The State Of Things
The People's Party have stepped up their attacks on far-right Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl ahead of Austria's election this month
Owing to a scheduled operation, this will be the final edition of The Vienna Briefing before the newsletter goes on hiatus while I recuperate. In the meantime, for those of you who missed it, you can catch up on my “Meet the Parties” series of interviews with Austria’s leading political parties: the People’s Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Greens, and the NEOS. If you’re eligible, don’t forget to vote on September 29. Thank you to everyone for continuing to read, subscribe to, and support this newsletter. Bis bald!
Servus!
Ahead of regional elections that took place in two German states last weekend, the German broadcaster RTL went undercover at two events organized by the extreme right-wing identitarian movement, which supports the mass deportation of millions of migrants from Europe. There, they recorded guests engaging in Holocaust glorification and denial and wishing for the genocide of Muslims in Germany—a “Srebrenica 2.0,” as the supporter described it, with reference to the slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at the hand of Serb forces in July 1995.
Recorded in Vienna, RTL’s reporting refocused attention on the identitarians’ connections to the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which continues to lead in the polls ahead of parliamentary elections on September 29. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl has previously described the identitarians as a “right-wing NGO” as if they were merely a counterweight to Greenpeace. “Why should I take a stand against a group of citizens who are merely exercising their right to demonstrate and point out problems with immigration?” FPÖ party secretary Christian Hafenecker asked last week in response to RTL’s revelations.
The identitarians are useful to the FPÖ: a street-based movement whose power the party believes it can harness to its benefit. The FPÖ’s links to the identitarians is one stick with which the ÖVP has sought to club the far-right during this election campaign. “It is shocking that a parliamentary party is acting as the patron saint of this movement. It is a radical movement; it is a threat to the state,” chancellor Karl Nehammer said last week in an interview with PULS 24. Kickl, he added, is a “conspiracy theorist” with whom it would be impossible to govern.
The ÖVP has also strongly criticized the FPÖ’s recently published manifesto as “disturbing,” an attack on parliamentary democracy, and “poisonous” for the Austrian economy. While there is a certain programmatic symmetry between the ÖVP and FPÖ—perhaps more than the ÖVP would be comfortable admitting—the FPÖ’s program for government is both radical and extreme. It is a far-right, nationalistic document whose policies such as an end to asylum in toto violate international and human rights law and guarantee a quarrel with Brussels. The document’s language with reference to “globalist elites,” “gender ideology,” “rainbow cult,” and “early sexualization” apes that of the international far-right.
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As election day draws nearer, the ÖVP has not retreated from its attacks on Kickl. On the contrary: both chancellor Nehammer and ÖVP party secretary Christian Stocker have stepped up their attacks on the FPÖ boss. Kickl is a “flipflopper” and a “populist” who “plays with people’s fears,” Stocker said last Wednesday. On Friday, he declared Kickl is “becoming more and more extreme,” “drifting further and further towards the edges of the political spectrum.” The ÖVP has previously attacked Kickl as a Russian agent and a threat to national security.
The Standard’s polling average indicates the ÖVP has managed to close the gap to the FPÖ to three points, but the FPÖ continues to retain a lead, 27 percent to 24 percent, and remains on course to win this month’s election. What then? Just as the ÖVP has been clear that there will be no coalition with Kickl as chancellor and minister, so does the FPÖ continue to insist that, if they win the election, Kickl will be their only candidate for chancellor—its Volkskanzler, indeed, borrowing a term previously deployed in Nazi propaganda to describe Adolf Hitler.
It is obvious that Nehammer and Kickl cannot sit in the same coalition. Were the two parties to govern together after the election, an elegant solution to this conflict would have to be found. The ÖVP could use its leverage over the FPÖ—namely that the ÖVP is the FPÖ’s only path to power—to force the FPÖ to nominate an alternative chancellor—Norbert Hofer, Manfred Haimbuchner, or an outside candidate nominated by the FPÖ—finding another role for Kickl in the process. The FPÖ, however, has learnt from previous experience the dangers of compromising for power and would not want to repeat the mistake Jörg Haider made in 2000 of giving up the party leadership and a role in government to facilitate a coalition.
The ÖVP could also back down and accept Kickl as chancellor, but that would require, first, playing second fiddle to the FPÖ, which would be a very difficult thing for the ÖVP to do, and second, the resignations of both Nehammer and Stocker, meaning the party would have to find a new leader, candidate for the vice-chancellorship, and party secretary all at once, which is a recipe for turbulence, chaos, and division. None of the foregoing rules out a coalition between the FPÖ and ÖVP—far from it, for they remain on course to be the two strongest factions in the next parliament—but it would require the almightiest of climbdowns by either the one or the other. Who blinks first? And what if the answer is neither?
Bis bald!
For those of you living in Austria who are ineligible to participate in the election on September 29, the Pass Egal Wahl administered by the NGO SOS Mitmensch began on August 29 and runs through September 24. The simulated election is the only opportunity for the more than 1.5 million non-Austrian citizens of voting age living in Austria to register their vote and their feelings about the future of the country in which they live. The event will take place nationwide, and a full list of polling stations and their opening hours is available at passegalwahl.at.
CIA To The Rescue
The CIA provided the information to Austrian intelligence that enabled them to thwart a planned terror attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna earlier this month, the agency’s deputy director confirmed last week. An “ISIS-connected group” was “plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert,” David S. Cohen said.
Deeper And Deeper
Inflation in Austria continued to fall in August to 2.4 percent, its lowest level since April 2021, according to initial estimates. Austria’s rate of inflation is now only 0.4 percentage points away from the European Central Bank’s 2 percent target.
Check Your Bank Accounts
The environment ministry has begun to pay out this year’s Klimabonus or climate bonus. Worth between €145 and €290 per Austrian resident depending on one’s place of residence, the Klimabonus was introduced in 2022 as part of the government’s ‘eco-social’ tax reform and was intended to offset the costs of a new tax on CO2.