As Austrians Vote, Far Right Awaits Its Biggest Success

Christopher F. Schuetze

He calls himself the “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, a term associated with the Nazis. He has demanded stopping all new asylum-seekers to make Austria a “fortress of freedom.” He calls his political opponents “traitors” and has said he wants to put unfriendly journalists on “arrest lists.” The World Health Organization, he has warned, is a dictatorship.

To the growing ranks of his supporters, Herbert Kickl, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, coolly diagnoses the country’s problems and offers reasonable solutions. To his detractors, the former interior minister is a dangerous right-wing extremist who trades in conspiracy theories. But after Austrians vote in a national election Sunday, Kickl may end up as the man Austria’s other parties will have to either work with or work around.

Five years after his party was ousted by a jaw-dropping scandal involving cocaine, a fake niece of a Russian oligarch, influence peddling and a secret video recording, the Freedom Party is back, and is now the most popular party in Austria. It could come out on top for the first time ever in elections. The party is expected to win 27% of votes or more, polls show, beating out the incumbent center-right Austrian People’s Party by several percentage points, and other mainstream parties by even more.

Unlike in neighboring Germany, where the growing popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has set off anxious hand-wringing in the political establishment, few in Austria seem especially concerned by the rise of the Freedom Party. Founded by former SS men in the 1950s, the Freedom Party has long been part of Austria’s political landscape. It has been the junior partner in four separate governments since the 1980s.

The party “is so normalized in Austria that few people will be shocked by it — and they have already had parliamentary election results on this scale,” said Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, a professor of Austrian politics at the University of Vienna. In Germany, mainstream parties have vowed never to work with the AfD. And the German domestic intelligence service has labeled some AfD state chapters as extremist, and it is actively monitoring the party, which it considers a threat to the constitution.

Austria is more akin to Italy or the Netherlands, where anti-immigrant sentiment has fueled the rise of far-right parties that work within the established political ecosystem. Kickl often praises Hungary, where the nationalist Fidesz party has governed virtually unopposed for more than a decade, for its ability to keep out migrants.

The coronavirus pandemic and Austria’s strict lockdown rules helped Kickl reenergize his party after it was kicked out of the government five years ago. Kickl demanded a public inquest into government actions around lockdowns, which he called “dictatorial.” At the time of the pandemic, Kickl was a proponent of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, he told supporters: “The Austrian population is part of a large field study by pharmaceutical companies.”

But much of his focus in the recent campaign has been on immigrants. Besides calling for more deportations, the Freedom Party’s platform also demands new legislation that would stop refugees from getting any social services and bar them for life from obtaining Austrian citizenship. Besides refugees, Kickl attacks supranational institutions, such as the European Union, NATO (of which Austria is not a member), the International Criminal Court and the World Health Organization for meddling in Austrian affairs.

The party is also close to Russia. In 2016, it signed a formal declaration of friendship with President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia. Karin Kneissl, the Freedom Party’s choice for foreign minister in 2017, moved to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. While the rest of Europe has mostly cut off its use of Russian energy since the invasion, Austria has not done so.

Kickl, 55, has portrayed himself as a kind of father figure to voters, but he has kept his private life mostly out of the spotlight. He started working for the Freedom Party as a student in history and philosophy, and quickly rose through the ranks. He served as a speechwriter for Jörg Haider, who took over the party in 1986 and moved it further toward far-right populism. Kickl was responsible for some of his most incendiary speeches. Haider, who later left the party and created a new one, died in a car accident in 2008.

As Austrian interior minister from 2017 to 2019, Kickl focused on border security, but he may be best remembered for overseeing a raid on the country’s domestic intelligence agency. At the time, Kickl’s clear political influence over the service made it a pariah among partner agencies. In rallies, debates and advertisements, Kickl has distanced himself from his party’s former coalition partner, the conservative Austrian People’s Party, which was roiled by a scandal involving fake polls in recent years. Kickl now blames his biggest opponent for inflation and a declining standard of living.

“We have actually come through difficult times reasonably well, as far as the Ukraine war is concerned,” said Nina Horaczek, who has written a book on Kickl. “But at the same time, there is an incredible dissatisfaction in parts of the population, and he is channeling that very, very well.”

Karl Nehammer, the current chancellor, said that if the Freedom Party won, he would not form a coalition government that would make Kickl chancellor. But he has stopped short of vowing not to work with the far-right party itself, something that experts say could happen if the People’s Party comes in first, thus ensuring that Nehammer remains chancellor.

On a recent evening in Simmering, a working-class district in Vienna, Sascha Kaiser, a local resident, was having a drink after work and mulling the question of whom to vote for. “I don’t know whether to vote strategic or follow my heart,” he said. “But I don’t want Kickl to get in.”