The extreme right is growing again in Austria. This is why

Despite having lost credibility among all but its most loyal support base after the 2019 Ibiza scandal, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) is as popular now as when it was last in power during the coalition government with the Austrian People’s Party (OVP). in 2017, according to surveys.

In 2020, the right-wing populist FPÖ polled at a dismal 11%. Today, according to polls, it is the most popular party in the Alpine Republic. What was once a party struggling to recover from a national scandal is now a leading contender for Austria’s chancellorship in the 2024 election, meaning another European domino could fall into populism and right-wing politics. .

During the regional elections in January, the FPÖ managed to come second in the country’s largest state, Lower Austria, forcing the ÖVP to accept a coalition. Several weeks later, he also won seats in the regional government of Salzburg, the richest state outside Vienna.

“Since Ibiza, it has been the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian war against Ukraine, current economic insecurities and immigration numbers that have provided fertile ground for a return.” Dr. Weisskircher, a political scientist at the Technical University of Dresden, told Euronews.

“Furthermore, the Social Democrats, currently the largest opposition party in the Austrian parliament, have had a terrible performance in recent years, which were marked by infighting rather than an effective opposition campaign.”

from the dead

The FPÖ began to again appeal to its support base as the truly “free” party during the pandemic, when the government began to restrict personal freedoms in the form of lockdowns, vaccines and other social restrictions.

At the time, the party was still recovering from the infamous Ibiza scandal of 2019, when Austria’s then-Vice Chancellor and FPÖ party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was caught on video obtaining political favors from Russian business contacts. Strache also signed a partnership agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party in 2016.

Apart from the Venga Boys’ song ‘Vamos a Ibiza’ reaching number one on the Austrian music charts, the scandal sank much of the FPÖ’s prospects for the foreseeable future. Strache resigned in disgrace and the coalition government dissolved shortly after focusing attention on the OVP’s Sebastian Kurz as Austria’s unimpeded chancellor.

But the global health crisis gave him his first real chance to recover. Every weekend, anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination and anti-freedom marches took place in the city center, with Austrian flags flying fervently back and forth.

Current FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl even denounced rumors that he had been secretly vaccinated against COVID in 2021.

The war in Ukraine put even more strain on the Austrian public’s relationship with the ruling party, as prices began to inflate and Austrian “neutrality” was tested with sanctions against Russia.

Then, after months of a corruption investigation, Kurz resigned from the chancellorship, two years after dissolving the coalition government, leaving the ÖVP holding the bag of a bad reputation and public speculation, further driving old supporters into the arms from an old love, the FPÖ.

Flirting too close to the right

The antics of the FPÖ can be seen as disturbingly unpleasant and often misguided.

During the run-up to the October 2020 Vienna mayoral elections, posters of political candidates lined the streets. That of the FPÖ candidate Dominik Nepp hung vertically and in the lower half showed a white woman screaming, clutching her face with her hand, while a menacing-looking dark-skinned man in a balaclava stood with a knife behind her.

The top half showed a happy white couple, one of them Nepp, with text reading: “With him, Vienna will be safe again,” and the other candidates “will put us in danger.”

This was just one of many posters throughout the city, displaying the same attitude towards Muslims, immigrants and anything that threatened traditional Austrian concepts of family. Nepp himself referred to the coronavirus as the “asylum seeker virus.”

Members of the FPÖ recently flew to Kabul, the capital of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are banned from higher education, to provide “the real picture” of the place. Their real objective was to obtain the release of a right-wing extremist and founder of a political party, now dissolved for being linked to National Socialism.

In July, members of the FPÖ were among several hundred far-right protesters at a march proclaiming “white ethnic power” and the goal of “protecting Austrianness.”

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Appealing to “people who feel confused”

Located along the Balkan migration route, in 2022 the country received the fourth highest number of asylum applications in the EU, and for a country of just under nine million inhabitants, migration has long been a predominant topic of conversation within Austrian politics.

“They (the FPÖ) attract people who feel confused by the complexity of the challenges we face, which include the coronavirus, Ukraine and economic challenges, and these people feel very insecure.” Professor Martin Kohanec, from the Department of Public Policy at the Central European University of Vienna, explained to Euronews why immigrants are “easy” targets for right-wing parties.

“The strategy of these types of parties that talk about these challenges present themselves as some type of threat, including migrants.”

Alexander Pollak, spokesman for the human rights organization SOS Mitmensch, claimed that the FPÖ was carrying out a “long-term racist campaign” against Muslims.

As Kickl moves towards chancellorship, EU could worry

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In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a live video address to the Austrian Parliament. As he began to thank Austria for its support for Ukraine, all 29 FPÖ members inside the chamber, including leader Herbert Kickl, abandoned banners reading “peace” and “neutrality.”

Kickl and party members have openly expressed their opposition to EU sanctions and their admiration for leaders such as Hungary’s Victor Orbán, with Kickl keen to use Austria’s veto power to block sanctions against Russia if elected as Volkskanzler (People’s Chancellor).

Italy, Poland, Hungary and recently Slovakia have seen populists take power. Even Germany’s far-right AfD party has seen its popularity rise under German Chancellor Scholz, and Austria represents another potential headache for Brussels.

Along with several other right-wing parties such as Germany’s AfD, Italy’s League and France’s Rassemblement National, the FPÖ is part of the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy Group which strengthens a right-wing minority group within the institution of the European Parliament. EU.

It is unclear whether the FPÖ will be able to maintain this popularity momentum ahead of the 2023 autumn elections, but with infighting affecting centrist parties, it may be a safer bet than others.

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Although Kickl remains less popular than the party, it seems clear that, based on past experiences of two coalition governments in 25 years, the FPÖ will not share power again.