Boiled wool jackets of Austrian populism ” “

Populism in Austria is nothing new. It dates back in history, a legacy of the rulership of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, which for several hundred years managed to preserve good relations with people belonging to different ethnic groups, speaking different languages and with different faiths. It united German strains and Catholic and Evangelical Magjari to Orthodox and Muslim Slavs, along with Italians who were never truly convinced or returning to their ‘homeland’. Austrian populism is also represented by an image. It’s the picture of boiled wool jackets with silver buttons, the guardians of the Alps, the ongoing discussions on whether or not to open the borders to refugees, in a land, Austria, that has always been a crossing point. Votes and scandals. Under certain aspects, today more than ever, Austria is a point of reference for European populist and nationalistic phenomena, especially owing to electoral successes, both at local and national level, of the Austrian Freedom Party (Fpö), that managed to sit in the government with everyone, despite accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and latent Nazism. The outcomes of the parliamentary elections of fall 2013 witnessed the establishment of a coalition government – the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) – which, however, have lost compared to the previous elections as much as 4.4%, while the FPÖ witnessed remarkable success also in the European elections, with a gain of almost three percentage points, 40 seats in the Nationalrat and 4 in the Bundesrat. All this – it should be said – despite long and complex judicial investigations, which have revealed an elevated degree of corruption at the highest levels of the populist movement with complaints for illegal party funding. People and Liberalism… The Freedom Party was founded in 1956 featuring a decidedly pan-Germanic vision that combined nationalist instances and those reminiscent of the glories of the Austro-Hungarian transnational culture of the three parties, the Rural Party, that of Greater Germany and the Federation of Independents. The approach, especially in the light of the tragedies of Nazism and the Second World War, was to move towards a liberal party, open to popular demands. But over the years it grew into a combination of national interests of extreme liberalism, markedly conservative in terms of production and taxation, characterised by a very strong connection with European Eurosceptic and anti-religious trends, with features stemming from national-socialism. Fpö started gaining political popularity as of the mid 1980s, when a histrionic, fiery man from Carinthia, Jörg Haider, in a few years managed to radicalize the party on increasingly stringent positions at local level, but apparently open to dialogue with the center-moderate political parties. Haider, the true leader. The story of the party became for fifteen years the story of pro-Nazi verbal excesses and pompous oratory skills of the Carinthian politician Jörg Haider, elected governor of Carinthia in 1989, earning the trust of ranges of moderate voters. But with time he was also forced to abrupts about-face, until his resignation in 1991 due to official statements, in which he praised the labor policies of the Third Reich. In the wake of his strong personality, however, the FPÖ was able to present itself as a government force, able to weave alliances and which until 2002 backed popular Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, in a government blatantly closed within Austrian borders, with peaks of nationalist intemperance and opposed both internally, with many Catholics and evangelical voters who criticized their own party, and by the European Union. Eyes on Vienna. Today there is no longer Haider, he died tragically in 2008. But what he left behind – divisions, a new party founded by him (Bzö, Alliance for the Future of Austria), contrasts with what was later to become the current national secretary and his former heir apparent Heinz-Christian Strache – is a striking example of continuity between a party that represented the past and is now an integral part of a liberal and democratic political system to the point of acting as government party. FPÖ is a continuation of the Austrian-nationalist tradition, which brings together populist, nationalist and anti-European stances and at the same time stands in open political confrontation with the other parties in the country. Haider’s heirs have never really renounced national-socialist and anti-Semitic inspirations, while pan-German sentiments have never waned. And, in view of the European elections in May, various nationalist and populist movements in other countries are attentively following what is happening in Vienna.