deeply worried for Vladimir. “I think he was so shocked, when he became ill, so shocked, so traumatized that people in Britain believed these ridiculous charges — he is Vladimir Bukovsky, known around the world for his moral stature — after he was diagnosed with this illness, then these charges were made against him, before, he hadn’t been religious. He was such a strong character that he couldn’t accept being bossed around even by God.

“But the shock of this made him very fatalistic. And when he realized that this time, unlike the other times, no one was coming to his support, no one was standing with him in solidarity against the Kremlin, the West had changed, he didn’t recognize England anymore — the shock was too great. So by reflex, almost, he did what he had always done, declared a hunger strike. It was all he knew how to do, to protest an injustice.”

I said that I thought it unnecessary. I had faith in the British legal system. The burden of proof was on the prosecutor. He would be acquitted if he was innocent, and would even win his libel case. But I was worried he would die from the hunger strike.

“So am I, and I am against this hunger strike. But now, he is — when he says he will do something, he has to.” The intimation was obvious: Now it was a point of pride. “All he wants is a word from the government, from the judge, acknowledging who he is. He is Vladimir Bukovsky. All his life they have been making one charge, another one — he is insane, he is this, that. But this time, for first time, West believes these charges. And at his age, all he had was his name, recognized everywhere as a great hero of human rights, and then suddenly, one day, people look at him like a filthy child molester. And even his friends, some of his friends, don’t call. So I know him. I agree with you, I disagree with this hunger strike. But I understand he will not stop.”

We spoke a bit of Viktor’s childhood, growing up with serene faith in the benevolence of Comrade Stalin, unable to understand, as a boy, why his parents seemed strangely overjoyed and not at all saddened by the news of the death of Comrade Yezhov.

“Putin and his mafia understand the West,” he said. “They understand that the West is now in a political, economic and moral crisis. Putin said it was time to strike, and he was proven right — in Ukraine, in Syria. In the UN, with the UN resolutions. He knew well-organized authoritarianism like his, run by a good KGB officer like him, would win. He saw that the West was weak, and used this period to get away with as much as he could.

“The Russian people are accustomed to a very strong power. For them, it’s a guarantee against the horror of anarchy. The main fault is with Obama, who has returned to isolationism, leaving the world to this new Soviet Union. Hollande and Merkel feel they have no choice but to cooperate, even in matters as basic as human rights. Only a small part of Russian intelligentsia is fighting for freedom.

“Frankly, I think that what happened now — it is very, it is very naive to speak about bureaucratic differences. About the traditions of the British jurisprudence. It is the situation, it is so complicated now with the West, with the crisis, this weakness, that this is, this is an event of very great betrayal, it is a knife in the door, which, especially, if this would be the tragic end, it would stay in history, not only in this period of jurisprudence, but for history in general. And it is especially painful for me and I’m sure for Bukovsky. Because we love this country.

“And if he said, ‘It is hunger strike,’ it is not to argue with the British judicial or political authorities — because he couldn’t trust them, after all that. It was for the British people, who he likes, and because he is a British citizen. He had chosen this country. A number of countries proposed him this. He had chosen this country. And he’s suffering from this: that these people doesn’t understand the danger. The danger is daily, when Russian military planes just intruded … “

He lapsed into Russian, unable to find the right word. “He told this, in his latest statement, that he’s doing this for British people. He’s ready to die even for that. And therefore I can tell you that I am against this hunger strike. I think it is a great mistake. But I understand him. and I’ll do, personally, all that I can, that in this battle, he would win. His victory, it is our victory. And his defeat, it is our defeat. I mean, the movement for human rights. It is a universal movement. For freedom, ours and yours. I’ll do everything for this. I joined him on hunger strike, when he was in labor camp, Number 35. I was put, myself, in a psychiatric hospital, but I was released after the BBC interfered into this because they knew my biography and because so many times there was a scandal about our hunger strike. So the last time, I was very soon released.

“The first time, when I was in psychiatric prison in Leningrad, with Vladimir Borisov. And when they were expecting the congress of World Psychiatric Organizations in Mexico City, Bukovsky, on the eve of this congress, he had sent the dossier of ten people, including Vladimir Borisov and myself. And he asked, “Is it right, is it just, to send these people to psychiatric prison, even if there are suspicions that they are not completely sane?”

“And therefore our hunger strike with Vladimir Borisov was victorious, and the authorities met almost all our conditions, but it lasted only a very short period of time. After that, Vladimir Borisov, they began to torture him. He resumed his hunger strike, I also. This time it was about two months, and this was such a hunger strike that it was … the conditions were very much worse.

“I survived because one psychiatrist, he was an officer, like all the psychiatrists at psychiatric prison. The captain, Petrov, of my life and my freedom. He had the reputation of a torturer and the most cruel psychiatrist in the prison. And when we were betrayed, with Volodya Borisov, by a member in our cell, and we transferred to his department — the most cruel one — he told me he was waiting for a man like me for three and a half years. He observed me, in the other department, and he would do everything that they want because he understood what was going on there. And he was my volunteer spy. And he saved us, because during every hunger strike, the BBC, The Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, and the other stations, they each, the same day, they spoke about it. Because a week before this, he delivered our declaration of Moscow dissidents to the foreign correspondents.

“And so therefore I was released. I was released without any conditions. Otherwise, I don’t know that I would have survived this, because otherwise I would never have agreed to their conditions to be released.”

The role of the Western media, of outrage in the West, had been key to his release and to Vladimir’s. “Bukovsky received twelve years, twelve years! Seven years of prison in the camps of the Soviet regime, including two years of prison and five years of exile. Fortunately, he was released after the greatest campaign in the West.”

