Far-right party founded by former Nazis wins Austrian election

A far-right party founded by former Nazis whose leader has adopted a moniker used by Adolf Hitler won in Austria’s national elections on Sunday.

The showing by the Freedom Party, known by the acronym FPO, is unprecedented there since the end of World War II and adds to a wave of support for far-right parties across Europe.

FPO took 29% of the vote on Sunday, twice its tally from the last election in 2017, according to early results. The center-right party that currently leads the government came in second, with center-left and left-wing parties posting historically poor results.

Whether the FPO is actually able to form a government remains to be seen. Leaders of the other parties have sworn not to enter a coalition with its leader, Herbert Kickl, who has said he wants to be seen as “Volkskanzler,” a term meaning “people’s chancellor” that Hitler used to describe himself. FPO was founded in the 1950s by former members of the Nazi SS paramilitary group.

Just before the election, top-ranking FPO leaders attended the funeral of a longtime party politician, Walter Sucher, where attendees sang a song popularized by the Nazis that praises the “holy German Reich.” Sucher, who was 90 when he died, himself drew criticism two decades ago when, as a party representative, he saluted a meeting with the word “heil,” which is largely associated with Hitler.

In the lead-up to the election, the Austrian Jewish Students Union protested against FPO, saying that the group’s rise augured danger for Jews and others in the country.

“As young Jews, we often confront the tragic question of who would have hidden us during the Nazi era,” Alon Ishay, the group’s president, said in a statement shared by the European Jewish Congress. “The FPÖ leader’s response is brief and chilling: Herbert Kickl would have deported us.”

The wave of far-right successes across Europe are driven largely by rising anti-immigrant sentiment and discontent with the governing parties; the parties are typically fiercely nationalist and, in many cases, pro-Russia. A far-right politician, Geert Wilders, won the Netherlands’ national election in December, not long after a politician once photographed wearing a Nazi armband won Italy’s election. The far right in France posted stronger-than-expected results in the country’s surprise elections this summer. And earlier this month, a far-right party won a state election in Germany for the first time since World War II.