Generation Identity
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Simon Cox is in Austria where the authorities have launched an unprecedented operation against a new far right youth organisation, Generation Identity. They prosecuted members of the group including its leader, Martin Sellner, for being an alleged criminal organisation. They are currently appealing the judge's not guilty verdict. The Austrian group is at the heart of a new pan European movement that is vehemently opposed to Muslims and immigration. GI says it is not racist or violent. In Germany more than 100 offences have been committed by its members in just over a year. And the group's co leader in Britain stepped down after he was revealed to have a Neo Nazi past.
Reporter: Simon Cox Producer: Anna Meisel
Image: Martin Sellner demonstrating at Kahlenberg Vienna Credit: David Speier/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for listening to this podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:02.8 | If you like the program, there are lots more on the assignment website. |
| 0:06.3 | Pick a country, there's certain to be a story we've covered there, |
| 0:09.3 | and if we haven't, do let us know. In a university theatre in Vienna a unique plays underway, staged by refugees performing in German as a way of them integrating into Austrian life. |
| 0:29.0 | When suddenly, protesters storming. |
| 0:34.0 | They're from a far right youth group called Generation Identity. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Simon Cox and for this week's assignment on BBC World Service I'm in Austria |
| 0:46.0 | to find out more about this organization that's tactics have led to an unprecedented |
| 0:51.1 | challenge from the state. At the protest, Generation Identity Activists began |
| 0:56.6 | throwing around a liquid in the darkness and confusion. The performers like Emma, who'd fled from so-called Islamic state in Iraq |
| 1:05.0 | thought the liquid could be petrol. |
| 1:07.0 | We came from the Angsland. |
| 1:10.0 | We came from the land of fear. We thought they were going to kill us. In my |
| 1:16.4 | homeland it's just so much killing and dead people. So that's what we believed. |
| 1:21.6 | The liquid was actually fake blood. |
| 1:24.0 | It's typical of generation identities provocative stunts. |
| 1:28.0 | I visit the theatre where it took place to meet Bessima, who was on stage at the time. Short with flaming red hair |
| 1:36.3 | and deep brown eyes she fled from Iraq with her three children. |
| 1:41.2 | Were you scared? |
| 1:42.2 | Sallam, we're going to find out of this meeting. were you scared? Standing in the same spot right now is making me shiver because of all the bad memories. |
| 1:50.0 | I got scared because in my mind it's the same situation from Iraq to here. |
| 1:57.0 | I left Basra because it's unsafe. My brother got killed and my son was kidnapped for a while so we had to leave. |
... |
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