"Shove it up your ass"

US politicians attack Van der Bellen on the web

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has received criticism from Florida for a statement he made in 2017 about headscarves.(Bild: Eva Manhart)

Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has criticized Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen. He shared a video on the X platform of a 2017 discussion event in which Van der Bellen spoke about Islamophobia. Shortly afterwards, a US congressman joined in the criticism.

"The irresponsibility of so many leading politicians across Europe is truly a frightening sight," DeSantis wrote about the video. He was referring to the president's statement that Islamophobia is becoming increasingly widespread and that the day may come "when we will have to ask all women to wear a headscarf, all of them, as a sign of solidarity with those who do so for religious reasons." When journalists asked him about this at the time, Van der Bellen said that he personally was "not a big fan of the headscarf," but that freedom of expression prevailed in Austria.

"You can take that hijab and shove it up your liberal, socialist ass," Republican US Representative Andy Ogles wrote on X on Friday. "America will never bow down to Islam. This is a battle of good versus evil," he continued.

Here you can see DeSantis' post:

Just recently, Martin Sellner, former head of the "Identitarian Movement," which is classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, dug up the controversial statement by the Federal President again. He shared it in response to a post by the group NXT EU, which had translated Van der Bellen's New Year's address into English and distributed it via the X platform.

The statement on headscarves had triggered massive criticism from the ranks of the FPÖ and ÖVP in May 2017. The Federal President then backtracked and said that his statement had been "a mistake." In terms of content, the politician stuck to his position and pointed out that during World War II, people in Denmark had worn a Jewish star out of solidarity with Jews. 

In his New Year's address this year, the Federal President called for "European patriotism." "Our Europe is a place that many, many people envy us for. Let's not allow this Europe to be disparaged. It is important that we continue to believe in the European idea," said the head of state. This requires cohesion, "in true imperial fashion."

It is much easier to "dominate individual small states than a confederation of states like the EU with over 450 million people."