“I disagree with him more than I do with [U.S. President Donald] Trump,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said about Sebastian Kurz, who might become Austria’s next Chancellor.
A few days after the recent legislative election results were out, the 31-year-old Mr. Kurz’s conservative People’s Party, which gained 31.7% votes, started coalition talks with the far-Right Freedom Party, which came third with 26% votes. The Social Democrats won 26.9% votes.
The Freedom Party, which was founded in the 1950s by former Nazi functionaries, is considered the real winner of the October 15 elections. While the party lost last year’s presidential race against Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green politician, it is now on the rise. The Freedom Party is going to be part of the Austrian government, while Mr. Van der Bellen’s Green Party was kicked out of Parliament as it failed to reach the constitutional 5%-vote threshold. Mr. Van der Bellen doesn’t have many options but to swear in the right-wing government with his main political enemies being part of it. “I think that after Van der Bellen won last year, many progressive Austrians thought that the boom of the Freedom Party was over. But as we see today, they were fundamentally wrong with their predictions. This is just the beginning,” said Amelie Schmidt, a 25-year-old student from the city of Innsbruck. Like many young Austrians, she is also worried about the country’s future.
This is not the first time in the Austrian history that a coalition of the Conservatives and the Freedom Party has been formed. In 2000, then Conservative leader Wolfgang Schüssel decided to form a government with Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party. Haider, who died in 2008 in a car accident, was among Europe’s leading right-wing politicians at that time and known for his charisma, rhetorical skills and controversial views on Muslims, Jews and other minority groups.
But the formation of the coalition triggered massive protests in Austria and condemnation abroad. The European Union even enacted sanctions against the coalition government. The government lasted for over two years, following which the Freedom Party slipped into a decline until it regrouped itself in recent years.
Today, the situation is different. “For me, it seems that hatred and racism have become more legitimate today. I have the feeling that this is the case because of the so-called refugee crisis, which mainly happened because of the wars and exploitation in the Third World by Western powers,” said Mustafa Hashemi, an Austrian-Afghan from Vienna.
Coalition terms
Many observers are worried about the possibility that the Freedom Party might control the Interior Ministry in the new government. The Conservatives had already taken harsh steps towards asylum requests and migration, but under the Freedom Party, this could become worse. The party has already stated that getting the Interior Ministry is one of its conditions to enter a coalition with the Conservatives. “I cannot imagine that neo-Nazis are going to take this position. Controlling the Interior Ministry means that one is above the police and the whole migration bureaucracy. This is going to become terrible. Austria will isolate itself,” said Davut Polat, a law student from Innsbruck.
Meanwhile, Der Falter , a Vienna-based Austrian weekly, published an old picture of the Freedom Party’s chief, Heinz-Christian Strache, which showed his neo-Nazi links, and asked the following question: “May this man be the Minister of Interior?”
Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist based in Stuttgart and was recently in Innsbruck
