(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: FPÖ trekt met zege in Oostenrijk Europa verder naar rechts)
The leader of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), Herbert Kickl (55), has dealt ‘the system of established parties’, as he calls it, an enormous blow with his election victory. Above all the Christian Democratic ÖVP, in power for 37 years in various coalitions, is up against the wall. Team up with the FPÖ, against the wishes of the established powers, or team up with the socialists and greens, with the danger that the party ends up in a CDA scenario.
For Europe the signal is clear. With the FPÖ, Austria will lean more closely toward the policies of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, on immigration and the war in Ukraine.
Profit warning: Kickl may be the big winner, but whether he also becomes chancellor is another matter.
On the Friday evening before the elections Kickl gave a speech during the FPÖ’s closing rally, right next to the Stephansdom of 1578, the cathedral that defines Vienna. Before a crowd of several hundred people he sketched his political agenda. He sees himself as an ‘anti-system’ politician who puts an end to the backroom dealing of, above all, Christian Democrats and socialists who still control a real ‘pillar’, as once existed in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Through cronyism with the business world, the ‘Freunderlwirtschaft’, the steering of the media and the system of clientelism in the distribution of government jobs. The right party membership can be decisive. Kickl wants to break that system. ‘The other parties have the wind of the system at their backs, but feel the headwind of the population’. He sees the FPÖ as leader of a ‘war of liberation’ and himself at the head of Austria as ‘Volkskanzler’ who ensures the ‘Festung Österreich’.
Immigration is the FPÖ’s trump card. Kickl: ‘We demand zero tolerance for immigrants who commit crimes’. And he advocates remigration. FPÖ policy barely differs from the policy Hungary already has: handling asylum requests at the border, deportation upon rejection.
Austria is not a member of NATO, neutral like Switzerland. Kickl: ‘Neutrality is a model for the future, no weapons deliveries to Ukraine.’ This too means that Kickl has the same position as Hungary, which is a member of NATO but received an ‘opt-out’ on Ukraine in exchange for its consent to Mark Rutte as secretary-general of NATO.
In style Kickl differs greatly from his notorious predecessors Jörg Haider and Heinz-Christian Strache. Both were glossy narcissists, eloquent and extravagant. Kickl comes across as a grey mouse, does not immediately stand out at 1.72 meters, has a bearded face and dresses ‘not elitist’. That outward dullness is his weapon. But his inner conviction is tenacious, terrier-like.
Kickl comes from the southern state of Carinthia, where he was born in 1968 in the village of Radentheim, of, as he himself says, ‘modest origins’. At the gymnasium in Spittal an der Drau he became impressed by the coming ‘strong man’ from the region: Jörg Haider, founder of the FPÖ and for years its figurehead.
Kickl studied politics, philosophy and history at the University of Vienna. But he never finished his studies. When confronted about this his answer is invariably: ‘I may not be able to do anything, but I can learn everything’. The real reason is that in 1995 he came to know Haider, and joined his party’s ‘Akademie’, the think tank. Kickl became a speechwriter for Haider; he stood out for his knowledge of marketing, especially the devising of slogans.
The two were totally different. Haider brazen and provocative; Kickl rather calm and level-headed. Haider loved parties with young men, the ‘Buberl parties’; Kickl a devout Catholic, a family man about whose personal life little is known. In 2005 it came to a split in the party, because a new star appeared on the firmament: Heinz Christian Strache (55). Only one rooster could rule the dunghill.
Because of the unpredictable conduct of Haider, who spoke apologetically about the Waffen-SS (‘no collective guilt’), the FPÖ was excluded from participation in government. Haider had brought his party from 5% in 1983 to 27% in 1999, but became a stumbling block himself. He left and founded his own party. Haider assumed that the loyal Kickl would come along. That did not happen. Kickl stayed and Strache made him secretary-general of the party. Thus he maneuvered himself into the center of power. In 2008 Haider died in a traffic accident, returning under the influence of alcohol from his notorious party.
All the squabbling did the FPÖ no good. The FPÖ is a party whose fortunes are very dependent on the migration question. In 2015 it was boom time when a wave of asylum from the Balkans appeared at the Austrian border. Strache and Kickl smelled their chance, because voters flocked en masse to the right. In the 2017 elections the FPÖ was back in the league of the big parties. The Christian Democrats, with their young lead candidate Sebastian Kurz, achieved 31.5%, the socialists 27% and the FPÖ 26%. Kurz entered a coalition with the FPÖ, Strache became vice-chancellor and Kickl came silently into the cabinet, as minister of the interior.
Then the hard side of Kickl also became visible to the outside world. He says little, but what he says counts. Kickl has something ascetic about him: he once completed an extreme triathlon in Scotland – 2.4 km swimming, 200 km cycling and a full marathon: in 16 hours. Few Austrian politicians will match him at that. During the Austrian presidency of the EU he launched proposals for a stricter asylum policy, supported by Italy and Hungary, such as the handling of asylum procedures at the external borders, including on ships off the coast. He spoke reproachfully about ‘die deutsche Dummheit in der Mitte’.
But the FPÖ ruined everything in 2019 when a video appeared showing Strache speaking at a holiday location in Ibiza with a supposed niece of a Russian oligarch, who also claimed to hold Latvian nationality. She wanted to do business with Strache, who floated an idea: to buy the Kronen Zeitung, by far the largest newspaper in the country, and prompt it toward positive coverage of him and his party. The video dated from 2017, but its makers released the footage just before the elections. Kurz broke the coalition, Strache left the cabinet voluntarily, but Kickl was thrown out immediately. Kurz continued to govern with the Greens. The FPÖ was back to square one.
After much internal turmoil Kickl became ‘Bundesparteiobmann’ of the FPÖ in June 2021, after he had campaigned fiercely in the Austrian parliament against the Corona policy of the Kurz government, which he called ‘criminal’. Kickl turned out to be a dogged fighter, a persister who wanted his revenge. Slogan: ‘Kurz muss weg’. The apple fell ripe into his basket when it became known that Kurz, as prime minister, had also been guilty of bribing the media in the so-called ‘Inseraten affair’. Once again: extra government advertisements for certain media, in exchange for positive coverage and favorable polls. Kurz left.
Kickl stands at the top of his power, made the FPÖ the largest party in Austria for the first time. Breaking the Austrian system is not easy and he remains dependent, above all on the ÖVP. The left already demands a ‘Brandmauer’ against the FPÖ, the exclusion of that party from coalition negotiations. That forces the ÖVP to become a prisoner of the left. The sitting Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) does not want to team up with Kickl. But what will his party do?
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