I asked him why, in his opinion, there was no media campaign for Vladimir now, no attention to his hunger strike. I was, I said, surprised by this.

“I was also amazed. Probably there are two reasons. One, the major one, is that the mentality of people in the West has changed. They … officially, the Cold War is finished. And officially the Soviet Union now it is a, it is even viewed as democratic. So, ‘It’s a very young democracy, not perfect, but still, it’s like this.’ And also that Putin is a great, well, he is a great partner in their worldwide war against jihadis, against this fanaticism — extremely dangerous — while also that it’s penetrated in Europe, in the West, and so it is the main danger. So Putin used this and appeared very resolute in this struggle. While he’s chosen not so much fight against the real jihadis as the others, the moderates, or even the democrats who are fighting against the extremely cruel regime of Bashar al Assad. Because Putin has the old dream of Russia, and then the Soviet Union. It just confirmed their presence in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean.”

What, I asked him, did he think the West should do about Putin?

“It is not only the question, it is the central question, to fight against Putin. All of the success of Putin, it is not as a result of his intelligence. It is the result of the weakness, the criminal weakness of the West. Criminal weakness. That is the story, the modern story of the West’s behavior. It is ridiculous and very sad.

“They — Obama said that he would never allow that transfer — a red line. About chemical weapon in Syria. He did it, and then Putin sent there his aviation, his troops, his [Russian], his weapon, well, he really acted. Obama put him, he allowed him the area. And then he couldn’t return there, it was too late. And then Western Europe, very weakened by the crisis, had no force to do something — they were accustomed to be defended by the United States, for the First War, for the Second World War, during the Cold War, also.

“And now they are in despair. Because they can’t do it, it is too late. So that they left him the space in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and so on.” …

We talked a bit about American politics, which he said were saddening.

“Reagan, you know, he understood the danger much better than all the other presidents of the United States. And he contributed to this, to the chute [fall] of the Soviet Union, and he supported the new power hoping that that democracy would do well. So for me, he was a great president for Russia and I think unfortunately, the others, his successors didn’t show the same shrewdness as him.

“And now the situation is very dangerous. It’s as dangerous, even if not more, than before the Second World War. That’s so.

“And therefore, I think that the people who are ready to defend their freedom, their independence, to defend the peace at least in the world, they should unite themselves. They should unite themselves, and that the case of Bukovsky, it is typical. When we defended such personalities as Bukovsky and the others, in gulag, we knew that we defended not only them, we defended the future of these people, where they live, we defended the freedom, we defended the peace, because without freedom, the peace is not possible. And I think that now it is a fight for Bukovsky. He is between death and life. And then, it is a fight for the life. Not only for Bukovsky, but for us, also.”

I had been there for several hours. I wished that I spoke Russian. I asked, in the end, what he made of our presidential campaign, and whether he saw in it any reason for hope.

“Of Donald Trump and Hillary, I think that Trump is more dangerous, certainly. Much more dangerous. It is demagogue, who, you know, is not capable to be president. I think that he knows that. He’s not dupe, he knows this. About Hillary, well, between two evils, I would choose less dangerous.

“I am very sad that the people are so, now … they are lost. In despair, the world situation for them is so complicated, they can’t see the issue in this. It is so great crisis, not only economical and political, but moral crisis, and they can’t see the issue in this. And for Putin, it is everything clear, it is a continuation of the history of his country. It’s a constant. And he’s using it, and he’s using the tradition of the people, of the people who couldn’t, in the so-short period of time, couldn’t liberate itself. And this is dangerous for all the world. Extremely dangerous. So that I think that only it would be the very strong minority, intellectually and spiritually strong, that would just begin the movement to liberate itself, from this intellectual weakness and slavery. It’s only this could save the world.

“And now I think, concretely, we should fight for the right and freedom of Bukovsky — freedom, yes, because he’s in such a situation as in prison. Nobody hears him. If somebody hears him, he doesn’t listen to him. It is a most tragical situation. Tragical. Well, and painful.”

After leaving his apartment, I exchanged e-mails with another one of Bukovsky’s close friends, the journalist and translator Alyona Kojevnikov. “We shall see what we shall see come next Monday,” she wrote.

On Monday, Bukovsky will be tried on five charges of making indecent images of children, five charges of possession of indecent images of children and one charge of possession of a prohibited image. That is according to the press release that in Bukovsky’s view irreparably destroyed his most treasured possession: the world’s esteem. He says that he will remain on a hunger strike until the court restores it.

“Volodya thinks the lawyers handling his case are doing a good job,” she wrote. “For example, they are trying to get a testimony from some guy in Lithuania, who faced the same situation as Volodya. Luckily for him the Lithuanians, with 40 years’ experience of being under the Soviet boot, saw through the intrigue and threw the case out of court. This man is still in Lithuania and can’t come to Volodya’s hearing, but his lawyers are hoping to get a statement from him about what happened to him. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know.

“Of course, a lot depends on the jury: We can only hope and pray that the jurors are your average middle-class Britons, who still have plenty of common sense and are largely unaffected by left-wing liberal notions and political correctness. You know what I mean, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker type of people.

“On the down side, it may be hard for them to grasp the entire complexity of the matter. It is a lot to expect for them to grasp the idea that the KGB (whatever it calls itself at any point in history) never forgets and never forgives anything. Their patience is extremely long – look at how they finally got to Trotsky when he thought he was safe and sound and beyond their reach.”

………………………

Postscript: The new Cold War will be one of the themes of Brave Old World. Thank you for your generous contributions. They are making it possible for me to work on this story. I could not do it without your support I’m also grateful to Michael Yaroshevsky for allowing me to use the trailer for his Portrait of Vladimir Bukovsky.