MICHAEL MOORE ON THE NATURE OF THE THREAT FROM DONALD TRUMP
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
SEPTEMBER 21, 2018
https://truthout.org/video/michael-moore-democrats-fatal-mistake-was-not-taking-trump-seriously/
POLITICS & ELECTIONS
Michael Moore: Democrats’ Fatal Mistake Was Not Taking Trump Seriously
BY
Amy Goodman Democracy Now!
PUBLISHED
September 21, 2018
VIDEO – DEMOCRACY NOW MICHAEL MOORE “FAHRENHEIT 11/9” 47:12 MIN.
In July, 2016, Michael Moore wrote a column titled “Five Reasons Why Trump Will Win.” In it, Moore wrote, “Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: ‘PRESIDENT TRUMP.’” He went on to list the five reasons why Trump would be elected: Trump’s focus on the midwest, “The Last Stand of the Angry White Man,” “The Hillary Problem,” “The Depressed Sanders Vote” and what he called the “Jesse Ventura Effect” — people voting for Trump simply to disrupt the system. We talk to Michael Moore about his predictions and how Democrats failed to take Trump more seriously.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to our conversation with the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. His new film, out today, Fahrenheit 11/9. I spoke to him earlier this week.
AMY GOODMAN: In your film, you start with that remarkable day, but you actually start before. And you were talking about this way before. You wrote in July 2016, again before Trump was elected —
MICHAEL MOORE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — ”5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win”:https://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/. In it, you wrote “Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ’cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: PRESIDENT TRUMP.”
You went on to list the five reasons you believed Trump would be president: Trump’s focus on the Midwest, the last stand of the angry white man, the Hillary problem, the depressed Sanders vote, and what you call the Jesse Ventura effect — people voting for Trump simply to disrupt the system. You were predicting this well in advance. And you show anyone who says something otherwise in the corporate media. This moment of George Stephanopoulos and Keith Ellison is priceless.
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes, OK. First of all, I take no pleasure in being right. I never wanted to be more wrong when I wrote that. But I had just come back from the UK, where my last film, Where To Invade Next had just opened, and so I went and did press throughout the UK, in London, in Sheffield, ending up in Belfast, and a lot of crowds and theater screenings with the working class of the United Kingdom.
This was the week before Brexit, and I saw what I see and hear a lot in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Ohio and elsewhere, where people didn’t necessarily like or were in love with the idea of Brexit, but they loved being able to have a chance to go into the voting booth and throw a Molotov cocktail into the middle of a system that had left them broke and in despair.
And when we left the UK there just before the vote, we were all saying — my crew and friends — ”Wow, this just sounds like many parts of the United States, and it looks like Brexit’s going to pass.” Even though all the polls said that it wasn’t going to. We came back here and of course all the polls — Brexit did pass — and all of the polls here were saying that Hillary had it in the bag.
AMY GOODMAN: And the day that Brexit passed, Donald Trump flew into Scotland to push the sale of his golf course.
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And a young comedian stood up right before he spoke on this windswept precipice and said something like, “Donald Trump’s balls are available in the golf shop.” And he’s showing these red golf balls with swastikas on them.
LEE NELSON*: These are the new balls available from the clubhouse as part of the new Trump Turnberry range, and I forgot to hand them out before.
UNKNOWN: [gasp] That’s that comedian, isn’t it?
MICHAEL MOORE: There were people who were trying to warn everybody else to not treat this as a joke, to take Trump seriously. And so I immediately started — I wrote that piece that you just referred to, and I went on Bill Maher, and I told the audience there that Trump was going to win, and he was going to win by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the three electoral states that he won by. And I got booed. [laugh] I got booed on Bill Maher. People did not want to hear it.
And I said, “Look, I’m not saying it because I want that to happen. I’m saying it that we’d better realize they’re having the Democratic convention this week and they’re popping the champagne corks as if it’s a done deal.” Because everybody’s mindset then throughout August and September and October was that, “How could she lose, to this guy?” And in fact, she won. She won by three million votes. So that part, people had right. But I kept telling people, “Look, you’re not looking at the right picture here. You’re all liberal arts majors. You suck at math and geography. This is going to come down to the electoral college. Are you counting this?”
