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I'm not familiar with the qualitative nature of the German/Austrian right wing right now (e.g. you can be an anti-immigration right winger without being Trumpian), but none of that sounds worthy of a dismissive attitude at face value.

Obviously I would not be surprised if he was a typical asshole about things like this. I just don't like the usage of those political opinions in particular as "this is a bad person" evidence.



> he recommended Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the Nobel Peace Prize


That's because the stuff is wrapped in layers. Read the original quotes (I've translated in [1]), or run the German Wikipedia article through a translation engine [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44597171

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner#Umstrittene_...


Yeah, he's definitely an asshole. But mostly in tone - most of the concrete stuff in this summary section consists of theoretically defensible conservative positions. To be clear: I'm not defending him holistically. I don't know him. I just don't like the idea of anti-immigration opinion as a whole, and the idea that democracy is failing rapidly, being elevated into the echelon of indefensible positions.

Of course "dictatorship", moderate or otherwise, is a scary word to hear from a German/Austrian. But simply the idea that there could be something in-between democracy and dictatorship? That doesn't sound insane. Just daunting. Also, he doesn't even seem married to the idea. The summary mentions his admiration of direct democracy.




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