Herbert Kicklfor decades a kind of brain in the shadow of Austrian ultranationalismhas just placed for the first time Liberal Party (FPÖ) at the top of power in Austria. Thus completing the path begun in 1986 by the charismatic Jörg Haider and that, after successive stages as a partner in conservative Executives, he has strong options to occupy the leadership of his Government.
His calm appearance and seemingly low-media disposition would place him at the opposite end of the vibrant Haider. He wants to be the ‘people’s chancellor’, a term that refers to the times of Adolf Hitler. The polls gave him 28.8% of the votes, with 98% counted, about 11 points more than the Chancellor’s People’s Party (ÖVP). Karl Nehammer. As party leader, Kickl already enjoyed his first success in the last European elections, as he was the most voted force.
In about four years, since the collapse of the last coalition between ÖVP and FPÖ led by Sebastian Kurz, he has managed to revitalize a party that openly displays its xenophobic, climate change denialist and anti-vaccine rhetoric, as much an enemy of asylum as it is of the LGTBI community.
He does it from heart of a European democracy advanced and in a prosperous country that one would say lacks nothing, but that soon attends, surprised, the economic recession and the inflation. It is a society in which the slogan of ‘Austria first‘and the longing for close borders. They are the two paradigms that Kickl now personifies, although in reality they were always very present in the Alpine country. His ideology regarding foreigners does not differ much from neo-Nazism, but he offers it wrapped in modern rhetoric and a supposed defense of European individual freedoms against foreign ‘invasions’.
Bastion: social networks
Kickl, 55, is not at rallies or debates between candidates. He has learned, however, to handle yourself with ease on social networks or the FPÖ-TV channel. His most notable interventions and messages reach a estimated audience 200,000 followers, in a country with 6.3 million voters. It is a multiplier effect that would be difficult to achieve with conventional campaign events.
Nothing guarantees his rise to power, not even the first position. His direct rival is the conservative Nehammer, his only possible partner due to the rejection of the rest of the formationsalthough during the campaign the chancellor has ruled out that he could join a government if its leader is Kickl.
The FPÖ, however, has the support of the Austrian identitya recalcitrant ethno-nationalist movement that advocates the so-called ‘remigration’, to refer to the expulsion of millions of foreigners for the sake of ethnic homogeneity. He forms a political family with the Patriots for Europe, the European Parliament group led by the Hungarian ultranationalist Víktor Orbánwith the French Marine Le Pen and spanish Santiago Abascalleader of Vox, among its members.
The position for which he was announced was Minister of the Interior Sebastian Kurz coalition. This alliance ended up taking over the scandal of the “Ibiza case”, unleashed following a video in which the then vice-chancellor and leader of the FPÖ, Hans Christian Strachein a T-shirt and between glasses of alcohol accepting, in exchange for public contracts, electoral support from a woman who posed as the niece of a Russian oligarch. Revealed by the German weekly ‘Der Spiegel’ in 2019, the images dated back to 2017 and affected campaign donations and the government.
The encirclement precipitated cascading investigations and resignations. The FPÖ sank to a minimum. His second after Strache, Norbert Hofer, took the reins. But The winner of the game was Kicklwho after an internal battle began to assume leadership.
This son of a family of working classwho attended university studies but did not complete them, became like this at the head of the party he joined in 1995 and in it he discreetly climbed positions. The FPÖ had been founded by Austrian Nazisten years after the Capitulation of the Third Reich and in the native country of Adolf Hitler. For many citizens, their reference figure continued to be Haider, who died in 2008 after crashing in his car, at the stroke of midnight and under the influence of alcohol.
The party had managed to enter its first government under that leader, but then became entangled in internal brawls. He seemed to have reconnected with his electorate under Strache, until the recording in the rented Ibizan villa sank him again.
Kickl is the updated face of a match that, for the family far-right European, represented the first rpersistence against the boycott imposed by the European Union in the 1980s, in an attempt to isolate it. Now his bet is no longer to be accepted as a partner, but to lead the next government in Vienna. It would thus be added to the increasingly extensive pro-Russian bloc in the EU, like Orbán, although from its status as a neutral country and not integrated into NATO.
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