The leaders of the Austrian and German far right could hardly have chosen a better place to celebrate their meteoric rise in the polls together. During her visit to Vienna on September 19th, Alice Weidel, President of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), together with Herbert Kickl, Chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), gave their only interview for AUF 1, a now established Internet television station of the most important bastions of the German-speaking anti-vax conspiracy.
Founded in 2021 by a former activist from Austrian neo-Nazi circles, this medium managed to exploit the strong vaccine skepticism observed in Germany during the Covid-19 pandemic, gain an audience and then impose right-wing extremist issues in the two countries: rejection of immigrants, LGBT -People or proximity to Moscow.
Enough to close the breathing space that the Austrian FPÖ had after the exhaustion of the migration crisis of 2015 and the gigantic “Ibiza” corruption scandal that forced the party to resign from power in 2019 in the early parliamentary elections “only” 16.1% of the Voices. A low value in this country, where the extreme right has been established much longer than the AfD in Germany and has already taken part in two government coalitions with the right (2000-2007 and 2017-2019).
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Herbert Kickl, 55, who took over the leadership of the FPÖ in 2021 and has long been a discreet gray eminence of the party, managed to climb back up the slope by enforcing a radical and rigid line, like this speeding hiker who doesn’t have the preference for it shares the party of his predecessors Jörg Haider and Heinz-Christian Strache. Their first step is to promote the use of ivermectin, an antiparasitic agent, to combat Covid-19. In this country, where vaccination skepticism is quite high, he also takes part in the anti-vaccination demonstrations in which tens of thousands of Austrians take part on Vienna’s Ringstrasse.
Record popularity
Far from the “de-demonization” strategies of his European allies, Mr. Kickl is openly committed to the identity movement, which he likes to describe as a “simple right-wing NGO.” This one also practices Since he led the FPÖ, he has been a determining influence within the party to the point where he now advocates the “great replacement” theory. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, in February 2022, Mr. Kickl took up a pro-Russian discourse by attacking the European sanctions against Moscow. He then castigates activists fighting climate change and government measures to curb carbon emissions, calling them “eco-communism.”
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