Il politico FPö mettono in piega il divieto dell’orgoglio austriaco

For context: FPÖ is currently the strongest party in Austria. They have been cruising at 33-36% support this year. They are not in federal government, but they have been before and are in governments of over half of Austrian federal states.

Translation by Deepl:

FPÖ politician Michael Gruber can imagine a legal ban on the Rainbow Parade in Austria. The Upper Austrian Freedom Party secretary announced this two weeks ago in an interview with the far-right broadcaster RTV.

The LGBTIQ-hostile programme was broadcast under the banner ‘Rainbow Madness’. Presenter Nico Schrott stated that the Pride Parade seemed to him ‘as if the doors of the asylum had been reopened’. For Gruber, it is a ‘state of emergency that I don’t want anywhere’. At most, everyone should live ‘according to their own style’ within their own four walls.

For him, ‘Pride Month’ is a ‘red-white-red month’ like any other, Gruber added. With ‘Pride Month,’ right-wing extremists have launched a counter-campaign to Pride, driven by the far-right Identitarian movement, among others.

Extradition blocked

This is not the first time that Gruber has attracted attention with anti-gay statements. Last summer, he posted a video in which he threw a rainbow flag into a rubbish bin. The Linz public prosecutor’s office then wanted to investigate him for incitement to hatred, but the Upper Austrian state parliament blocked the politician’s extradition with the votes of the FPÖ, ÖVP and MFG.

Gruber is probably not alone in the FPÖ with his stance, even though a legal ban on Pride is the most radical initiative of the far-right party to date. FPÖ member of the National Council Lisa Schuch-Gubik, for example, spoke of an “act of recklessness and moral derailment” because the Pride parade was not cancelled after the massacre in Graz. Pride has, however, adapted its programme and organised a memorial march for the victims.

Gruber’s party leader, Manfred Haimbuchner, Deputy Governor of Upper Austria, has also attracted attention on several occasions with anti-LGBTIQ slogans. His Lower Austrian colleague Udo Landbauer called for “putting the normal before the abnormal”; in its party programme, the FPÖ wants the abolition of a “separate legal institution for same-sex relationships”.

Parliament without a rainbow As the party with the most votes, the FPÖ provides the President of the National Council – and in this way is said to have prevented Parliament from being lit up in rainbow colours for Pride Month as in previous years, as ORF journalist Patrick Gruska reported via Bluesky. For Schuch-Gubik, the parade has “nothing to do with normality”; she prefers public festivals. Gruber also boasted that no Pride flags are hung on official buildings in Upper Austria.

Gruber’s statements were sharply criticised by the Green Party on Monday. “Anyone who openly calls for a ban on Pride events is bluntly showing their rejection of an open and diverse society,” writes David David Stögmüller, LGBTIQ+ spokesperson for the Greens. The FPÖ is thus once again opposing the fundamental rights of queer people in Austria. What Gruber is doing here is not conservative politics, but “crude, dangerous agitation against a minority. That is despicable, anti-democratic and not worthy of a mandate.”

According to Stögmüller, the FPÖ is also partly responsible for the fact that queer people in Austria feel increasingly unsafe. In a survey conducted in 2024, 15 per cent of Austrian LGBTIQ people surveyed stated that they had been attacked in the previous five years. Sixty per cent said they had been bullied or harassed in the previous year. According to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office, assaults against queer people are expected to have risen by a whopping 20 per cent in 2023. The number of unreported cases is likely to be far higher. (Fabian Schmid, 23.6.2025)

Anyone reading this & being disgusted should now: Austria isn’t the exception. No matter how progressive you thikn your own country & people are, eventually, your country too will do this with the way things are heading in Europe.

You are next, and tomorrow, it’ll be your country in the headlines.

This’ll be every country eventually, since we’re going back to nazi-land as a species.

Once again, straight people just can’t help but attack my people over literal *rainbow* festivals. We’ll never be seen as human or enough for you. First its the pride festivals, eventually it’ll be bigger things like our literal existence.

Regardless lgbt people are resilient, we’ll get through this because we’ve been through much worse throughout history. You can’t legislate how people are born. You’re better off yelling at the sun and telling it to turn blue instead of yellow.