“We will not be stopped by systemic parties or media!” Herbert Kickl, leader of the far right FPÖ party, shouted a fewer weeks ago during the festival in advanced Austrian Wels. Its tense rumblings enthused a crowd featuring red-and-white-red flags and pints with beer. After the Sunday parliamentary election, it seems that Kickl's threats have partially come true. FPÖ not only won, but besides won evidence 29.1% of the vote.
The second place was taken by the Austrian People's organization (ÖVP) with a score of 26.3%. The 3rd was the Social Democratic organization of Austria (SPÖ), earning 21.1 percent. At the same time, ÖVP scored a evidence failure and SPÖ a evidence mediocre score. The turnout was very advanced – almost 80 percent of eligible people started to turn to the urns. These were exceptional elections for Austria.
Mainstream parties are weakening, polarization is pushing people to urns, and the utmost right is increasing stronger – this is simply a pan-European trend to any extent. rather universal are besides the enemies indicated by Kickl in his tirades: “illegal migrants”, “world government” (i.e. the planet wellness Organization), and supporters of “gender madness” or “climate communism”. However, if you look at electoral demography, it turns out that the case of Austria is rather specific.
Triumph of the electorate from alpine villages
Young men and old conservatives, as is usually the case in Europe, are not a hot FPÖ electorate. Statistical voter of this party is 35–59 years old, is simply a female or a man and comes from a village, usually alpine. small wonder, then, that Herbert Kickl sees himself as a “people's chancellor”. Volkskanzler It's a word that is associated with mass support. And besides Adolf HitlerBecause that's what the Nazis called him.
Unlike most European utmost right-wing FPÖ is not a fresh organization either. It was formed in 1956 at the initiative of a erstwhile SS officer and ruled Austria twice as a coalition force. For the first time in the early 2000s, erstwhile its leader was charismatic Jörg Haider, which defined the activities of the SS as "a fight for freedom and democracy", and the migrants surviving in Austria wanted to force them to bear the signs "in visible places". The European Union then sanctioned Austria.
The FPÖ entered the government besides in 2017, at the summit of concerns about the alleged migration crisis. The ÖVP-FPÖ government broke up after 2 years as a consequence of a corruption scandal involving the then leader of the far right. There were tapes on which Heinz-Christian Strache agreed to the deal: contracts for Russian oligarchy in exchange for support for FPÖ.
The organization barely survived this scandal, but later strengthened in subsequent European crises, mobilising anti-vaccination, anti-immigrant, anti-European and anti-Ukrainian electorate. Commentators agree that Kickl's character played a key function in this revival. This fifty-five-year-old politician has been associated with FPÖ since 1995, starting with writing speeches to Haider, and creating electoral slogans for the organization (e.g.Mehr Mut für unser Wiener Blut – zu viel Fremdes tut niemanden gut“ More courage for Viennese blood is what makes me sick. ” He was at the centre of attention in the area of the pandemic with his unroasted tongue. Last year, he called president Alexander van der Bellen "a adequate mummy", who "became in Hofburg".
Differences between Austria and Germany
Numerous polls show that Austrians to the urns pushed primarily 3 subjects: migration, war in Ukraine and in a way the associated price. German AfD, as well as Austrian FPÖ, points to the emotions of these problems, but the rhetoric of the second is much sharper. In the Kickl campaign, he promised the creation of an "Austrian fortress" – a country closed to migrants in which there would be "a ban on political Islam" and a death penalty. AfD's engagement in the “remigration” plan, i.e. the deportation of refugees, took distant its voters, FPÖ gained on this slogan. In Germany there is besides (for now) no mention of almost 30% support for the far right at national level.
Why the difference? First of all, it seems from a different approach of both countries to the legacy of planet War II. While West Germany worked its part in it (even if not sufficiently thorough and not sufficiently permanent), Austria declared itself “the first victim of Hitler”. Austria's denazification was late and of a residual nature, and the cut-off from Nazi crimes was not accompanied by the abandonment of a radically coloured language. Hitleroid tirades against “systemic parties”, “the traitors of the people” or “the breaking of chains” – how proves “Der Standard” – this is not a prank of single politicians, it is the everydayness of FPÖ rhetoric under Kickl.
The sources of German and Austrian caution concerning Ukraine's reinforcement are besides somewhat different. The economies of both countries suffered from anti-Russian sanctions, which translated into advanced costs of living, but these similarities end. While German sympathy for Russia – as explained to me late by Reinhard Bingener and Markus Wehner – it is due to anti-Americanism and bad associations with the presence of German tanks in Russia, Austria is obsessed with its neutrality. In 1955, she promised it to the russian Union, staying on the western side of the Iron Curtain. It was not only the Austrians who, unlike the Germans, did not gotta think about their fathers in the Wehrmacht, but besides the Austrian business that developed wings on the bridge between the west and the east.
Stop pauperization
Kickl has won a immense victory, but there are many indications that he will not become Chancellor. FPÖ needs a coalition government to form, and current Chancellor and leader ÖVP Karl Nehammer ruled out “the creation of a government with individual who worships conspiracy theories”. president van der Bellen besides announced that he would not entrust this task to Kickl. It is possible that the FPÖ-ÖVP government will be created with another policy at the head. The alternate pursued by the Austrian mainstream is the FPÖ environment, the alleged sanitary cordon, or coalition government consisting of social democrats (SPÖ), chadeks (ÖVP) and liberals (Neos) or Greens.
But even if we can make specified a broad coalition against the far right, before Austria dark times. As in Germany or France (and in a sense Poland) a weak and conflict-stricken government would be formed, which would most likely contribute to further increase in the power of radicals. If the European mainstream does not want them in power, it must find a prescription to halt the pauperisation of the European mediate class, which is increasingly inclined to beat the weaker for the state of its wallets.
