By John Foster
The history of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) is a core sample of Austrian history since the Second World War.
The far-right party’s fortunes reflect the transition of conservatism in the Atlantic world, of which Austria sits on the periphery.
Once upon a time, it was about selling Horatio Alger stories. To the extent that Horatio Alger remains relevant, it is only as a prop for the narrative of white victimhood.
And once upon a time, the FPÖ was a standard liberal nationalist organisation.
In those days (the mid-1950s), Austria was still something of a backwater, as it had been when it was left as the German-speaking rump in the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire.
Austria was on the eastern edge of Europe, cheek-by-jowl with now communist Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.
After the allied occupation officially ended in 1955, Austria was ruled by a cartel of Christian democratic and social democratic parties not dissimilar to most non-communist states in Europe.
The Austrian historical narrative of the years since 1918 was one of victimhood.
The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the descent into relative obscurity, and then the forcible Anschluß with Hitler’s Germany in 1938 were all folded into a story in which the Austrians were a people to whom many bad things had happened.
The association of Austrians with the crimes of National Socialism was conveniently forgotten, at least until the outbreak of the Waldheim Affair during the federal elections in 1985.
The overrepresentation of Austrians in the upper ranks of the SS, especially those associated with running the concentration camp system, is one of those things only historians seem to be aware of.
Initially, the FPÖ was a further-right alternative to the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP), the Christian democratic option on the political menu.
The FPÖ was more liberal then. Its early platforms focused on individual rights and the free market as the best mode of economic organisation for preserving them.
Calls for lower taxes and the pruning back of regulations were coupled with defences of German nationalist identity and Austrian neutrality.
For the first three decades, the FPÖ hovered on the margins of Austrian politics, receiving between 5% and 8% of the vote in national elections.
They were in an electoral cul-de-sac. Their situation was similar to that of the British Liberal Democrats or Germany’s Freie Demokratische Partei.
The program’s identitarian elements did not gain traction in Austria, in no small part because of the unfortunate narratives such politics became associated with in the 1930s and 1940s.
The conservatism of the ÖVP, like that of the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) in West Germany, was based on Catholic doctrine. This had the effect of insulating it against associations with the bad old days before 1945.
The FPÖ remained on the margins of Austrian politics until 1986 when Jörg Haider assumed leadership. If one were in any doubt about the waning of the distaste for Nazism in postwar Austria, Haider’s career put paid to that.
Haider was one of those people who liked to see the good in the bad. He described the Nazi period as “a time of order” and praised the state’s commitment to social welfare (at least for certain kinds of people).
Under Haider, the FPÖ lurched to the right, taking on a distinctly populist cast. In 1990, it received more than 16% of the federal election votes. Ten years later, their total exceeded 25%, which set alarm bells ringing both inside the country and in Europe more generally.
At this point, the FPÖ had become the second-largest party in Austria.
In 1999, the ÖVP (ever the pragmatists) formed a coalition with the FPÖ. The EU responded with sanctions, admittedly of a very moderate kind (public statements of concern, suspension of some bilateral agreements, etc.)
The coalition eventually broke down in May of 2000. Even the ÖVP, whose ethical principles were quite flexible, were put off by the increasingly radical rhetoric on immigrants and immigration generated by the FPÖ.
Worse yet, officials from the FPÖ became involved in a series of scandals that diminished the party’s public profile.
The coalition broke down, and although another was formed briefly in 2005, the party returned to the margins, especially after Haider split to form his own, even more unhinged party in 2006.
Over the last twenty years, the FPÖ has experienced repeated cycles of political expansion, followed by a recession caused by a combination of extremist utterances and scandal.
In 2019, after the FPÖ had once again achieved a 25% vote share, party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was recorded in a secret meeting in Ibiza discussing the allocation of lucrative government contracts, manipulation of the media, and illegal campaign contributions.
And now, here we are. The FPÖ has again reached a new high-water mark, with almost 29% of the vote. As it has often been over the last forty years, Austria has become a bellwether for the growth of far-right populism in Europe.
The politics of the FPÖ are roughly the same as those of Alternative für Deutschland, Fratelli d’Italia, and Rassemblement National. They’re more intense.
Paranoia about immigration and the supposed dilution of Austrian/German/European identity is not new in Austria. It has been a feature of Austrian politics since the 19th century.
It is worth remembering the role that Karl Lueger’s explicitly Antisemitic and xenophobic Christlichsoziale Partei was a precursor to the xenophobic populism of National Socialism.
The FPÖ’s current populist mix is a relatively extreme version of what most far-right groups in today’s Europe offer.
In keeping, there is the obsession with immigration and the stoking of the fear that Austrian (or German or Western) culture will disintegrate. But underlying it is the promise that society’s resources will be used to redeem the fortunes of white people.
This is the secret of the populist wave, the premise on which the support of the lower classes can be elicited by parties run by (and ultimately catering to the interests of) the ultra-wealthy.
There is a sleight of hand here. Wealthy donors, as do many middle-class supporters, want to scale back the welfare state.
Those at a lower income level are made comfortable with this by the belief that if benefits aren’t being paid to immigrants, austerity measures can be made to coexist with welfare for those who qualify on ethnic and cultural grounds.
This is the standard math of contemporary conservatism. It can be traced back to Ronald Reagan’s contention that cutting the taxes of the rich and massively increasing the military budget can coexist in a world of fiscal probity.
Of course, it’s got to come out somewhere. In Reagan’s case, it was an enormous increase in the national debt, later conveniently blamed on others.
The question for the FPÖ, as for all the other far-right parties across Europe, is how the promises of payoff to the Volksgemeinschaft and better outcomes for the wealthy coexist.
The rise of far-right populism is unnerving, involving as it does the revival of ideas that were shown to be wholly without merit in the course of the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.
Of course, no idea is so bad that it can’t be resurrected. Especially fascist ones.
As history shows, when such ideas make Europeans feel like heroes, victims, or both, they tend to do all manner of dangerous things.
One need not look as far back as the Nazi era for precedents, though, of course, it helps.
The war in Ukraine and the Bosnian War are vastly underappreciated examples.
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Photograph courtesy of Ivan Radic. Published under a Creative Commons license.