Yes, in those popular vote polls, she was ahead, but that’s unfortunately not the way the president gets picked. And because the Democratic party and others have led no fight to get rid of the electoral college since President Gore won in 2000 — you would think after that, people would go, “You know, this electoral college, I think it’s time for it to go.” [laugh] No.
Now, there have been good people that have got the national popular vote thing going and they have got it passed in a lot of states. If you haven’t heard of this, go on nationalpopularvote.com. We have to get enough states to pass this law. The law says — can I go into this? Can I just explain this? The law says that if you pass [inaudible] in your state that your state’s electors will go to whoever wins the popular vote. But we’ve got to get enough states where we get the 270 electoral votes. We’ve got enough states now that have passed this where we are up to 172 electoral votes. So we just need enough states that have 98 electoral votes left, and then that’s that, and now the winner who actually wins the popular vote will be the president of the United States. So there’s a possibility of fixing this without having to go through the machinations of changing the Constitution.
So, to get back to what happened in the summer of ’16, I couldn’t get anywhere, and I couldn’t convince Democratic Party leadership types. I couldn’t get people who vote Democratic to listen to me. I started to feel that I must have communication skill issues, because somehow I’m not getting this through to people: “You’re not taking Trump seriously.”
AMY GOODMAN: And you were talking about the blue states that —
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — that Obama had won, that you thought Trump was going to win.
MICHAEL MOORE: Right, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Ohio and your home state of Michigan.
MICHAEL MOORE: And Pennsylvania, right. And I just couldn’t get anybody to listen. Nobody thought it could happen, because — ”Are you kidding? He’s such an idiot. He’s crazy.” I said, “That’s why he’s going to win. You don’t understand. He’s an incredible performance artist.”
People loved The Apprentice. I mean, people between the Hudson River and Interstate 5 love The Apprentice. They love him on it. Because here’s what he did every week. Whoever the biggest jerk was on the show that week got to hear, “You’re fired.” And everybody works with that jerk. [laugh] Wherever you work, there is that one jerk. And the cathartic feeling you got watching The Apprentice, of hearing somebody fire that jerk — people loved that show, and they loved Trump and they loved hearing him say, “You’re fired.”
I couldn’t get anybody to listen to this because on the coasts, within the bubble, within the bubble of the Democratic Party infrastructure, they don’t watch The Apprentice. They also don’t watch The Bachelorette either, by the way, which is a great show. I’m just saying [laugh] that I pay attention to what my fellow Americans are watching and listening to.
AMY GOODMAN: So where does Gwen Stefani fit into the picture?
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, Gwen Stefani — this is what I have known from the beginning of this, is that Trump found out — he was in negotiations for re-upping The Apprentice with NBC and he found out that Gwen Stefani, who is one of the stars of The Voice, another show you are not watching — [laugh]
AMY GOODMAN: You can’t say that about me, but you’re looking at the audience right now when you say that.
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes. I’m [inaudible] the entire audience, the people watching right now who know that they don’t watch The Voice or The Apprentice. Well, you can’t watch it anymore; that’s one off the air. Anyways, he found out that somebody else was getting paid more than him on NBC. And not just somebody else — can I say it? — a woman. A woman was being paid more than Donald J. Trump. And that, you know, makes him go — like this.
So, he decides [laugh] that he’s going to show NBC. He contacts another network to put them in competition for each other for The Apprentice and then he comes up with this idea of holding an announcement. Not for real; just it’s going to be a pretend thing. He is going to hold an announcement announcing he’s running for president, and he’s going to have a couple rallies, and he’s going to show these networks just how much the American people love him. Out there in that vast, wide swath of land.
And so that’s the big plan. But then — [laugh] so he comes down the escalator, makes the announcement and goes off the rails, and starts calling Mexicans rapists and criminals and murderers and whatever else. And a few days later —
AMY GOODMAN: And the people cheering?
