Austria’s legislative elections saw an all-too familiar result for Europe in recent times, with a right-wing party – the Freedom Party (FPÖ) – coasting to victory, leading to similar conclusions being drawn from the Left as to why this has come about.
But in the case of Austria, there are many important facts and interpretations, from a progressive left and radical democratic point of view, that need to be mentioned to give a clearer picture of the situation, and add more context to DiEM25’s recent conversation on the matter (below).
The astonishing range of left-wing small parties in the election
In these elections, there was a quite astonishing range of small, left-wing parties which showed the lively democratic spirit in our quite conservative country. Present and former DiEMers have been active at some time in all of those smaller parties, except for the so-called Beer Party. The fact is that none of them were able to pass the 4% threshold to enter parliament. All together, they achieved 6.3% of votes.
There was a ‘Gaza List’ party, two anti-Corona-measures parties, a radical left reformist and a kind of urban hedonist-private-one-man-anarchist party with the curious name of ‘Beer’. There was also the 100-year-old Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). The communists have just recently won the majority in the second largest town in Austria, Graz, where the communist mayor is well accepted. This has never happened in the last 100 years in this city. Thus, many thought the KPÖ, slightly over 100 years old, would enter parliament again, after they were absent since the 1950s.
And, this time there were no small right-wing or conservative parties, like in the past, the Christian fundamentals or EU exit parties.
Two surprising voter streams
The only party from the left which made it was the 135-year-old Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), with 21% of the votes. This success was made possible by an exceptional high influx of Green votes.
In the most ‘Green’ district of Austria, which is the densely populated inner city, Neubau, in the 7th district of the capital city Vienna, the SPÖ won with a high margin. Over the last 30 years, this urban district has been dominated by the Green Party (Grüne), even in national elections. This time, the green voters turned their backs on their party en masse, and the SPÖ gained 11%, reaching 31% of all district votes, mainly from the greens.
This Grüne to SPÖ voter stream happened all over Austria, but was most prominent in bigger cities.
So, why did the left-wing SPÖ then not win the national election after such an abundant stream of Green votes? Firstly, the Greens are not so many. They are a medium sized party that makes up around 10-15% of the national votes. And secondly, the SPÖ was weakened substantially due to a significant chunk of their voters that decided not to vote all. It was not weakened by an increase in right wingers. Why? Many workers have long defected from the SPÖ to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). And the factory-working class is shrinking, as are manual jobs disappearing like everywhere in the rich West.
Why, then, did the FPÖ win the election this time?
The ruling conservatives, the centrist Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) suffered their greatest loss ever. The party was abandoned by nearly 40% of those who voted for it last time around. Those defecting voted mostly for the FPÖ.
Voter streams lead to ÖVP debacle and FPÖ victory – the straw that broke the camel’s back
So, what motivated the centre-right, more rural ÖVP populace to vote for FPÖ, instead of for the quite centre-left SPÖ, as was the case in the past? You will not easily find these motives reported in the mainstream media of the United States, western European or NATO countries. Such reports do not help the current EU agenda, as they lay bare the consequences of EU and NATO manoeuvres.
However, they are very clear to me, observing the slow and stepwise regrowth of the FPÖ over the last four years. This growth did not stem mainly from the issue of immigration, which has been a staple of the FPÖ’s rhetoric for the last 40 years or so.
The FPÖ, a nearly 70-year-old Austrian right-wing party, had many ups and catastrophic downs. Since the 1970s, they were sometimes in different coalition governments in Austria. They never could govern alone, as is also the case right now. Their first-time numeral victory in 2024 is far too slim.
The three main steps of recent FPÖ regrowth
The first step started in 2020 and lasted until the spring of 2022. It was caused by the mishandling of COVID-19 at the EU level since autumn 2020.
As a quite experienced public health and epidemics expert, I, like many Austrians, see severe problems in the management of the pandemic at the EU level: the green-pass access restrictions, the untransparent dealings of Ursula von der Leyen with vaccine manufacturers, the EU de-facto monopolising a risky US-German vaccine, and many more questionable actions and decisions.
This was obvious to many, in all political fields. The misuse of administrative power of an undemocratic EU was felt by everybody. And only the FPÖ, then the opposition in Austria, loudly voiced its discontent.
The next increase step started in 2022 and factors driving it last until today. The cause is the relentless NATO escalation of the war in Ukraine. Again, the EU top level was, and is, in the driver seat. The FPÖ urged from the beginning, like we DiEMers did, for peace and diplomatic solutions, and were against NATO escalation. And they also resisted the sanctions aimed to destroy Russia economically, as we and Yanis Varoufakis warned would be futile.
Their party leader clearly stated in 2022: “If I, Herbert Kickl, become chancellor in the next elections, I will not allow any Austrian soldiers beyond our borders, except UN missions, and no Austrian weapons to the battlefield in Ukraine.” As we still have a populace army – a general draft – everybody understands, we do not want to lose people in foreign wars, like it happened in two world wars in the past.
The FPÖ defended our everlasting military neutrality, which is the constitutional basis of our state since 1955, loud and openly since 2022.
In other large parties, some circles flirted, at one point or another, with militaristic EU and NATO groups and ideologies since then. The more a NATO victory over Russia seemed to be near, the more open this flirting was. At the forefront of the pro-NATO-camp in our parliament is the 15-year-old neo-liberal party NEOS.
However, many moderate right-conservatives typical ÖVP voters, do not like this unwinnable war. And they clearly identify the EU, as we do, as war mongers. So, they voted in the 2024 EU elections against Von der Leyen. Even more of them defected to non-voters, having lost hope in EU democracy. They wanted to get rid of her.
Final step three: Breaking the camel’s back – EU machinations, conservative voters’ revenge
And again, the only large party in Austria who promised in 2024 to get rid of Von der Leyen, and who actually tried to do so, was FPÖ. The ÖVP conservatives at the EU, the EVP, including their newly-elected MEPs, betrayed their conservative Austrian anti-Von der Leyen electorate. They installed her again. And as it was done without proper lengthy debate, without alternative candidates in the EU parliament, the FPÖ crowd clearly defined that as autocratic centralism.
The betrayed ÖVP voters got their opportunity for revenge three months later. They shifted to the FPÖ in September 2024. Nearly 500,000 moved this way, which is a lot in a small country. It was a debacle for the ÖVP. This massive move within the right political spectrum led to the quite small victory margin of 2.6% of FPÖ over conservative ÖVP with its now only 26.3% of votes.
A longer analysis and more conclusions for the left could follow. The main conclusion for us left-wingers can already be stated: war and peace, health, death, life and corporatocracy and EU autocratic centralism, are topics we clearly have to address in exact and simple words, like some right wingers in the EU do.
This includes the fight for peace in Ukraine and Gaza and clear institutional condemnation against NATO and EU entanglement at the Brussels level. That this can pay off, is clearly visible in Austria. People understand it, voters are not stupid at all. We should not leave these positions to parties like the FPÖ, which then go on to win elections.
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