A historic victory, but with a strong touch of bitterness. Before his followers gathered in a brasserie on the campus of the University of Vienna, Herbert Kickl, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ, far right), celebrated, on Sunday, September 29, “a piece of history” after its unprecedented result in the legislative elections, but recognizing that this could be left without a future against the adversaries “who act as if the elections had not taken place” maintaining its refusal to form a coalition with him.
“I give them two or three days to think. Let’s hope they come to their senses. It would also be in their own interest.”The very radical leader of the FPÖ launched into the crowd with this threatening tone of which he has the secret. With 28.8% of the votes, Kickl achieved the best result ever obtained by the extreme right since 1945 in Austria, causing a political earthquake in this country of nine million inhabitants. But this former Minister of the Interior has no guarantee of coming to power, since all the other parties do not want to ally with him in the National Council, the lower house of the Austrian Parliament.
This victory reveals the radicalization of an entire part of the Austrian electorate in a context of record inflation, high immigration and growing skepticism about the evolution of the war in Ukraine. Since taking the helm of the party in 2021, Kickl has led the FPÖ to adopt a deeply conspiratorial, anti-vaccine, climate-skeptic and identity-based discourse. “Covid played an important role, the FPÖ was the only party against mass confinement and mandatory vaccination”greets Heimo Lepuschitz, a veteran party communicator who was on the guest list Sunday night.
A “bitter” result for the conservatives
Very close to the radical line of the German AfD, the FPÖ no longer even suffers scandals for its links with its Nazi past, while several party leaders were filmed attending a funeral during which they sang an SS anthem, just two days before the elections. Promoting in your program the “remigration” strangers and naturalized people, “when they attack our values”, and give back to the Austrians their “homogeneity”Kickl assures that it counts “stop all asylum applications.”
Secondly, with only 26.3% of the votes, the outgoing chancellor, the conservative Karl Nehammer, recognized that the result was ” bitter ” estimating that “Our duty is to understand why the radicalized people got more votes than us”. His formation, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), fell by more than 11 points compared to the 2019 elections. Nehammer, who embodies the traditional Christian Democrat wing of the party, once again ruled out allying with Kickl. consider “lost in conspiracy theories”.
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