Vienna Waltzes Toward the Right as Freedom Party Scores a Victory, According To First Projections

It isn’t just in the Middle East that the times are changing, and rapidly. A clear win Sunday for Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, FPÖ, spells a conservative swing in the heart of Europe that looks to be fêted by some and watched apprehensively by others. The forecast after the closing of the last polling stations in the capital, Vienna, pointed to the victory for the FPÖ, with more than 29 percent of the votes. The conservative Austrian People’s Party, or ÖVP, trailed just behind with 26 percent. In the final polls before the election, the two were neck and neck.In theory, the FPÖ could still end up behind the ÖVP, but it is more likely that the FPÖ won the election for the first time. Reaction from some quarters was swift. In a statement, the leader of the anti-immigrant Dutch Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, said “The Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, Czech Republic and today Austria. We are winning. Times are changing.” He added, “Identity, sovereignty, freedom and no more illegal immigration/asylum is what tens of millions of Europeans long for.”The win for FPÖ is a triumph for 55-year-old party leader, Herbert Kickl, who has pushed Europe’s migrant crisis to the center stage of Austrian politics. It comes just weeks after Germany decided to scrap the EU’s open border conventions and impose controls along its land borders. That decision came after far-right parties won regional elections in two eastern German states, putting pressure on Berlin to make policy changes.As elsewhere in Europe, the public frustration’s with rising crime has helped fuel the surge in support for parties on the right side of the political spectrum. In August, Austrian authorities canceled three Taylor Swift concerts due to the risk of Islamist-linked attacks.Mr. Kickl, who has been described as “a wiry, acerbic provocateur in designer glasses,” wants to see a program of remigration that would include deporting “unwelcome strangers” to their countries of origin. Before the vote, on Thursday, he spelled out his vision to build “Fortress Austria” and “Fortress Europe.”Doing so would put him in alignment, at least ideologically, with Germany’s similarly far-right, Eurosceptic Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, as well as the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and others. Austria’s Freedom Party rose to prominence in the 1990s under the late Jörg Haider, framing immigration as a cultural and economic threat. Today the FPÖ opposes the Brussels bureaucracy and is also against support for Ukraine. Migration issues, though, top the list of party priorities. Not only does the FPÖ seek to reduce the number of asylum-seekers to zero, it also wants to exclude refugees already in Austria from social services, including most health care services.The party also wants to disrupt the “woke” currents of contemporary culture in the country. That includes plans to abolish government subsidies for the press and establishing a sort of clearinghouse where people could report teachers who have been politicizing lessons.At a campaign rally on Friday, Mr. Kickl called out the “the snobs, headteachers, and know-it-alls,” as well as climate change advocates and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualization of our children.” There is a proposed constitutional amendment in Austria that would declare the existence of only two genders.Programmatic goals like these have led some FPÖ’s detractors to argue that what the party wants is a sort of authoritarian-lite democracy along the lines of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party in Hungary. In that neighbor to the east, some critics say, democratic institutions such as the courts and the press are steadily being sidelined.Despite gains for Mr. Kickl, however, translating wishes into political action won’t be so easy. The FPÖ has already governed three times since 2000, each time together with the conservative ÖVP — and all three governments ended in an early fall, or the split of the FPÖ itself. This time, ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer — currently Austria’s chancellor — says that his party will not cooperate with the FPÖ as long as “right-wing extremist” Herbert Kickl helms the party.From NBC to the Guardian, the press has already been cherry picking some of the more unsavory nuggets from the party’s past. A leading German newspaper, Tagesschau, has reported that the youth wing of the FPÖ is linked to an Austrian far-right group.On election day, the FPÖ was also in the news because a German battle song used during World War Two was played at the funeral of a 90-year-old party member. Other parties, with weaker finishings in Sunday’s election, have already categorically excluded the FPÖ from any cooperation. Austria, though, is a small country and finding alternatives to come kind of collaboration may be difficult. If the ÖVP were to form a coalition with the far-left Social Democrats and a third party, taking a page out of France’s left-wing New Popular Front playbook, it might hold Mr. Kickl back for a while.That said, in France, it is still Marine Le Pen’s National Rally that is political kingmaker, so look for the FPÖ to take on similar contours of influence in the near future. Will Mr. Kickl take a cue from Ms. Le Pen and capitalize on his fresh win to nudge his party toward the center? Doing so could give cause for the rightists to break out the Sachertorte to celebrate longer-term success — and not only at Vienna.

Vienna Waltzes Toward the Right as Freedom Party Scores a Victory, According To First Projections

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