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes. Well, the people are cheering — people are cheering — if you’ve seen that escalator — I think by now, most people have seen the escalator, coming down with Melania. The people cheering down there are extras, and he has paid extras $50 apiece to be there in Trump t-shirts and holding signs and all of that. It’s all fake. It’s all fake. It’s as fake as the gold-plated escalator he’s coming down. It’s gold-plated, folks; it’s not real gold. He comes down, he says this about Mexicans and within days, NBC fires him.
DONALD TRUMP: They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume are good people.
MICHAEL MOORE: It goes completely against what he thinks is going to happen, and now they don’t want him at all, and now he has lost his job because of his racism. And he has already booked and paid for these two events. I believe one was in Phoenix and one was in Mobile, Alabama. They are paid for, they have rented the arenas or the auditoriums or whatever. And now, this is the part that I’m not privy to his conversations with Don Jr. and Eric. Although I usually am, but not this one.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to ask you about your relationship with Jared, but that’s coming.
MICHAEL MOORE: OK, I’m ready for it. I’m here. This is full transparency.
AMY GOODMAN:[laugh]
MICHAEL MOORE: But they decide, “We’ve already paid for it. Let’s go and do the rallies.” So they go and do the rallies. And we show in the film the look on Trump’s face. There’s 40,000 people in that stadium in Mobile, Alabama, and he cannot believe it. I mean, he has never been in front of 40,000 people. He has never had that experience, like you and I have. [laugh]
But there is something when you stand on a stage and there is a lot of people — OK, I’ll — it happened to me at the University of Florida. They changed me from the auditorium into the basketball arena. It had never happened before. And they were people just coming to hear me talk, and there’s 14,000 people in the arena. When you step on that stage [laugh] and 14,000 people are cheering, you’re like, “Wow. [laugh] I’m glad I didn’t listen to my guidance counselors.”
And so you see the look, though. I show the look in his face in my movie. You see the epiphany taking place in his head. It’s like, “Well, maybe running for president isn’t such a bad idea. To hell with NBC and The Apprentice.” And he decides to actually go ahead with it.
Remember early on where pundits and people were saying, “There’s no campaign apparatus. There’s nobody in charge. There’s no place — how do you donate to the campaign?” Right? It was all that, “He’s not really running. He’s not really wanting to do the job. This is just some kind of stunt.” I mean, it was kind of obvious to everybody. But I actually show how the stunt got launched.
And then we end up being the losers for it in the long run, because he decides he likes it. He loves these crowds, and they just keep getting bigger and the rest is history.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have people like Les Moonves, now disgraced, who is saying things like, “It’s great for us. It just may not be great for America.”
LES MOONVES: Who would have thought that this circus would come to town? But, you know — it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. That’s all I gotta say.
AUDIENCE: [laugh]
MICHAEL MOORE: Les Moonves, who was the head of CBS, and Jeff Zucker, who is the head of CNN, both kind of copped to the fact that they were putting him on the air a lot for free. He didn’t have to pay for any of this. It’s why Hillary — if you look at what she spent, she spent — well, he spent about $300,000 — I’m sorry, $300 million. She spent almost a billion on her campaign. He didn’t have to spend a billion, because he got all this free airtime from the mainstream networks. And in the film, I show Moonves and Zucker yukking it up over how great it is that Donald Trump is running, because it was very good for business and they sold a lot more ads.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have the red carpet treatment from the networks. Wall-to-wall coverage of his speeches. Often — I mean, the other candidates, like for example Bernie Sanders, got nothing — nothing like this.
MICHAEL MOORE:Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Even though he had some of the largest crowds of any of the candidates, Republican and Democrat.
MICHAEL MOORE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And I want to go back to that moment of George Stephanopoulos and Keith Ellison, the congressman from Minneapolis.
MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah. So Keith Ellison is on the Sunday morning show that George has onABC. And Keith says, very seriously, “You should take Trump seriously. He could end up leaving the Republican Party ticket.” And George Stephanopoulos just starts laughing hysterically and our good friend Katrina over at The Nation, she’s there on the panel. She’s laughing. I mean, everybody was laughing. People watching this show were probably laughing. I mean, nobody really took it seriously because it just — that is not — ”A lot of bad things can happen in this country;That is not going to happen.”
REP.KEITH ELLISON: This man has got some momentum, and we’d better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: [laugh]
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: [laugh] I know you don’t believe that, but I want to go on to Maggie [laugh] [inaudible]
MAGGIEHA BERMAN:Sorry to laugh.
MICHAEL MOORE:But a few people like Keith Ellison were trying to warn people, “You’ve got to take anybody seriously when they say something like this.” And I think now, after all this time, we realize that Donald Trump is always lying and he is always telling the truth. And you have to be able to operate on both levels with him.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, when he says, “I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it,” you know that he’s not going to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, I hope, but you know he could get away with it. [laugh] I mean, both are true. And it’s always that way with him. So, I pay close attention to him when he says things that sound crazy and you think he’s just being crazy. I always go, “Well, you know, he may mean that.”
I mean, even in the film, when he says that about, “We’re not going to arm teachers” — you know, after Parkland, Florida — ”We’re not going to arm teachers,” and then within two seconds, he goes, “Well maybe 20 percent of them.” And then two seconds later — ”It could be 40 percent. It could be all — ” [laugh] He just — it’s like he says one thing that could be the truth, but he switches it up within seconds. This happens all the time. He’ll switch something up the same day, or within a day or two.
Part of that process — and this is the evil genius of Trump — is that he knows how to keep, especially liberals, all scatterbrained, and not knowing — ”Well, what — what’s he — what’s going on? What? Wait a minute. He said that. But no, he said that. No, he said that.” Like when people say something, we take it literally. He knows he can just say stuff, get everybody discombobulated and he becomes the master distractor. He knows how to get people off the topic and on to something else so that we won’t really be paying attention to what he’s really up to.
AMY GOODMAN: Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. His new film Fahrenheit 11/9 is out today. We will be back with more of Moore in a minute.
[Music Break]
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Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's "Meet the Press."
LEE NELSON* -- STAGE NAME FOR SIMON BRODKIN
Simon Brodkin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simon Brodkin
Born September 1977 (age 40–41)[1]
Education University College School
Alma mater University of Manchester
Notable works and roles Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder
Lee Nelson's Well Good Show
Lee Nelson's Well Funny People
Website leenelson.com
Simon Benjamin Brodkin (born September 1977) is an English comedian, performing both on the stand-up circuit and in comedy television series. He is best known for playing a cheerful chav character* called Lee Nelson, but also performs as other comedy characters. Performing solo stand-up since 2004, he has also written for and appeared on the television shows Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder in 2009, Lee Nelson's Well Good Show in 2010 and Lee Nelson's Well Funny People in 2013.
Brodkin is known for taking part in pranks as his characters at public events, heckling public figures such as Sepp Blatter, Donald Trump and Theresa May.
BRITISH SLANG HAS ALWAYS MYSTIFIED ME. OF COURSE, IN THE USA WE HAVE WORDS LIKE "DOOFUS," "GOONYBIRD," MEANING PEOPLE WHO ARE MENTALLY UNSOUND OR OFTEN "INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGED." HERE IS A PRETTY LENGTHY DISSERTATION ON THE WORD "CHAV." LIKE MOST TRUE SLANG, IT LOOKS AS THOUGH NOBODY REALLY KNOWS THE DERIVATION OF IT. IT'S NEW, THOUGH, OR THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSING IT IS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13626046
Magazine
Why is 'chav' still controversial?
3 June 2011
A new book claims the word "chav" is helping to reignite class war. The journalist Polly Toynbee calls it "the vile word at the heart of fractured Britain". Recently a peer caused a kerfuffle when she tweeted about being stuck in "chav-land". So almost a decade after its emergence, is chav really the most divisive word in Britain, asks Tom de Castella.
For some it has been a satisfying label to pin on Burberry check-wearing louts. But for others, it's a nasty, coded attack on the working class.
