Tag: eu

In the wake of Austria’s drastic lockdown of unvaccinated people, EU chief calls for throwing out Nuremberg Code

Ursula Van Der Leyen, the head of the EU commission, told the press on Wednesday that she is in favour of scrapping the long-standing Nuremburg Code and forcing people to get vaccinated against COVID.

“Hey, it’s just the Nuremberg code. Only what we learned from the Nazi atrocities, not least those that were medical,” sarcastically notes esteemed professor, lecturer and podcaster Dr. Jordan Peterson.

In Austria, people over 12 who are not vaccinated are currently almost completely locked down, only allowed outside for absolutely essential tasks like food or medical appointments.

In an interview she gave to the BBC, the EU chief  said that it was “understandable and appropriate” to consider vaccine mandates, especially due to the new Omicron variant of COVID 19, which has been now detected in 12 different member nations of the EU.

“How we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union? This needs discussion. This needs a common approach, but it is a discussion that I think has to be led,” commented Van Der Leyen to the BBC.

The WHO, however, has strongly encouraged countries not to enact travel bans because of Omicron, and further iterated that early data points to the fact that most Omicron cases are not severe. Most of the world’s governments are not paying attention to the WHO’s guidelines on this occasion, however.

The Nuremberg Code was enacted in 1947, immediately after the Second World War to prevent many of the egregious human rights abuses enacted by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese during the war.

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Humorless EU report: It’s not funny anymore. Far-right extremists’ use of humour

Humour has become a central weapon of extremist movements to subvert open societies and to lower the threshold towards violence. Especially within the context of a recent wave of far-right terrorist attacks, we witness “playful” ways in communicating racist ideologies. As far-right extremists strategically merge with online cultures, their approach changes fundamentally. This trend has been especially facilitated by the so-called alt-right and has spread globally. This predominantly online movement set new standards to
rebrand extremist positions in an ironic guise, blurring the lines between mischief and potentially radicalising messaging. The result is a nihilistic form of humour that is directed against ethnic and sexual minorities and deemed to inspire violent fantasies — and eventually action. This paper scrutinises how
humour functions as a potential factor in terms of influencing far-right extremist violence. In doing so, we trace the strategic dissemination of far-right narratives and discuss how extremists conceal their misanthropic messages in order to deny ill intention or purposeful harm. These recent developments pose major challenges for practitioners: As a new generation of violent extremists emerges from digital subcultures without a clear organisational centre, prevention strategies need to renew focus and cope with
the intangible nature of online cultures.

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