The leader of the Austrian far-right, Herbert Kickl, leader of the FPÖ, asked for a vote to turn the country around, change “the system” and close the door to asylum and immigration. This Sunday he managed, according to the scrutiny after the parliamentary elections in Austria, to cross the finish line first with a historic result for the party, although at the moment he does not have a political partner to govern or head the Executive, as he has claimed if he wins. .
Kickl (Villach, 55 years old) assumed the reins of its formation a little over three years ago after removing Norbert Hofer from the leadership, considered a friendlier face of the FPÖ and who sought to soften the messages. His successor announced that he would toughen the tone as soon as he was elected party leader in June 2021, and set himself the goal of returning the FPÖ to the front line after the fall at the polls by the Ibiza case. That scandal cost former leader Heinz-Christian Strache the vice-chancellorship in 2019 in the coalition government with the Christian Democrats (ÖVP) Sebastian Kurz, who broke the pact after the release of a video recorded with a hidden camera in Ibiza in which the ultra proposed dubious businesses. to a false Russian oligarch.
The failure of the coalition – the third in which he participated at the national level – also led to the dismissal of Kickl as Minister of the Interior, a department from which he left surrounded by controversy after promoting a raid for alleged irregularities in the internal spy services that ended in nothing judicially, but it ruined the image of Austrian intelligence.
There are also some of his statements from that time in which he advocated “concentrating” asylum seekers in basic care centers. Although he denied deliberately choosing a word reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps, the incident demonstrates rhetoric that appeals to the most extremist in his party. No less controversial was that he questioned the European convention on human rights as a minister and stated that “the law must follow politics and not politics the law.”
In these years he has embodied a radical program with immigration and asylum, support for protesters against pandemic restrictions, his opposition to aid to Ukraine and defense of neutrality, as well as the rejection of measures to combat climate change.
The recipe, disseminated with a good command of social networks and on the party’s own television, already gave results in the regional elections in Lower Austria in January 2023. The European elections last June then became the first won at the national level. national by the ultras, although with less advantage than this Sunday.
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Ideologist
“He is intelligent, disciplined and a good strategist, he knows how to position his issues,” says political scientist at the University of Vienna Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik. And he has “a lot of political experience”; Not in vain has he been devising strategies for decades, first for the historical leader, Jörg Haider, whom he has now surpassed in results, and then for Strache.
Sporty – he likes climbing and triathlon – and reserved, he trusts very few people in his party and does not allow entry into his personal life, as described in an unauthorized biography by journalists Gernot Bauer and Robert Treichler (Kickl and the destruction of EuropePaul Zsolnay publishing house). He studied Philosophy without finishing his degree and went directly to work at the FPÖ. Since then, he has been part of that “system” that he criticizes so much. He married his youthful girlfriend in 2018 without guests at the wedding. He has a son, whom he also keeps away from the political scene.
During Strache’s era, the party wanted to distance itself from anti-Semitism – as Marine Le Pen did in France – and from the radical group of the Identitarians, monitored by the Austrian intelligence services for their extremism. Kickl sees no reason to keep them away, considering them “a right-wing NGO.” It also downplays complaints of xenophobic or anti-Semitic interventions in its ranks, or accusations of exaltation of the Nazi past prohibited by law in related associations. Let him be criticized for trying to be called Volkskanzlerchancellor of the people, as Hitler was defined before becoming Führer of Nazism and Germany, considers it bad faith against him. “What I say is not extreme right, but normal,” he said at the campaign closing rally in Vienna.
Kickl does not have Haider’s charisma or Strache’s ability to deal closely with militants; sometimes he seems somewhat uncomfortable with so much attention. Where the leader of the Austrian ultras performs best is in the speakers’ gallery, with his stinging harangues.
In the last phase of the campaign he has tried to show a less radical profile, with electoral posters such as: “You are the bosses, I am your instrument”, or “Your will be done”, with biblical resonances. “This works with many people who have the feeling that they have nothing to say about other parties or politics,” says Kathrin Stainer-Hämmerle, political scientist and professor at the Higher School of Applied Sciences at the University of Carinthia. . “It uses factors that mobilize and are emotional,” adds the expert. This time it was enough for him to achieve victory, although far from a majority.