And for some commentators the word chav is now at the heart of Britain's obsession with class.
There has been much discussion over the origin of the term. The Romany word chavi - meaning child - was recorded in the 19th Century. Others argue it's from "Chatham average", a disparaging reference to the inhabitants of the Kent town.
There have always been regional labels equivalent to chav - skangers, spides, charvers, scallies and neds, respectively in Ireland, Northern Ireland, North East England, North West England and Scotland. But chav has somehow scaled regional barriers to become a national term of abuse.
When did 'chav' take off?
The OED lists the first reference as a Usenet forum in 1998
First recorded use in newspaper in 2002
By 2004 word was in common currency
Driven by websites like Chavscum and Chavtowns, and soon picked up by the mainstream media, the word has also mutated into "chavtastic", "chavsters", "chavette", "chavdom".
There are plenty of people for whom the word is harmless. Daily Telegraph blogger James Delingpole argues it's merely an updating of "oik".
But more left-leaning commentators have seen it as shorthand for bashing the poor. In 2008 the Fabian Society urged the BBC to put it on their list of offensive terms.
"This is middle class hatred of the white working class, pure and simple," wrote Tom Hampsen, the society's editorial director. He also called on the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to take this kind of class discrimination seriously.
Image copyrightOTHER
Image caption
The use of the term has grown alongside concern about anti-social behaviour
But last week a Lib Dem peer on that very commission caused controversy by using the term on twitter: "Help. Trapped in a queue in chav-land! Woman behind me explaining latest Eastenders plot to mate, while eating largest bun I've ever seen," Baroness Hussein-Ece tweeted.
Her comment appalled the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee who compared it to two of the most serious racial insults, noting that chav is seen as "acceptable class abuse by people asserting superiority over those they despise".
Now a new book - Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class - argues the word is a coded attack on the poor. "As inequality has widened it's a way of people saying that the people at the bottom deserve to be there," says Owen Jones, the book's author.
The situation is complicated by the decline in the number of people identifying themselves as working class. A survey in March this year by research firm Britainthinks, suggested 71% of people define themselves as middle class.
"I saw the 'working class' tag used as a slur, equated with other class-based insults such as 'chav'," wrote researcher Deborah Mattinson.
A belief has grown that the aspirational "decent" working class has become middle class, Jones argues. According to this narrative, what is left behind is a "feckless rump" housed on estates, living off benefits or working in low status jobs at supermarkets, hairdressers or fast food outlets.
Where did the word come from?
Lexicographer Susie Dent
It's likely that chav originates in the Romany word "chavi", recorded from the middle of the 19th Century.
In the 20th Century it was prominent in Kent, used among Chatham builders in the same way as mate. "Chatham average" is probably a later rationalisation.
Like many insults it's short and punchy. Its brevity lends itself easily to spin-offs, such as "'chavtastic", "chavsters", "chavette", "chavdom".
This century there is a new lexicon of tribal vocabulary that draws on "us and them" and the idea of a "peasant" underclass.
There is a long list of similar regional examples - skangers, spides, charvers, and neds, for the uneducated, lower-class, and vulgarly-dressed.
For a while it seemed like it might lose its sting. Some fashion houses were even rumoured to be contemplating using the term for a new line.
But the bite behind the caricature has persisted - the label is being used as a "catch-all" for people of a particular social class.
That view has been reinforced by "grotesque" sketches about chavs written by public school educated comedians like David Walliams and Matt Lucas, Jones says. A 2006 survey by YouGov suggested 70% of TV industry professionals believed that Vicky Pollard was an accurate reflection of white working class youth.
But Delingpole rejects Jones's analysis. "The left loves this constituency of the deserving poor, honest people who would dearly love to get a job if the system would only allow them to."
Chav for Delingpole is both a term of abuse for an "underclass" who won't work and also a wider term similar to how "yob" was used in the '70s. "It's a young person in their teens or 20s. It covers a multitude of characteristics. It's not even exclusively used about white people."
