The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) received 11 percent of the vote in the October 2006 general election, compared to 10 percent in 2002. Animosity between the FPÖ (21 seats) and Jörg Haider’s Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ − 7 seats), which split from the FPÖ in April 2005, prevented the latter from forming a coalition with the former ruling Austrian People’s Party ÖVP (66 seats). At the opening of Parliament, all 21 FPÖ representatives wore a blue cornflower in their buttonholes. Between 1933 and 1938 blue cornflowers served as a symbol identifying the illegal NSDAP in Austria. Nevertheless, politicians of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ – 68 seats), which formed a coalition government with the ÖVP, have begun to trivialize the increasingly extremist right-wing position of the FPÖ. For example, they portray FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache as trying to distance himself from neo-Nazism (see below).
As a result of FPÖ’s further shift to the right, beginning in 2002 and intensifying in 2005, the line between (legal) right-wing extremism and (illegal) neo-Nazism became even more blurred. The Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend (RFJ, the FPÖ’s youth wing) in particular, showed signs in 2006 of a convergence with Nazi discourse and activists. Neo-Nazis, for their part, have begun viewing the FPÖ, under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, as “their” party. This trend was reinforced by Austrian neo-Nazi Gerd Honsik who appealed for the first time to vote for the FPÖ. Honsik, who avoided serving an 18 month prison sentence in 1992 for violation of the Nazi prohibition law by fleeing to Spain, called the FPÖ “the only party in which the leading figures still profess to and stand up for the German people.”
Following Honsik’s appeal, Ariel Muzicant, president of the IKG, openly criticized the FPÖ in the media for its neo-Nazi connections. As a result, he was subjected to antisemitic attacks; in early September, the German neo-Nazi website stoertebeker wrote, for example: “Killer arguments from the mouth of a half-Asian, who is known (despite his laundry detergent name) for not having a completely clean record, were not defamatory but rather complimentary, in that the maligned politics are at least heading in the right direction.” Further, it said, on the day of the “expected national uprising,” Muzicant would do well “if he and his kind find themselves on the next plane to Tel Aviv.” Jews have “not yet grasped their last lesson” (referring to the Shoah).
Following the conviction of John Gudenus, former FPÖ member of the Bundesrat (Upper House) and Nationalrat (National Assembly), and until summer 2006 co-editor of the FPÖ affiliated weekly Zur Zeit (see below), the paper took up his cause in June, arguing that Gudenus had only exercised his right of freedom of speech in questioning the existence of gas chambers in the Third Reich. This position apparently reflects the FPÖ party line, evidenced by then high-ranking FPÖ official Ewald Stadler (who has since left the party), who not only ceremoniously greeted Gudenus at a party event in Vienna on 8 May, but also won enthusiastic applause when he spoke out against the “political sentence” passed on him.
In July it became public that Styrian FPÖ regional spokesperson Gerhard Kurzmann was a member of the extreme right Kameradschaft IV (K IV), an association traditionally linked to the Waffen SS. When speaking on Austrian radio, Kurzmann rebutted the DÖW’s characterization of the K IV − as an organization located somewhere between right-wing extremism and neo-Nazism − as a “sweeping assumption.”
Following the death of an Austrian UN soldier in Lebanon in July, Dietmar Gerhartl, a FPÖ district councilor in Neunkirchen, Lower Austria, wrote on the website of the Palästinensischen Gemeinde in Österreich (Palestinian Community in Austria) that he had long since grown tired “of having to watch the injustice in Palestine without being able to say or do anything about it.” As a Freiheitlicher (FPÖ member) “one is a victim of the Nazi bludgeon (and so with every criticism of Israel one is labeled a Nazi).” However, as the “terrorist state of Israel has now killed an Austrian too in cowardly fashion” and the “mass murderers with the Star of David… continue to go unpunished,” he no longer feared the “Nazi bludgeon” as the real Nazis were those in Israel.” Styrian FPÖ chairman Kurzmann said that “the Jewish state must finally recognize that the community of civilized states would no longer allow state terrorists to lead them a merry dance.” At the end of July the FPÖ demanded the suspension of relations with Israel. Condemning “Israel’s aggressive policies which contravene human and international law,” FPÖ member of the European Parliament (MEP) Andreas Mölzer decided to demonstrate solidarity by hoisting a Palestinian flag in front of his house.
Walter Sucher, member of the far right student league (Burschenschaft) Olympia and chairman of the Ringes volstreuer Verbände (umbrella group of organizations “faithful to the Volk”), warned at the Vienna FPÖ regional party congress in May, against denial of deutsches Volkstum (German “folklore,” with its racist connotation) and appealed for its protection. He concluded his speech with “our traditional, real greeting… a vigorous Heil!” Sucher sees himself and his party as victims of a “witch hunt.” During the congress, FPÖ chairman Strache threatened to don his “battle dress” in light of the “Turkish siege.”
The Alliance of Free Youth (BFJ) (modeled on Hitler Youth), the youth wing of the Team for Democratic Policy (AFP), a right-wing extremist group with neo-Nazi connections named after Dr. Fritz Stüber, a Nazi co-founder of FPÖ, joined with other neo-Nazis (including leading neo-Nazi Gottfried Küssel) in an illegal demonstration on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, in several Upper Austrian cities. A further demonstration in Ried/Innkreis organized by Reinthaler was forbidden by the authorities.
In October AFP’s annual “Political Academy” took place near Vienna. Speeches were made by Reinthaler, Andreas Thierry, Roman Grassl (alias “Volker Dorn”), BFJ leader Stefan Magnet, NPD politician Holger Apfel and others.
Die FPÖ Rechtsextrem? Das Stephen Roth Insitut sagt: Ja
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