Schwarze Haut, weiße Angst and the Parallel Societies
While I waited for the bus, stomping my feet and fighting the cold weather, I noticed some frizzy scribblings ornamenting one of the columns supporting the bridge and the railways somewhere in Kagran. Either It was newly added by some bored teenager/passerby or I just didn’t simply notice it. The graffiti is the opposite of what I usually encounter every time I go to work. I mean, I know that Vienna was used to be the center of arts and all things like that centuries ago but vandalism is certainly the order of the day nowadays. You really cannot miss them. The vandals are rampaging. They like to put their marks everywhere and the city of Vienna is having problems dealing with them.
I don’t really mind them unless a) they start to “uglify” the new buses or train seats and b) they reek of racism/hatred of any kind.
With the point A not only they make the interiors of the vehicles depressing and disgusting (frankly my dear, it is not PUNK ROCK!, okay perhaps I am just getting older), but also a lot of money has been put to waste. With the point B it is a sign of a discontented youth trying to magify his/her hate through the power of words and by unleashing them will send everyone to panic. I mean, gee, Neonazis in the house! All right!
They are all over the place. They are splattered on the walls of the buses, on the trains, under the seats, even the street walls. And the “authors”? They move in shadows. They live, they eat, they work like the normal people. You cannot identify them unless they wear their “uniforms,” which is unthinkable today. Or they show up on your TV blabbering what is wrong with the foreigners without jobs and the best solution is to kick them out.
The first time I read them with my own eyes I was a bit amazed, my mouth agape. But this is the 21st century, right? And the people must have learned their lessons.
Unfortunately Vienna (or the whole Austria, or the whole Europe) hasn’t come to terms with it. Perhaps, parts of it. And this is the trying times. You mix glabalisation with unemployment equals everyone is fucked. Somehow Fortress Europe is afraid to acknowledge that it exists.
Racism exists everywhere, that is a fact. Still, there are a number of people living in this city who are struggling with their identity, shaking off the “Schuldgefühl”, forgetting the past, and worse, they could be the politicians who capitalise in this concept.
The words “Nazis, Bimbo, toten, Neger, Ausländer raus” are something you really cannot deny.
At the end of the day, I thank that Vienna is not Moscow, nor some parts in Russia, where cases of racism are frighteningly increasing, where haters smear synagogues and rabbis are beaten up during daylight and Asian students’ hostels are burned down while the Russian media keep their mouths shut, their eyes close, saying that it is not really happening.
And I hope that it won’t turn out like Paris.
Oh yeah, please tell me the truth. Do the Viennese really read Elfriede Jelinek???