For the tabloids, the word is associated with loud or aggressive behaviour. Lottery winner Michael Carroll, the footballer Wayne Rooney, ex-glamour model Jordan, and Cheryl Cole have all been celebrated as "chav royalty". In 2005 Cole told Marie Claire: "I'm proud to be a chav if by that you mean working class made good."
Everyone's missing the point, argues Labour MP Stephen Pound. The term chav just shows how jealous middle Britain is about working class people having fun.
"Chav is an utterly misunderstood term. It is used in envy by the lily livered, privileged, pale, besuited bank clerk who sees people dressed up to the nines and going to the West End." It's no different, he argues to the Teddy Boys or Mods, youth style movements about asserting individual identity and confidence.
Mocking chavs' perceived bad taste and excess has become a popular sport.
In 2006 the Sun reported that Prince William and his fellow officers at Sandhurst dressed in chav fancy dress to celebrate finishing their first term. According to the paper, the future king "donned a loose-fitting top and bling jewellery then added an angled baseball cap and glare to complete his menacing lookalike of Lotto lout Michael Carroll".
Image copyrightPA
Image caption
Cheryl Cole used the term to indicate working-class-made-good in 2005
Whatever the complicated arguments over class, there is always a suspicion for some that the word represents contempt for the "other".
"What makes Britain so hard to love is this term 'good taste'. When what they mean is 'my taste'," notes Pound.
Delingpole says chav is an acceptable word in polite society. "Of course you shouldn't worry about using it. All that happens when you put a word on the prohibited list is that another equally offensive one comes in to fill the gap."
Jones cannot even accept the word as a demarcator of taste. "If you mean bling then say bling," he says. The word chav "is deeply offensive" and should no longer be permitted as a smokescreen for class hatred. Jones disapproves of the word "toff", but asserts it is far less wounding as it mocks the powerful rather than the poor.
It's common practice these days to try to reclaim offensive terms, "queer" and "slut" being notable examples. But this is not the way to deal with the word chav, Jones says.
Ten years after it started filtering into the national consciousness, this term continues to be seen through the prism of Britain's complex class attitudes.
ON MODERN-DAY FASCISM
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45572411
Stories
Martin Sellner: The new face of the far right in Europe
By Simon Cox and Anna Meisel
BBC News
20 September 2018
PHOTOGRAPH -- In his T-shirt, skinny jeans and sharply styled haircut, Martin Sellner is the European far right's newest poster boy. The group he leads in Austria has attracted huge publicity. However, Sellner's insistence that his movement is non-racist and non-violent doesn't have everyone convinced. GETTY IMAGES
In April 2016, hundreds of people sat inside the University of Vienna's theatre watching The Suppliants, a play performed by asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. And then the stage invasion began.
Members of a far-right group called Generation Identity (GI) rushed in, unfurling a banner calling the audience hypocrites and throwing fake blood over some of them. The performers screamed, fearing they were under attack. There were scuffles as some in the audience began shouting "Nazis raus" or "Nazis out" and tried to eject the protesters.
Ima was one of the performers. She had fled Mosul in Iraq when it was taken over by the so-called Islamic State group. "We came from the land of fear," she says. And now, in the darkness and confusion, she was scared again.
"We thought they were going to kill us. In my homeland it's just so much killing and dead people so that's what we believed."
The young man who leads GI in Austria plays down the incident. "I actually don't think people were really traumatised," he says. "I don't know anybody who had a severe trauma or a medical condition."
His name is Martin Sellner, and with his striking haircut, fashionable skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses, he looks like a typical style-conscious 29-year-old. Like many others of his generation, he can normally be found staring into the lens of a mobile phone - but in Sellner's case, it's typically to deliver a monologue about the evils of multiculturalism and how Muslims want to take over Europe.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Sellner on a torch-lit march near Vienna in September 2017
He is often joined in his videos on YouTube by his fiancee, Brittany Pettibone, an alt-right vlogger and conspiracy theorist. Her posts about a so-called "white genocide" and a paedophile ring connected to Hillary Clinton led the Anti-Defamation League to place her on its list of hate groups.
