NOWKR

Cause for the foundation of the alliance

In 1952, the Viennese Burschenschaften consisting mainly of fencing student fraternities, most of them German-nationalist, founded an annual ball. This festivity went mostly unnoticed in a post-war Austria concerned with reconstructing society and war-damaged buildings. The ball was called Ball des Wiener Korporationsringes (Ball of the Viennese Union of the Incorporated), abbreviated WKR Ball. Right from the beginning hundreds of former Nazis used the ball as a popular get-together. As the years went by, the organizers became bolder and bolder. Step by step they invited prominent politicians and theoreticians from right-wing parties and movements from all over Europe - among them Markus Beisicht, Patrik Brinkmann, Filip Dewinter, Aleksandr Dugin, Matthias Faust, Bruno Gollnisch and far-right Catalonian politician Enrique Ravello. Some of them flatly denied the Holocaust; all of them are radically nationalistic.

Starting in 1967, the ball took place at the Hofburg Palace, the official residence and workplace of the President of Austria. In 2008 some left-wing activists brought this to public attention and started demonstrating against the ball. The following year the alliance NOWKR was founded and since then has demonstrated against each ball, every year.

In 2012 the company running the Hofburg Palace ball business canceled the contract, therefore the 2012 WKR ball was the last one with this name. As an act of solidarity with the German nationalistic Burschenschaften in 2013, the Freedom Party of Austria took over the organization of the ball, which was then renamed Ball of the Academics.

Manifesto

The actual website of the alliance states the following:

The NOWKR Alliance understands itself as a radical-left and antifascist confederation organizing protests against the WKR ball (now named Ball of the Academics). The NOWKR Alliance succeeded in dragging the ball into the limelight and thereby has achieved several payoffs. First, the ball and the German nationalistic Burschenschaften were delegitimized. Secondly, the ball is losing participants from year to year. Thirdly, the ball had to be renamed after 2012. In all these battles it was constantly important to us to see the ball only as the peak of an iceberg of reactionary thinking. Making it impossible to dance at a ball like this, for us means making it impossible to organize society like this, namely, a society that generates reactionary ideologies of any couleur. Therefore it was always central to us to put the criticism of society — seen from a radical-left point of view — in the foreground of our political work, thereby promoting the project to overcome existing circumstances.

First demonstrations

The persistence of the NOWKR Alliance achieved some success after four years of public protests.

Success No. 1

In December 2011 the company running all events at the Hofburg Palace decided that the WKR ball no longer conformed with the principles of the estate and would therefore be held for the last time in January 2012. The main reason for this decision was the explicit statement of one of their major associates, Casinos Austria. This company declared explicitly that it discountenanced extremism of any kind and did not want to offer a stage to organizations lacking the appropriate distance from retrogressive ideas.

Success No. 2

By coincidence, most probably not noted by the organizers, the date of the last WKR ball fell on 27 January 2012. This is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. When the fact was made public there was an outburst throughout large parts of Austria's civil society, calling for cancellation of the event. The organizers showed no sensibility and went through with the organization of their last ball. Thereupon UNESCO decided that the institution of the Viennese Ball could no longer be listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The UNESCO decision was made public nine days before the event took place.

Success No. 3

In April 2013 the Austrian Constitutional Court decided that the interdiction of the 2011 NOWKR demonstration by the police was unlawful. The Court referred to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that the police was not entitled to interdict a demonstration for fear of possible collisions. In the case of collisions between two demonstrations the police has to interfere in such a way that freedom of assembly is ensured for both parties. This decision constituted an absolute legal triumph for the NOWKR Alliance.

Themes of the demonstrations

Since 2009, each NOWKR demonstration had a different slogan:

On January 8, 2015 NOWKR announced its avid resistance against the German right-wing PEGIDA movement. The alliance will organize demonstrations and blockades against Austria's first PEGIDA demonstration on February 2, 2015.

Interdiction of demonstrations in 2015

In 2015, two demonstrations against the Ball of the Academics were interdicted by the Vienna Police. Constitutional law scientist Bernd-Christian Funk says, unlike 2011 this interdictions are appropriate because the organizers didn't exclude violence. Additionally, Vienna Police pressed charges against NOWKR for the formation of a criminal organisation (Bildung einer kriminellen Vereinigung).

Spin-off alliances

In 2011, the new alliance The Anti-Right Offensive [Offensive gegen Rechts] was founded by several socialist and communist groups and organizations, mainly youth associations. It was a spin-off from NO-WKR and can be differentiated by its focus on Anti-fascism (instead of the primarily anti-capitalist motivation of NO-WKR).

In 2012, an even broader alliance under the name Setting an Example Now! [Jetzt Zeichen setzen!] was founded by the Austrian Federation of Unions, by three parties and by representatives from several religious groups, among them the Catholics, the Protestants and the Jews. As this alliance is also supported by the Social Democratic Party of Austria and The Greens, it is regarded as a mainstream effort to protest against the ball. The first demonstration of Jetzt Zeichen setzen! on the Heldenplatz (in front of the Hofburg Palace) on January 27, 2012, already attracted several thousand protesters. Speakers at their demonstrations are Holocaust survivors or former emigrants like Rudolf Gelbard and Dora Schimanko, as well as politicians from the Social Democrats and The Greens.