Anti-migrant, anti-Islam FPÖ could emerge as most voted for party in Sunday’s parliamentary poll

After winning the EU elections in June, Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) seized the moment, calling for the appointment of a EU “remigration” commissioner to be tasked with the forced return of migrants and citizens with a migration background to their countries of origin.

The muted reaction that followed was a sharp contrast to Germany, where months earlier, allegations that members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had attended a meeting at which they discussed remigration dominated headlines and prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.

The difference was not lost on Farid Hafez, a senior researcher at Georgetown University. In Austria, “there was no outcry,” he said. “This is the normalisation of racism that the far right has achieved and that has become a very normal part of daily Austrian politics.”

  • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    As someone who lives in Austria and happens to have immigrant roots (parents came here in the early 90ies)

    The rise of the far right is partly due to the incompetence of the other parties.

    The social democrats are almost non existent when it comes to political topics of any sort.

    The “greens” (mostly left) turned out to be kissasses with whomever they coalition with.

    And the removed-of-the-riches (that’s literally how they called themselves) well… they only act in the interest of the wealthiest.

    So, “normal” people have almost no sane option to vote for, and some even go as far as to vote the far-rights as an act of demonstration.

    Sure, there are other small parties to vote for, but at the end, they might get 3% all together, because they just din’t have the budget to advertise themselves strong enough, like the big ones do.

    • PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I really wish people would look at it in this lens more. I think this is a big part of why we’re see this same issue in many developed countries. Like, yes. Xenophobia and racism is a part of it, but the other, more actionable part of it is that all of our viable political options have turned into technocrats who have used their political and economic expertise to fatten the richest people, and largest, most profitable industries at the expense of the poor for decades. This reality has bred resentment, distrust, and disinterest in politics, especially of political moderates and “status quo” politicians. All major left-wing opposition has been suppressed, or neutered, and as a result the only truly “oppositional” seeming politics come from far right nut jobs and they end up being the release valve for the political frustration. People can only hear “the economy is doing great”, while watching their children struggle to afford even a modest standard of living (by the standards we’ve come to expect) for so long before they become desperate for a significant change.

  • Commiunism@lemmy.wtf
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    10 hours ago

    Not surprising, white nationalist movements were always there but only somewhat recently they stopped using extreme rhetoric in order to get more supporters, and it’s super effective. Nowadays you have even mildly exclusionary people who wouldn’t have supported white nationalists spout anti-immigration nonsense online and irl, voting for the far-right thinking they’re solving some issue that doesn’t really exist in reality and is massively overblown.

    The world is going back to authoritarianism.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    Euro govts: It’s totally cool to genocide palestinians.

    Euro govts: Why is our country filled with nazis?

  • Atin@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    I think we are too far now from the generation that fought or grew up during WW2. I hope we aren’t doomed to repeat it.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    After winning the EU elections in June, Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) seized the moment, calling for the appointment of a EU “remigration” commissioner to be tasked with the forced return of migrants and citizens with a migration background to their countries of origin.

    Jesus Christ.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      16 hours ago

      Exhume and ship Beethoven’s corpse back to Belgium! Austrian soil is for Austrian blood alone!

  • Sundial@lemm.ee
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    22 hours ago

    You know what’s so funny about people who say we don’t want these people here and we should send them back? It’s that they fail to even ask or address the question of why those people uprooted their entire lives and left in the first place.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
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      17 hours ago

      They managed to normalize the idea, that there is “real” citizens and people who only hold the citizenship. It is Blut und Boden like from Hitlers Nazis all along. The problem is that these ideas have infiltrated large swaths of politics in Austria and Germany, so people claiming to be conservative or liberal now subscribe to the same principles of hard Nazi ideology, just worded differently.

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        It is, they have openly talked about revoking the birth right citizenship so they can deport people who don’t believe the same thing as them.

        • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          i don’t doubt that some have talked about it, i’m saying i’m surprised it isn’t even more commonplace.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

    … time again throughout history, bad things and terrible ideas only come about due to the ignorance and inaction of individuals who think that a movement may be good for them but deep down know that they are not morally right, so instead they choose to do nothing in the hopes that their most secret thoughts and beliefs might come true but if they don’t, they can plausibly deny everything.