Last updated: 16.01.2024, 04:34 a.m.
By: Kilian Beck
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In Austria, the election campaign begins. Social Democrats and Conservatives are preoccupied with each other. The laughing third is the right-wing authoritarian Herbert Kickl.
Vienna – The 2024 election campaign year in the Alpine republic has begun. Three parties and their respective leaders want to move into the Chancellery on Vienna's Ballhausplatz: the incumbent Austria's Chancellor, the right-wing conservative Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), the right-wing authoritarian Herbert Kickl of the FPÖ and the left-wing Social Democrat Andreas Babler (SPÖ). The new parliament will most likely be elected in the autumn, the exact date is still unclear. At the New Year's meeting of the FPÖ at the weekend, Kickl was confident of victory, saying that the FPÖ was "strong" again and that he wanted to become "people's chancellor". A term used by the Nazis for Adolf Hitler.
FPÖ leader Kickl shows where he wants Austria to go: to the far right. © ALEX HALADA/AFP
In the election trend of the Austria Press Agency, Kickl's FPÖ is currently in the lead with 28.5 percent of the average of the polls recorded. Followed by Babler's SPÖ with a good 24 percent and the ÖVP under Karl Nehammer with just under 21 percent. The Greens and the liberal NEOS are each at around ten percent. There are currently two duels going on for the voters' favour, political scientist Kathrin Steiner-Hämmerle recently analysed in the magazine News. The FPÖ against everyone – Kickl spoke at the weekend of the "power cartel" of the "unity party", which the FPÖ stands against. And the dispute between the ÖVP and the SPÖ, whose "fixation on each other" had given the FPÖ the opportunity to "quietly and secretly" prepare the field, Steiner-Hämmerle said.
Social Democrat Babler wants redistribution and rules out coalition with FPÖ
After his chaotic election as SPÖ leader last year, Babler campaigned to prevent Kickl and the FPÖ and replace the ÖVP in the chancellery. He sees his party as a "protest party in the good sense," he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung over the weekend. In a classic Social Democratic manner, he calls for inheritance taxes, even making them a condition of the coalition. Babler diagnosed "class warfare from above" in the face of an ever-widening income and wealth gap. Asked in an interview with ORF that this would not be a condition for a coalition to find a majority against Kickl, he said: "I believe that the ÖVP is also trying to establish more justice." Babler wants to reposition the SPÖ as a left-wing party. This means redistribution, tougher climate action and more active policies for gender equality.
Andreas Babler jumped to the top of the SPÖ with a speech full of pathos and a long campaign at the party base. © GEORG HOCHMUTH/APA/AFP
Their response came promptly: ÖVP General Secretary Christian Stocker issued a press release: "We reject new taxes." Federal Chancellor Nehammer preferred to speak on ORF about the European elections scheduled for the beginning of June. He called for the European Union to "fight illegal migration". With regard to the highest inflation in Western Europe, which prevails in Austria, he referred to various one-off payments, which economists criticized as partly counterproductive. He did not sketch out a real perspective for an Austria after the National Council elections.
Kanzle Nehammer calls Kickl a "security risk" – coalition with FPÖ without Kickl not ruled out
Nehammer called Kickl a "security risk" and justified this with the fact that Kickl had denied asylum to "7,000 Afghans" during his time as interior minister. The FPÖ leader has "proven that he cannot bear any responsibility". That is why he rules out a coalition with the FPÖ "as long as Herbert Kickl bears responsibility in the party," Nehammer said. He considered a coalition with the FPÖ to be possible. Even before Kickl came to power, the FPÖ was the only parliamentary party that had "programmatically committed itself to the Nazi ideology of the 'German national community' beyond Auschwitz," wrote the Viennese right-wing extremism researcher Bernhard Weidinger of the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) in the daily newspaper Standard in 2019.
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ÖVP initiative "Believe in Austria": Chancellor Karl Nehammer presents it in Vienna. © Roland Schlager/APA/dpa
The FPÖ leader was celebrated in front of his own audience at the weekend, accompanied by pyrotechnics and Austrian flags. He gave an hour-long rant against "the system." This refers to liberal democracy as it functions in Austria today. He described the German government as a "tormentor and oppressor". He described all other parties as a "political hydra" that he – the "blue Hercules" – wanted to defeat. Weidinger located per Bluesky: animal metaphors from the "arsenal of images of anti-Semitism". The man who spoke of "redemption" on stage recently explained several times what he imagines by that: "Let's imitate Orbán," he repeatedly shouted to his audience.
Kickl threatens his political opponents with a "long wanted list"
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been pursuing an authoritarian state restructuring there for years. Free media have dried up financially. It is governed by emergency decree. Minority and women's rights are being systematically dismantled. The 2022 parliamentary elections, like some before them, were criticised by international election observers as unfair. If Kickl wins the parliamentary elections, he announced that he would "no longer accept an asylum application". He also boasted of having "a long wanted list." Because of their corona policy, he wants to persecute the ministers of the black-green government as "evildoers and torturers".
While Kickl is conducting his own election campaign, the ÖVP and SPÖ are still facing a dispute over their possible involvement in various affairs of Austrian domestic politics. At the beginning of March, questioning will start in two committees of inquiry of the National Council. In a nutshell, one deals with very privately allocated Corona aid funds by a federal company subordinate to the ÖVP Ministry of Finance. The Constitutional Court declared the practice illegal in 2022.
Two committees of inquiry in the 2024 election campaign
The second is to deal with, among other things, possible corruption in the allocation of posts and misappropriation of public funds in SPÖ and FPÖ-led ministries. It was requested by the ÖVP when it became known that the opposition had requested the first committee of inquiry. Both Babler and Nehammer had to spend a lot of airtime dealing with controversies from their parties.
Kickl, on the other hand, took a lot of time in the ORF interview to defend himself on the term "remigration". Under this headline, the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner outlined plans for the deportation of millions of people from Germany to other right-wing extremists, some of them high-ranking AfD members. This was reported by the research portal Correctiv. At a secret meeting in Potsdam in November 2023, the deportation of immigrants, including German citizens, and dissidents to North Africa was discussed. (kb)