This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.

Flushed with its success in September’s elections, the right-wing extremist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) is urging moves to scrap the Austrian law that bans Nazi activity and attempts to revive Nazism. Norbert Hofer, an FPÖ MP, has suggested a referendum to test public opinion on abolition of the law. He is supported by his party’s leader Heinz-Christian Strache.

At the same time as the far-right is trying to lift restrictions on the dissemination of hatred, threats from far-rightists have forced two satirical political revue performers, Dirk Stermann and Christoph Grissemann, to cancel a performance, planned for December, at Klagenfurt University.

The reason for the pressure on the duo is that they devoted their last show, titled Welcome to Austria, on ORF TV - the Austrian state channel - on 23 October to the death of Carinthian governor and right-wing extremist, Jörg Haider, and the consequences of his demise in a car crash. The Alliance for Austria’s Future (BZÖ), the party formerly led by Haider, has branded the satirists’ performance as “not acceptable for Carinthia” while the FPÖ has gone further by demanding that their presence on ORF is banned.

The FPÖ does not deny that freedom is excellent, except that it only seems to want it for Holocaust deniers while, hypocritically, claiming that satirical revue performers are unworthy of it. It now remains to be seen whether the left and liberal intellectuals who rushed to defend the British Holocaust denier David Irving when he fell foul of Austrian law will display some support for and solidarity with Stermann and Grissemann.

Z Word adds: For more on the Irving case and freedom of speech, see Karl’s excellent article here.