Austria's elections, the radical-right and the lessons for Europe

In yesterday’s general elections in Austria, two radical right-wing parties, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the Union for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) polled together almost 30 percent of all votes cast. Having been in Austria twice since elections became inevitable as a consequence of the breakdown of the grand coalition between the two big parties in June, this aspect of the results was no surprise – but it is nevertheless shocking. The FPÖ has adopted positions that are openly racist, while the BZÖ is effectively the political creation of the Governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider, whose reputation as one of Europe’s leading radical right-wing politicians was established during the 1990s.

Much ink is likely to be spilled in the mainstream media across Europe and North America, seeking to argue that the roots of this election result lie in Austria’s National Socialist past and its failure to come to terms with that legacy during much of the post-war period. I am highly sceptical of these explanations. This is not to deny that political elites during the first forty-five years of the Second Republic sought to whitewash the reality of Austrian support for National Socialism, and the complicity of Austrian society in maintaining a criminal regime. Nor do I want to deny that this whitewashing and the dominance of the politics of statist consensus during the post-war period had baleful effects on the development of Austrian political culture. When Austria was subject to EU sanctions in early 2000 following the inclusion of the FPÖ in a right-wing coalition, I argued in my contribution to a discussion on the HABSBURG list that the rise of the radical right in Austria was related far more to contemporary political, social and economic pressures than a past that was then fifty-five years distant.

Not only was this true then, but it is equally true almost nine years after the FPÖ won the same kind of share of the vote that the FPÖ and BZÖ won together yesterday. While most media commentary focuses on the past, they miss the more crucial, important and worrying point – that this result points to the future of politics in Europe, rather than its past. To see why this is the case one only needs to examine the relationship between society and politics in Austria during the post-war period, and some of the parallels (and points of divergence) with other European states.

During the years of four-power occupation between 1945 and 1955, Austria’s political elites were forced to build a political system based on elite consensus. The presence of Soviet troops in the east of the country, and much of Austria bordered socialist states from the late 1940s cemented elite co-operation. The centre-right majority and socialist/social democratic minority co-operated. The left’s supporters were integrated through the development of a welfare state, that continued after Austria signed its peace treaty in 1955, and reached its apogee during the 1970s when the Socialist Party (re-named in 1991 as the Social Democrats) won a series of absolute majorities. In the early 1980s as the cold winds of new right politics blew through North America and Europe, Austria continued to enjoy full employment, and welfare-based politics based on a high degree of elite consensus.

Given the changes in the international economic environment during the 1980s this did not last, and from 1986 under a grand coalition of the two major parties, budgets were cut, full employment abandoned, and state industries were privatized – unemployment reached 7 percent by 1993, and Austria became a two-thirds, one-third society like its neighbours. During the same period, the cold war border between east and west disappeared, with a consequent pick-up in economic migration – a process exacerbated by flight from the consequences of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. This was the environment which enabled Jörg Haider’s rise during the 1990s.

Up to five years ago, it seemed that the radical right’s incorporation into government in 2000 had led to its marginalization. The responsibility for governing and supporting some fairly unpleasant neo-Thatcherite policies undercut its ability to play the populist cards Haider used to such effect in the 1990s. The FPÖ split between Haider and his “moderates”, and the anti-immigrant, racist radicals. Aided by the stupidity of those leading a renewed grand coalition of the two parties that took power in 2007 (especially of the Social Democrats in agreeing to most of the neo-liberal agenda of the party they defeated after spending an election campaigning against it), they have returned with a vengeance.

Hitherto, Austria’s radical-right has been most effective as a vehicle of protest, but they may not stay as such (a unified radical-right party, combining the FPÖ and BZÖ, would have come within one percent of winning more votes than any other party on the basis of yesterday’s scores). Therefore the phenomena which have made them a major political force need to be grasped. The first of these is the tabloidization of the mass media. The FPÖ especially speak the language of tabloid populism effectively – looking at their posters, their layout, and language I was reminded of the front-pages of tabloid newspapers across Europe (there is a very good example of what I mean here). It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the rise of the radical-right in Austria demonstrates the dangers of the debasement of political debate that the growing tabloidization of the media has brought in train.

The second and more serious issue is the salience of the politics of immigration. Austria seems to me to be a prime example of a state where legitimacy was built among the population through offering nationally-bounded social citizenship. During the post-war period the authority of the state was based on offering Austrian citizens full employment, relative security, and a welfare state. Ironically because of the success and the nationally-bounded nature of this bargain many of its core supporters have reacted to its erosion by believing that if it were restricted only to “true Austrians” then it would gain a renewed viability. The futility and inhumanity of such politics of restriction have not stopped many people believing in them (aside from the size of the combined vote of the FPÖ and BZÖ, one of the most depressing features of this election was the way in which all mainstream Austrian parties bought into the anti-immigration consensus).

I think the description I have given is good reason to ignore smug analyses that suggest this election result was rooted in Austria’s Nazi past. I recognize many of the phenomena behind the large vote for radical-right parties in Austria in most western European states, including my native Britain. Given the state of the Schengen border regime in Europe one can imagine ever more futile and barbaric anti-immigration measures being pursued, accompanied by neo-nationalist politics of restriction and exclusion on lines of citizenship within Europe’s nation-states. While I find such a future profoundly abhorrent, there seems to be little debate (and even less political will) about when it comes to developing an alternative based upon principles of non-racism and greater social justice (both locally and globally).