World news Nazi past haunts Austrian election as far-Right favourite scents victory
“THIS election is all about the refugees,” Thomas Hadorits said, as an icy December wind rattled the door of his village shop. “If it weren’t for the refugees, that guy wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Outside, an election poster for Norbert Hofer was swaying in the wind. Austria goes to the polls today to choose a new president, a vote pitting Mr Hofer, of the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ), against Alexander van der Bellen, a former economics professor endorsed by the Green Party. None of the established parties made it past the first round.
If Mr Hofer wins, he will become the first far-Right head of state in the history of the European Union and the first the continent has seen since the death of Franco in 1975.
It has been a long, hard journey to this point for Mr Hofer, who almost won the first of 2016’s great populist upsets in May. He started celebrating when the exit polls showed he had won the presidency, only to have victory denied him when the final tally showed he had lost to Mr van der Bellen by just 31,000 votes.
But in a surprise twist, the courts annulled the result after irregularities in counting postal votes emerged, and ordered a rerun.
The latest polls are on a knife edge, but Mr Hofer is the narrow favourite.
The story of how Austria reached this point lies in the windswept plains on the border with Hungary. The villages here are Mr Hofer’s new stronghold, although few of the residents would call themselves far-Right.
In the last general election, in 2013, the centre-left Social Democrat party (SPÖ) won more than 50 per cent of the vote in some of the villages. But that was before the refugees came through.
For a few weeks last year, this part of Austria appeared on television screens around the world, as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers spilled across the Hungarian border.
Villagers opened up their homes to offer showers to the refugees, and donated old clothes. But something has changed since then.
In the first, aborted presidential vote, Hofer won more than 74 per cent of the vote here.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with the other issues people talk about, like unemployment,” Mr Hadorits said. “It’s because of the refugees he’s there. People are afraid of the refugees, because they fear for their own welfare and security.”
This is an affluent, winemaking area, nothing like the impoverished rust belt that fuelled Donald Trump’s victory in the US. There is almost no unemployment in Apetlon. Many people commute to work in Vienna, an hour away, and there are expensive cars parked in the driveways.
Johann Lang, the deputy mayor, is sitting with friends in the local pub. The air is thick with cigarette smoke — the habit is still allowed in Austrian pubs — and the discussion is politics. But one by one, the others drift away when a journalist enters, until it is just Mr Lang and Gerhard Tschida, an unemployed truck driver.
The two friends disagree passionately about politics. Mr Tschida supports Mr Hofer — “I’m afraid people won’t vote for him because they’re worried about international opinion”, he said — while Mr Lang is backing Mr van der Bellen.
But they agree it is discontent over refugees that is fuelling the debate.
Mr Hofer has spoken out against asylum seekers, claiming as many as 75 per cent are not genuine refugees but are economic migrants. He has also said Islam has “no place in Austria”.
Mr Tschida says his problem is not with the migrants themselves. “I was one of those who helped them when they arrived last year,” he said. “I brought my own clothes to give to them. And if a new influx came, I’d do the same again. We’re all prepared to offer solidarity to people.”
What he objects to is what he says are excessive benefits paid to asylum seekers. “Most of the people here live pretty well,” Mr Lang explained. “But the thing is, most people in work here earn something between €1,200 (£1,000) and €1,500 (£1,250) a month. But a refugee family with two parents and two children can get twice that in benefits. This plays a decisive role in the election.”
At Mr Hofer’s rally in Vienna on Friday, an a cappella choir sang Christmas songs while an Advent candle was lit, in a show of traditional Austrian life.
A video that has gone viral in the past week tells a different story. In it, an 89year-old Auschwitz survivor warns against voting for Mr Hofer, and compares his campaign to Austria’s Nazi past. “It’s the humiliation of others, the demonisation of others, that alarms me the most,” the woman, who gives her name only as Gertrude, says.
“We have already seen that scenario. Like the Jews: they had to clean the streets. The Viennese, men, women and children, stood by and laughed. That’s what they’re trying to bring out in people again.”
It goes to the crucial question of the election: how afraid should Europe be of Mr Hofer and the Freedom Party?
“It’s ridiculous,” said Johann Gudenus, deputy mayor of Vienna and a leading Freedom Party figure. “The only argument the other side can make against us is calling us Nazis or the farRight.”
The Freedom Party was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, and its first leader was a former SS officer.
Mr Hofer has repeatedly been photographed in public wearing a blue cornflower, which was used as a secret symbol by the Nazi party when it was banned in Austria in 1930s. He is also on record saying V-E Day, traditionally celebrated in Austria as liberation from the Nazis, was “no day of joy”.
If Mr Hofer does win today, it will not mean an immediate or dramatic change. Austria has a parliamentary, not a presidential system, and the presidency is largely ceremonial.
It does, however, afford the power to dissolve parliament and dismiss the government.
That could usher in a general election, which the Freedom Party would currently be favourite to win.