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

Between 1969 and 1992, Klaus Emmerich was the correspondent of ORF, the Austrian state television channel, in Washington DC. He also worked also for the Vienna daily Die Presse and for German media. On October 5, Emmerich, who retired a few years ago, was asked by the discussion club 2 of ORF to comment on Barack Obama. “I wouldn’t want the Western world to be directed by a black man,“ he said “If you say that is a racist remark, that’s right, without a doubt!”

Americans are, he continued, “racists: they are now and always have been, and it must be going very badly for them that they so imposingly […] send a black man, and a black, very good looking woman, into the White House”.

And in order to scare his fellow racists, he compared the election of Obama to the prospect of electing a Turkish chancellor in Austria.

Emmerich refused to retract his remarks. In an interview with the Vienna left-liberal daily Der Standard he saw in Obama’s election “an alarming circumstance,” since according to this leading Austrian journalist, “blacks are not politically civilized enough yet in their development” to lead the USA. Emmerich implicitly compared Obama to Hitler, citing his “rhetorical brilliance” and his ability to “appeal charismatically to people.”

Pius Strobl, head of communications for ORF, told Spiegel Online that moderator Andreas Pfeifer (no relative of mine), the anchor man who was moderating the roundtable discussion, had “reacted immediately and correctly” by denying Emmerich any further opportunity to speak.

In Austria, the law forbidding Nazi activities is sometimes used against journalists who ask correct questions. For example: John Gudenus went to court to sue Armin Wolf, moderator of the ORF newsreel ZiB2, after Wolf asked Martin Graf, the deputy president of Austrian parliament, “Do you doubt like your party colleague of many years, Gudenus, that in the gas chambers millions of Jews were murdered?”

Wolf proved that his question was based on facts and was surprised, because of the final sentence of his question to Graf, that the case came before court. The lower Vienna court acquitted Wolf.