Earlier this year Sellner and Pettibone were both banned from entering the UK. The Home Office said that when "the purpose of someone's visit to this country is to spread hatred, the Home Office can and will stop them entering Britain".
Sellner isn't just GI's leader in Austria. He's also a poster boy for the Europe-wide Identitarian movement, which is fiercely opposed to Muslim migrants - claiming that they threaten Europe's identity and will eventually replace the indigenous populations. The movement began in France in 2012 and has expanded to nine countries including Germany, Italy and recently the UK. It doesn't have many members but gets publicity through confrontational and expensive stunts.
In the summer of 2017, GI raised over £150,000 through crowdfunding to charter a boat in the Mediterranean to target non-governmental organisations that patrol the sea to rescue migrants in peril. GI said it would arrest illegal migrants and sink their boats - its campaign received the backing of a neo-Nazi website, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and a leading American white supremacist.
It didn't quite go to plan, though. GI's boat was detained and the captain was arrested, accused of having illegal Sri Lankan refugees on board and false documents. They were all later released.
A few months later, GI paid for a red helicopter to land on the crisp white snow of the French Alps. Flanked by 100 activists from across Europe, a massive poster was laid out telling migrants to go home. This stunt cost more than £50,000.
But the organisation's actions in Austria have landed it in deep trouble.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Supporters of Sellner confront anti-fascists at Speaker's Corner, London
The Austrian authorities think that actions like the protest at the University of Vienna theatre and Generation Identity's accompanying rhetoric amount to incitement of hatred against Muslims, foreigners and refugees. It's why they have taken the unprecedented step of charging GI with being a criminal group, rather than the non-governmental organisation it says it is.
The Austrian prosecutor compiled evidence from stunts GI carried out in the past two years. These included the targeting of a lecture at Klagenfurt University, a small campus set amidst the jagged mountains and cool lakes of Carinthia. Identitarians disrupted a talk on refugees and integration, unfurling a banner while a man with a megaphone barked at* a shocked audience.
Enis Husic, a softly spoken student from Bosnia, challenged them that day. "It was very tense and aggressive. I could really sense that," he says. "At the time I wasn't scared but I was very scared afterwards once it was all over."
The fresh-faced rector, Prof Oliver Vitouch, was looking out of his office window when he saw protesters and rushed to confront them. He was hit by one of them as they tried to escape. "Although they usually say they're completely free of violence and completely peaceful, it's pretty clear to me that the readiness to violence is obviously there," he says.
For years, GI was dismissed by its critics as a bunch of wannabe hipster Nazis - but Natasha Strobl, an author and researcher, has long thought their actions and rhetoric pose a threat to the country.
Image caption
Natasha Strobl
"They paint refugees as invaders, as dangerous soldiers of Islam who come here to destroy Europe. It really destroys society," she says. As a result of this rhetoric, she adds, "people get aggressive, people harass Muslim women on the streets".
Martin Sellner grew up in an affluent suburb outside of Vienna. In his teenage years, Strobl says, he was drawn to the nationalist fringe in Austria. "He was part of the neo-Nazi scene and the most well-known figure of the neo-Nazis, Gottfried Kussel, was his mentor," she says.
At the time Kussel had already been to prison for trying to revive Nazism. He was arrested again in 2011 and later jailed for nine years for continued far-right activity. It was after this, in 2012, that Martin Sellner set up the Identitarians in Austria.
Image copyrightSEAN GALLUP
Image caption
Sellner at Europa Nostra, a GI gathering in Dresden, German, in August 2018
We meet him inside their offices in a scrappy apartment in the centre of Vienna. It's fairly basic apart from a room full of cameras, laptops and lights where they make and edit their videos. Sellner is relaxed and confident; the day before he had been acquitted, along with 16 other GI members and supporters, of belonging to a criminal organisation.
"I really think we were vindicated and I hope that this verdict will also have an effect beyond this case and beyond Austria in the rehabilitation of GI," he says, sipping from a glass of sparkling water.
