The far-right Freedom Party (FPO), founded in the 1950s by a man who had been a senior officer in Hitler’s elite paramilitary SS, is on the verge of taking power in Austria.
On January 6, the country’s President Alexander Van der Bellen reluctantly granted FPO leader Herbert Kickl – who is, like Hitler once was, referred to as “the people’s chancellor” by his party – the mandate to form a coalition government after a centrist bid to assemble one without the FPO collapsed unexpectedly.
The FPO, which came first in the September election with 29 percent of the vote, is now in talks to form a coalition with the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP).
Other than the FPO, this was not a preferred outcome for any Austrian faction. Like all other major parties, the OVP had entered the election on a promise to never form a coalition government with the party with Nazi roots. Yet after it became clear that a non-FPO alternative could not be agreed, the OVP swiftly changed its leader to walk back on this promise and participate in coalition negotiations.
The anticipated FPO-OVP coalition will not be the first one to involve the far-right party in Austria’s recent history. In fact, the FPO was the junior partner in an OVP-led coalition government as recently as in 2019. But it would mark the first time that the FPO is the senior partner, and thus the main decision-maker, in an Austrian government.
Political developments in Austria – a landlocked European nation of just nine million – rarely cause much of a ripple on the international scene. Yet, the potential rise to power of a proudly far-right party in Hitler’s home country deserves special attention. Especially at a time when the hard right is making gains across the globe, and Russia is continuing its war of aggression at the heart of Europe, the FPO’s success in Austria must be analysed closely. We must look at the situation in Austria to understand the failings of Western liberalism that got us here, and use this knowledge to come up with a strategy to prevent further gains by illiberal forces.
First and foremost, it needs to be recognised that an FPO government in Austria would be a significant win for Russia.
When the FPO first got into government with OVP in 2017, it had a “‘friendship agreement’ with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. As interior minister, its current leader, Herbert Kickl, used his powers to order a raid on the country’s own domestic intelligence service, which caused European security services to freeze out their Austrian counterpart.
Kickl’s attack on Austrian intelligence was followed by some of Europe’s most significant spying scandals, which all underlined how the new Austrian government paved the way for Russia to deepen its infiltration of and influence over European politics. In 2019, then-OVP leader and Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was videotaped entertaining bribes from a purported Russian oligarch, which led to the downfall of the government. That government had also signed Europe’s longest agreement with the Kremlin-owned energy giant Gazprom. The gas offtake deal running until 2040 is now set to be at the core of legal disputes around the end of Russia’s gas deliveries via Ukraine to central Europe at the end of 2024.
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