Austria dodged electing a far-right president by the smallest of margins yesterday. In an election that was too close to call on Sunday night, postal votes pushed Green Alexander Van Der Bellen over the line, beating Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom party (FPO) by just 31,000 votes.
While such a nail-biting result was shocking political drama of the highest calibre for the rest of us across Europe, Hofer’s success is less surprising if you take a closer look at the state of Austrian politics.
Brussels-based Austrian Barbara Holzer explained why centrists had been so dramatically rejected at the election.
The Freedom party came out as the big winner in the first round of the presidential elections, not because Austrians are largely right-wing oriented, but because people are frustrated with the political standstill of the grand coalition between the Christian Democrats (OVP) and Socialists (SPO) that has run the country since 2006.
Their two candidates for the presidency, Andreas Khol and Rudolf Hundstorfer respectively, took less than a quarter of the national vote between them in the first round.
The FPO successfully presented itself as the disciplined, professional party of the ‘small people’ and took many votes from the socialists, most them being from white men.
Indeed, the gender split at this election was dramatic. 60 per cent of men voted for Hofer, while 60 per cent of women voted for Van Der Bellen.
Christian Bitschnau, executive member of the Austrian Liberal party’s youth wing (NEOS) and parliamentary assistant, made clear why there was such a reaction against the establishment.
There is a sense in which the two parties can’t govern in this way anymore. The public sentiment is that from 2006, there have been no policy changes, and people are increasingly fed up with it.’
This reaction played out clearly in the polls. 40 per cent of people did not vote for a government candidate, and also did not vote for the FPO.
‘In that light, Hofer’s 30 per cent was still shocking to us, but not as shocking as you might think.’
He felt that Hofer’s strong support could also be explained by a shift to the right among the Austrian public over the last few decades.
‘I don’t think the Freedom party has changed very much – I think the public has moved. The party’s views on foreigners have not changed. The public view on foreigners has changed. It is now acceptable to say the sorts of things about foreigners the Freedom party says.’
Immigration has so centrally defined Austrian public discourse over the past few years that people are constantly exposed to the Freedom party’s core message.
‘On the news there is nothing else. Refugees, migrants, migrants, Refugees. We have 90,000 asylum seekers in Austria, a very large number for such a small place and people are shocked and don’t know how to deal with it.
The Freedom party offers the most straightforward answer to this. Shut the borders and kick them all out. Some people want that simple answer.’
In Austria, voting for the FPO does not come with the sorts of stigma voting for fight-right parties entails elsewhere on the continent. Indeed, Christian was surprised that Van Der Bellen had managed to pull over the line on Monday.
‘People don’t perceive them as crazy, but just as another party.
There is no such thing as a republican vote in Austria as they have in France. Socialists and conservatives don’t vote strategically to keep out the FPO as there is just not the same stigma voting FPO as there is for voting Front National in France.’
While the president has strong constitutional powers, by convention it is a ceremonial position. It seems Austrians were more comfortable voting for a candidate of the far-right whose main role would in theory be to greet foreign visitors.
Whether Hofer viewed the role in that light is less clear. He was challenged in an interview before the election that the sorts of things he wanted to change were not really possible as president. He responded ‘well you will be surprised what will be possible.’
While the prospect of a far right president has evaporated, this is not the end of Austria’s political troubles. The polls show a clear divide between cosmopolitan, educated urbanites, and ‘the rest’.
As Christian put it
‘The FPO will continue to be strong, on their Facebook page people are already screaming “scam”, and talking about a stolen election. They will be as angry as ever, if not more so.’
The ‘49.7 percenters’ will no doubt play an important role in Austrian politics up to the 2018 legislative election. Exactly how they will react in the longer term remains to be seen.
Norbert Hofer may well take over the FPO, as he has been far more successful than current leader Heinz-Christian Strache ever was. And he is unlikely to moderate his position given how close to power he came.
For the FPO more generally, this was a tactical setback not a comprehensive rout. They will be back.
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George Greenwood is a political columnist at CapX. He tweets @GeorgeGreenwood
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Nor are they in Hungary or central Europe as a whole. Painting these countries as pariahs will not help. They were once part of a multi-ethnic confederation called Austria-Hungary until being divided up by the west in 1919, and then enslaved by Nazis and then Stalinists. Can we blame them for wanting to assert their rights to self-determination, even if this means electing people we don’t agree with? They have a right to be monocultural, just as the western countries, based on their imperial heritage, have a right to their multi-culturalism. Unless the EU adopts a more respectful, flexible, inter-cultural approach, it risks driving the whole of central Europe back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
The governments of western Europe have no right to impose multiculturalism on their populations. The indigenous people have the right to expect incomers to adopt the local language, customs, etc. If you come to my home, you have two choices: my way or the highway. Imperialism isn’t part of my heritage, as nobody in my family ever had a say in running the empire or ever asked for an empire. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. (That’s what people in the Third World would tell any westerners who rock up in their countries.)
How ironic that the place that gave birth to Hitler should flirt once more with the far right, or to give him his real name, Hiedler ( the pig farmer ) hence he changed his name, the far right or to describe them more accurately fascists, have no right to flex their democratic rights after the disgrace of Germany and Austria in the first part of the 20th century, indeed since the Franco Prussian war in 1878 where the Kaiser flexed his muscles, Hitler grabbed totalitarian rule with the enabling act after Goring copped a deafen in the Riechstag to get it through in 1933, who is to say that an Austrian today wouldn’t try the same con, vote to stay in Europe ,to keep the Tutonic’s Platonic, far right, Yeah right.