The prosecutor is appealing against the acquittal and is investigating GI's finances.
GI likes to stress it's not violent or racist, but what of Martin Sellner's past?
He admits he was involved with neo-Nazis when he was younger because, he says, "there was no alternative. There was no right-wing patriotic movement".
When asked bluntly: "So you weren't a racist?" his fluency falters.
"I don't think I was."
Find out more -- Simon Cox's documentary Generation Identity, produced by Anna Meisel, is broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents at 11:00 on Thursday 20 September 2018. Listen again on iPlayer
For transmission times on the BBC World Service, click here
When pressed further - "Surely you'd know if you were a racist?" - he still sounds a little unsure. "I wouldn't say I was. It was a very ambiguous thing. I would say I was like a conservative, patriot."
Earlier this year, before he was banned from the UK, he was secretly filmed by undercover reporters during a trip to London. He was captured using a racist and offensive term. He says it was a genuine mistake. "I really thought that 'Paki' was a completely normal term. If I would have known it, that it was considered a racial slur, I would have definitely not used it."
"Come off it," we tell him. "You come to the UK a lot - the idea you wouldn't know it was offensive isn't believable."
He once again insists he didn't know and apologises. "If I insulted anybody with this word, I absolutely say sorry and I will never use it again."
GI's actions often target events which promote integration - because, he says, he doesn't believe in this. The Muslims who come to Europe must do more, he says - they must assimilate.
"Assimilation means that you completely identify with the country, the nation, its history," he says - otherwise, he warns, "it's treason, because you're betraying this community… because this community is giving you open hands, taking you in and then you have to put the interests of this community in front of your own."
Standing in his way are anti-fascist campaigners like Jerome Trebing.
Publicly, Sellner's group says it is not violent or racist. But Trebing has worked with activists who have gone into meetings GI holds in isolated rural areas.
As he sips sweet tea in a Turkish cafe in Vienna's multicultural 10th district, a place that GI abhors, Trebing says: "There is some really hard stuff going on. There are people who are allowed to say racist stuff, anti-Semitic stuff and there is no-one who is saying there is no place for it here."
According to Trebing, in these meetings GI supporters said it wasn't just Muslims who wanted to replace the local population, but Jews too.
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GI's leader denies it has any bias against the Jewish population. He wants to expand the Identitarian movement to other European nations. In Austria, he says, "We have a right-wing government. And we want to push for that everywhere in Europe, we really want to change public discourse."
The nationalist, anti-immigration Freedom Party joined Austria's coalition government last year.
Sellner's ban on visiting the UK has made it harder for him to spread his message to potential supporters, but online he is still very active - although he has been banned from Facebook.
In mainland Europe he is free to lead GI's continued aggressive, provocative targeting of Muslims.
Besima is one of those who have been on the receiving end of GI activity.
Sitting in her faded apartment drinking sweet tea with freshly made lamb koftas, she describes how she was performing with other asylum seekers at the University theatre in Vienna when GI stormed in.
Her son Mohammed was on stage with her too and she said the experience had traumatised him. "He has refused to go out, he is still at home, saying 'If I go out something bad will happen to me.'"
Mohammed had been kidnapped in Iraq, which is one of the reasons she originally fled Basra with her three children. When she arrived two years ago she felt welcomed and accepted but feels the atmosphere towards migrants is changing.
"I thought I found happiness and peace here," she says, "but I feel it's not safe any more."
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BARKED AT* --
Identitarians disrupted a talk on refugees and integration, unfurling a banner while a man with a megaphone barked at* a shocked audience.
EITHER THIS IS A VERY ODD USE OF LANGUAGE, OR A BIZARRE TURN OF MIND. THE SPEAKER PROBABLY MEANT SOMETHING LIKE “A CARNIVAL BARKER.” I WISH I KNEW WHAT THIS SCENE ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE. I'M IMAGINING A MAN WITH A MEGAPHONE MAKING RAUCOUS DOGGIE SOUNDS. A VIDEO WOULD BE NICE.
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