Numerous polls show that Austrians have been pushed to the polls primarily by three topics: migration, the war in Ukraine and high prices. If the European mainstream doesn't want radicals in power, it must find a recipe to stop the pauperization of Europe's middle class.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
"We won't be stopped by the systemic parties or the media!" - shouted Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right FPÖ party, a few weeks ago at a festival in the Upper Austrian city of Wels. His nervous hooting enraged a crowd equipped with red-white-and-red flags and mugs of beer. After Sunday's parliamentary elections, it looks like Kickel's threats have partially come true. The FPÖ not only won, but won a record 29.1 percent of the vote.
The Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) came in second with 26.3 percent, followed by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) in third with 21.1 percent, with the ÖVP scoring a record loss and the SPÖ a record poor result. At the same time, turnout was very high, with nearly 80 percent of eligible voters going to the polls. This was an exceptional election for Austria.
Mainstream parties are weakening, polarization is pushing people to the polls, and the far right is growing in strength - a pan-European trend to some extent. The enemies Kickl points to in his tirades are also fairly universal: they are "illegal migrants," "world government" (i.e., the World Health Organization), and proponents of "gender madness" or "climate communism." However, if one looks at electoral demographics, it turns out that the Austrian case is quite specific.
Triumph of the electorate from the Alpine countryside
The core of the FPÖ electorate is not young men or old conservatives, as is usually the case in Europe. The statistical voter of the party is 35-59 years old, female or male, and comes from a rural, usually alpine village. It is no surprise, then, that Herbert Kickl sees himself as a "people's chancellor." Volkskanzler is a term that connotes mass support. And also Adolf Hitler, because that is what the Nazis referred to him as.
Unlike most European far-right parties, the FPÖ is also not a new party. It was founded in 1956 on the initiative of a former SS officer and has ruled Austria three times as a coalition force. The first time was in the 1980s, in coalition with the social-democratic SPÖ, and later, in the early 2000s, when its leader was the charismaticJörg Haider, who described the SS's activities as "a fight for freedom and democracy," and wanted to force migrants living in Austria to wear signs "in conspicuous places." The European Union then placed Austria under sanctions.
The FPÖ also entered government in 2017, at the height of unrest over the so-called "migrant crisis. The ÖVP-FPÖ government fell apart after two years following a corruption scandal involving the then-leader of the far right. Tapes surfaced in which Heinz-Christian Strache agreed to a deal: contracts for a Russian oligarch in exchange for support for the FPÖ.
The party barely survived the affair, but later strengthened on subsequent European crises, mobilizing an anti-vaccine, anti-immigrant, anti-European and anti-Ukrainian electorate. Commentators agree that the figure of Kickel played a key role in this revival. This fifty-five-year-old politician has been associated with the FPÖ since 1995, having started out as a speechwriter for Haider, and also created election slogans for the party (e.g., "mehr Mut für unser Wiener Blut - zu viel Fremdes tut niemanden gut," meaning "more courage for Vienna's blood - strangers make me sick"). He came into the spotlight around pandemonium thanks to his unspoken tongue. Last year, he called President Alexander van der Bellen a "senile mummy" who "languishes in the Hofburg."
Differences between Austria and Germany
Numerous polls show that Austrians have been pushed to the polls primarily by three topics: migration, the war in Ukraine and the related high cost of living. Both Germany's AfD and Austria's FPÖ are scoring on the emotions associated with these issues, but the rhetoric of the latter is much harsher. In the campaign, Kickl promised the creation of "fortress Austria" - a state closed to migrants, with a "ban on political Islam" and the death penalty. The AfD's entanglement with the "remigration" plan, i.e. deportation of refugees, took away its voters, the FPÖ gained from the slogan. In Germany, there is also (for now) no question of the nearly 30 percent support for the far right nationwide.
Why the difference? Primarily, it seems, from the two countries' different approaches to the legacy of World War II. While West Germany has worked through its role in it (even if not thoroughly or sustainably enough), Austria declared itself "Hitler's first victim." Austria's denazification was late and residual in nature, and the dissociation from Nazi crimes was not accompanied by the abandonment of radically colored language. Hitleroid tirades against "systemic parties," "traitors to the people" or about "breaking the chains" - as the daily "Der Standard" proves - are not the antics of individual politicians, but the everyday rhetoric of the FPÖ under Kickel's leadership.
The sources of German and Austrian caution about arming Ukraine are also somewhat different. The economies of both countries have suffered from anti-Russian sanctions, which has translated into a high cost of living, but that is where the similarities end. While Germany's sympathy for Russia - as Reinhard Bingener and Markus Wehner recently explained to me in detail - stems from its ingrained anti-Americanism and bad associations with the presence of German tanks on Russian soil, Austria is obsessed with its neutrality. In 1955 it promised it to the Soviet Union, thus remaining on the western side of the Iron Curtain. This benefited not only the Austrians, who, unlike the Germans, did not have to reflect on their fathers in the Wehrmacht, but also Austrian business, which spread its wings on the bridge between West and East.
Stop pauperization
Kickl won a huge victory, but there are many indications that he will not become chancellor. The FPÖ needs a coalition partner to form a government, and current Chancellor and ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer has ruled out "forming a government with someone who worships conspiracy theories." President van der Bellen further announced that he would not entrust Kickl with the task. It is possible that an FPÖ-ÖVP government will be formed with another politician at the head. The alternative, which the Austrian mainstream is pushing for, is to surround the FPÖ with a so-called cordon sanitaire, i.e. a coalition government consisting of the Social Democrats (SPÖ), the Christian Democrats (ÖVP) and the Liberals (Neos) or the Greens.
But even if such a broad coalition can be formed against the far right, dark times lie ahead for Austria. As in Germany or France (and, to some extent, Poland), a weak and conflict-ridden government would emerge, with the result that the radicals' power would probably increase further. If the European mainstream doesn't want them in power, it needs to find a recipe for stopping the pauperization of Europe's middle class, which is increasingly willing to bludgeon the weak for the state of their wallets.
