As of: March 29, 2024, 7:23 p.m
By: Kilian Beck
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The integration minister should define “leading culture”. Before she's finished, her People's Party launches a campaign. Criticism also comes from the governing coalition.
Vienna - With a commission of experts in the Chancellery and sharp slogans on social media, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) began a debate on the dominant culture. On Thursday (March 28), Integration Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP) invited experts to the Chancellery to discuss a “basic consensus” on the Austrian way of life. As the daily newspaper
Presse
reported, a process was agreed upon to find this consensus. On Good Friday (March 29th), the party published its campaign with the slogan: “Anyone who rejects our way of life must go!” Criticism comes from the green coalition partner, among others. Austria will elect a new parliament in the fall.
“Tradition instead of multi-cultural”: ÖVP takes on old FPÖ hat – Sharepic disappears from website
While the ÖVP minister cannot yet provide an answer to what Austria's dominant culture is, the party proclaimed “tradition instead of multi-culturalism” on social media. Multi-cultural is a term that the party rarely uses. Her former coalition partner and ex-head of the right-wing authoritarian FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache, on the other hand, raved about the “end of the multicultural utopia” in an interview with the daily newspaper
Kurier
in 2011 and railed against Muslim “mass immigration”. On Friday afternoon, the ÖVP's corresponding sharepic was no longer available on their website. The daily newspaper
Standard
had already saved and published it.
Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Integration Minister Susanne Raab at the Vienna Opera Ball. © HELMUT FOHRINGER/APA/AFP
Instead, we now talk about “tradition and customs”. The Austrian brass band association distanced itself from the newspaper because the ÖVP used pictures of people with wind instruments in traditional costumes. Association President Erich Riegler said that he “couldn’t do anything” with the term leading culture and that parties should refrain from appropriating brass music.
Kickl's FPÖ leads the polls - Nehammer wants to enshrine "leading culture" in law
The FPÖ under its hard-right leader Herbert Kickl is currently
at around 28 percent in the
Austria Press Agency's
election trend, followed by the SPÖ with 22 percent and the ÖVP with around 20 percent. The Conservatives are the only party of the three that have lost support since January. At the beginning of the year, Austria's ÖVP Chancellor Karl Nehammer, in his “Austria Plan” for 2030, announced with PR fanfare, called for determining what the Alpine state's “leading culture” would be. This should then be “reflected by law as a national cultural asset”. The rest of the ÖVP campaign contains points that are fundamental values of a liberal constitutional state and as such have been anchored in Austria's constitution - at least nominally - for more than a century.
Heinz-Christian Strache at a Pegida rally in Dresden on February 24, 2023. Under his leadership, the party campaigned with slogans such as “Daham instead of Islam”. © STRINGER / AFP
“Anti-feminism”: Sharp criticism of a member of the ÖVP minister’s key culture commission
The commission convened by Raab is likely to play a greater role in the idea of legal regulations for a “leading culture” that goes beyond the constitutional principles than the social media banter. This is quite diverse. The sociologist Kenan Gungör, a member of the commission, told the news magazine
Profil:
He sees that society is becoming “more and more plural and dynamic” and that raises the question of who we actually are. The group should ask citizens this question.
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Green women's spokeswoman Meri Disoski with SPÖ women's leader Eva-Maria Holzleitner in the Austrian parliament. © IMAGO/Martin Juen
Katharina Pabel also sits on the commission. The lawyer was criticized by the SPÖ and the Greens for her involvement in the “Lebensrecht Lawyers’ Association” which was opposed to abortion. She helps organize the anti-feminist “March for Life”. Meri Disoski, women's spokesperson for the Greens in the National Council, asked her coalition partner via
whether "anti-feminism and queer hostility" were part of the "centre politics" that the ÖVP has recently been calling for.
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