Austria: Ultra-right extremists assault university rector during lecture

A lecture at a university in the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt was disrupted on 10 June by approximately 10 adherents of the ultra-right who burst into the lecture hall shouting with megaphones. Rector Oliver Vitouch told the Austrian Press Agency that one of them proceeded to strike him in the belly.

Vitouch told the group to leave, but they only did so after he called police. The rector attempted to detain one of the men, who struck him.

"I wanted to learn his identity, but that was apparently not to his liking," Vitouch said of the scuffle. The group involved is said to be part of the so-called "identitarian movement" in Europe.

German secret services consider that movement to be ultra-right and the Austrian secret services are of the same opinion. The Austrian authorities say the movement espouses "protecting" Europe from "Islamization" and from mass immigration and does its best to advocate for a nationalist, racist worldview, according to the Austrian newspaper Kurier.

Two months ago, so-called "identitarians" burst into an assembly hall at a university in Vienna to unfurl a banner reading "Multiculturalism Kills". There were approximately 700 people seated there at the time and the rioters spray-painted them with red paint.