Electoral comeback for Austrian anti-immigration party
Posted by admin978 on October 1, 2024 · Leave a Comment
The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) became the largest single party at Austria’s parliamentary election on Sunday, bouncing back from the scandal that destroyed its former leader Heinz-Christian Strache five years ago.
The FPÖ polled 1.4 million votes (28.9%) and won 57 seats, just ahead of the conservative ruling party ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) on 26.3%, and the social democratic SPÖ on 21.1%.
As has sometimes been the case in German regional parliaments, the ÖVP had been in coalition with the Greens, and the latter suffered the frequent fate of junior partners in coalitions: their vote collapsed from 13.9% to 8.2%.
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, who was interior minister in an earlier coalition government from 2017-19, will now enter negotiations with other parties, but it seems very unlikely that even after this success his party will be able to form a government. Their only realistic path to office would be in coalition with the ÖVP, and the latter has other options (though none of these seem likely to be stable).
To some extent the FPÖ’s success is to be welcomed because it is yet another reflection of Europe’s turn against mass immigration. FPÖ are longterm allies of the French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen – and regular readers will realise that this has both positive and negative connotations!
Like Le Pen, the FPÖ has succeeded in bringing anti-immigration politics into the mainstream. But this has also meant compromises that for some of us go well beyond “sensible nationalism” and cross the line into abandoning basic principles.
We shouldn’t forget that FPÖ has already been in coalition with the Austrian conservatives, from 2017 to 2019, when its then leader Strache was Vice-Chancellor (i.e. deputy prime minister). The party’s present leader Kickl was interior minister in that government. So when the FPÖ talk about immigration we should remember that their leader has already served as the equivalent of a UK Home Secretary for 16 months during 2017-19.
That coalition ended with the so-called “Ibiza Affair”, when Strache was taped apparently offering political favours (in exchange for cash) to someone he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. The tapes also revealed Strache speaking of his other dealings with Putinists as well as ‘right-wing’ Israelis.
After his disgrace, Strache resigned from the party he had once led and formed a tiny new party that has made little impact.
FPÖ has evidently now succeeded in escaping the shadow of the Strache scandal, no doubt helped by the fact that their conservative rivals (and ex-partners) have also been discredited: former Chancellor and ex-leader of the ÖVP, Sebastian Kurz, resigned after a corruption inquiry three years ago, and he received a suspended prison sentence earlier this year.
The electoral swing to FPÖ partly reflects former conservative voters abandoning the ÖVP, whether on the immigration issue, over corruption, or over its handling of Covid.
It’s interesting to note that in Austria, two issues that are at best electorally irrelevant or at worst electorally toxic in the UK – namely Covid dissidence/crankism and Putinism – don’t seem to have dented the FPÖ’s support and in some cases might even have helped them.
H&D readers will have very differing views on the FPÖ’s friendly approaches to both Russia and Israel.
One basic historical fact to bear in mind is that while in some ways FPÖ is a dissident force, in other ways it’s part of Austria’s political fabric dating back to the revolutionary mood of Europe in 1848.
At that time, central and eastern Europe contained a patchwork of kingdoms, duchies, and principalities, plus three great empires: Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian. One dominant force was not ‘Austria’ as it now exists, but the Habsburg Empire, aka ‘Austria-Hungary’.
When German nationalists such as the young composer Richard Wagner formed revolutionary movements in the 1840s seeking to create a German state, ‘Austrians’ were divided.
There was no ‘Austrian’ state: some were loyal to their Catholic roots above their essentially Germanic race/nationality/culture – and they retained those loyalties even after a German state was created a generation later in 1871. The simple way to see this is that these people and their ideological descendants became what’s now the conservative ÖVP.
Meanwhile those who saw themselves as Germans rather than Habsburg loyalists became known as national liberals. This is because the formation of Germany was intrinsically ‘liberal’ economically – in that it involved breaking down customs barriers between what had been separate principalities and kingdoms to create a unified German state.
That’s why we now see the paradox of the most ‘right-wing’ party in Austria having the name ‘Freedom Party’ and being in some ways ideologically ‘liberal’.
And of course the third force in Austrian politics was socialism – at one time including communists as well as various socialist / social democratic factions.
Post-1945 these traditions settled down into three broad strands. The ÖVP representing conservatism; SPÖ representing social democracy / socialism; and FPÖ representing ‘liberalism’ but with a strong residual tendency towards pan-Germanism, and therefore attracting the support of those who had been strongest supporters of union or Anschluss with Germany (briefly attained from 1938-45).
It’s this latter factor that will always make the left (and most Jews) hysterical about the FPÖ. However much FPÖ leaders kowtow to Israel and however close (financially and politically) they are to Vladimir Putin and his imperialist Russia (founded on ‘anti-nazi’ mythology), they will always be accused of being ‘nazis’ in disguise.
This is because today’s fake European ‘leaders’ fear any real Europe that is based on ties of blood rather than political contrivances and paper nationalities.
