For
Austria’s far right, defeat may be a springboard
Jeremy Cliffe
Tuesday 24 May 2016
08.00 BST
Strategic
mistakes by Austria’s coalition played into the Freedom party’s
hands – and are an object lesson for centrist politicians in Europe
and North America
Phew. By the
narrowest of margins Norbert Hofer, the presidential candidate of
Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), lost to Alexander Van der
Bellen, the pro-refugee former leader of the country’s Green party.
Polls suggested that the victor owed his win to his mostly young,
urban and well-educated base. There was much in it to celebrate.
Austria, a cradle of the continent’s far-right and at the forefront
of the refugee crisis, had voted in a progressive, pro-refugee son of
Estonian immigrants as its head of state. The candidate who had
campaigned on what he called a “Muslim invasion” had lost.
Yet Van der Bellen’s
victory is too close for comfort. The country at Europe’s
crossroads has just come within a few thousand votes of electing the
EU’s first far-right head of state. Hofer won more federal states
than his rival and was only stopped by postal votes. His far-right
party is still on track to finish first in the next parliamentary
election, due within the next two years.
Activists I spoke to
at the FPÖ’s “victory” rally in a beer garden in Vienna’s
Prater Park on Sunday gave me the clear impression that they would
not take its defeat easily – if at all. They called Hofer “the
president of our hearts”.
Austria is a
polarised nation. Almost exactly half of it, on both the right and
left, voted for a pro-migration cosmopolitan. And almost exactly half
– likewise transcending the traditional left-right spectrum –
voted for an anti-migration nativist who questions whether the postal
votes by which he lost were fair and valid. Austria today is a vision
of Europe’s political future; one in which cultural differences
between progressive cities and conservative rural areas slice through
the old left-right axis.
It is easy to point
the finger at Brussels and Berlin for waving in refugees and thus
inadvertently propelling Hofer to within inches of his country’s
presidency. Yet to do so would be to normalise and excuse what has
happened.
It is true that the
FPÖ’s success is part of a European pattern. In Austria, Poland,
Germany, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, the refugee crisis
combined with terror attacks by Islamists in Paris and Brussels are
driving those voters already uncomfortable about multiculturalism
towards far-right parties that, sensing the opportunity, have ditched
their more unpalatable policies, put on suits and generally made an
appeal to a soft-conservative electorate.
Yet the fact that
Hofer came so close to becoming head of state is also specifically a
reflection of Austria’s conventional parties. The centre-left (SPÖ)
and centre-right (ÖVP) have for decades dominated the country and
governed in coalition. The Proporz system, by which they give out
jobs to supporters almost regardless of who is best qualified, is
clientelism at its worst.
Under their rule,
unemployment is now rising in Austria while in many European
countries it is falling. Doughty and uncharismatic, the traditional
parties have struggled to compete with Heinz-Christian Strache, the
dynamic FPÖ leader who posts cheesy but catchy rap videos on YouTube
– and who, by most accounts, is Hofer’s puppet master. The plan,
it seems, was for the latter to become president and to use his new
constitutional powers to undermine the mainstream parties and call
new elections at a time that suited his mentor.
Not only did the SPÖ
and ÖVP create the conditions in which Hofer and Strache could
thrive, but they also pandered to the FPÖ once it had started to
gain ground. Having initially endorsed the pro-refugee policies of
the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the government now insists on
draconian controls at the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria.
Having obtained barely 22% in the first round of the presidential
election, the governing parties declined to appear on Austrian state
television’s election-day programme on Sunday.
This is part of a
deep historical tradition in Austria. The Freedom party was founded
by former SS officers
This is part of a
deep historical tradition in Austria. The FPÖ was founded by former
SS officers, and for decades it has maintained links with the sort of
far-right student fraternities that exhibit both close connections to
the neo-Nazi scene and a broadly pan-Germanist outlook. (Hofer has
been photographed wearing both a cornflower, the neo-Nazi symbol of
German-Austrian unification, and a German-flag necktie.)
Yet the party has
long been tolerated by the Austrian establishment. On a regional
level the ÖVP and SPÖ have both entered into coalitions with it. In
2000 it even became part of a national government led by the
centre-right. The FPÖ’s success at the presidential election could
prove the springboard it needs to surge ahead at the next
parliamentary election and take the chancellorship.
There are lessons
here for other centre-right and centre-left parties in Europe and
North America. In Austria, the mainstream succumbed to the temptation
to pander to its rivals. Its politicians tried to compete on their
opponents’ turf: that of migration and national identity. They lost
sight of their own strengths: economic growth and jobs. The result
has been a confident, dynamic far-right almost capable of winning the
premiership.
For Labourites
sizing up the UK Independence party in northern England, or Democrats
pondering how to fight Donald Trump, Austria foreshadows a bleak
future.
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