As Austrians Vote, Far Right Awaits Its Biggest Success

The Freedom Party has made itself the country’s most popular party, with calls to bar asylum seekers. It is poised to come out on top in parliamentary elections for the first time.

He calls himself the “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, a term associated with the Nazis.

He has demanded stopping all new asylum seekers to make Austria a “fortress of freedom.” He calls his political opponents “traitors” and has said he wants to put unfriendly journalists on “arrest lists.” The World Health Organization, he has warned, is a dictatorship.

To the growing ranks of his supporters, Herbert Kickl, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, coolly diagnoses the country’s problems and offers reasonable solutions. To his detractors, the former interior minister is a dangerous right-wing extremist who trades in conspiracy theories.

But after Austrians vote in a national election on Sunday, Mr. Kickl may end up as the man Austria’s other parties will have to either work with or work around.

Five years after his party was ousted by a jaw-dropping scandal involving cocaine, a fake niece of a Russian oligarch, influence peddling and a secret video recording, the Freedom Party is back, and is now the most popular party in Austria.

It could come out on top for the first time ever in elections. The party is expected to win 27 percent of votes or more, polls show, beating out the incumbent center-right Austrian People’s Party by several percentage points, and other mainstream parties by even more.

Unlike in neighboring Germany, where the growing popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has set off anxious hand-wringing in the political establishment, in Austria few seem especially concerned by the rise of the Freedom Party.

Founded by former SS men in the 1950s, the Freedom Party has long been part of Austria’s political landscape. It has been the junior partner in four separate governments since the 1980s.

The party “is so normalized in Austria that few people will be shocked by it — and they have already had parliamentary election results on this scale,” said Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, a professor of Austrian politics at the University of Vienna.

In Germany, mainstream parties have vowed never to work with the AfD. And the German domestic intelligence service has labeled some AfD state chapters as extremist and is actively monitoring the party, which it considers a threat to the Constitution.

Austria is more akin to Italy or the Netherlands, where anti-immigrant sentiment has fueled the rise of far-right parties that work within the established political ecosystem.

Mr. Kickl often praises Hungary, where the nationalist Fidesz party has governed virtually unopposed for more than a decade, for its ability to keep out migrants.

The coronavirus pandemic and Austria’s strict lockdown rules helped Mr. Kickl re-energize his party after it was kicked out of the government five years ago. Mr. Kickl demanded a public inquest into government actions around lockdowns, which he called “dictatorial.” At the time of the pandemic, Mr. Kickl was a proponent of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin.

At the height of the pandemic in 2021, he told supporters: “The Austrian population is part of a large field study by pharmaceutical companies.”

But much of his focus in the recent campaign has been on immigrants. Besides calling for more deportations, the Freedom Party’s platform also demands new legislation that would stop refugees from getting any social services and bar them for life from obtaining Austrian citizenship.

Besides refugees, Mr. Kickl attacks supranational institutions, like the European Union, NATO (of which Austria is not a member), the International Criminal Court and the World Health Organization for meddling in Austrian affairs.

The party is also close to Russia. In 2016, it signed a formal declaration of friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia. Karin Kneissl, the Freedom Party’s choice for foreign minister in 2017, moved to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. While the rest of Europe has mostly cut off its use of Russian energy since the invasion, Austria has not done so.

Mr. Kickl, 55, has portrayed himself as a kind of father figure to voters, but has kept his private life mostly out of the spotlight. He started working for the Freedom Party as a student in history and philosophy, and quickly rose through the ranks.

He served as a speechwriter for Jörg Haider, who took over the party in 1986 and moved it further toward far-right populism. Mr. Kickl was responsible for some of his most incendiary speeches. Mr. Haider, who later left the party and created a new one, died in a car accident in 2008.

As Austrian interior minister from 2017 to 2019, Mr. Kickl focused on border security, but may be best remembered for overseeing a raid on the country’s domestic intelligence agency. At the time, Mr. Kickl’s clear political influence over the service made it a pariah among partner agencies.

In rallies, debates and advertisements, Mr. Kickl has distanced himself from his party’s former coalition partner, the conservative Austrian People’s Party, which was itself roiled by a scandal involving fake polls in recent years.

Mr. Kickl now blames his biggest opponent for inflation and a declining standard of living.

“We have actually come through difficult times reasonably well, as far as the Ukraine war is concerned,” said Nina Horaczek, who has written a book on Mr. Kickl. “But at the same time, there is an incredible dissatisfaction in parts of the population, and he is channeling that very, very well.”

Karl Nehammer, the current chancellor, said that if the Freedom Party won, he would not form a coalition government that would make Mr. Kickl chancellor. But he has stopped short of vowing not to work with the far-right party itself, something that experts say could happen if the People’s Party comes in first, thus ensuring that Mr. Nehammer remains chancellor.

If the far right wins, Mr. Nehammer could choose to isolate the Freedom Party and form a government with center-left Social Democrats and possibly a third party.

But a coalition between the conservatives and the far right is still considered a likely outcome, “simply because the parties are relatively close on many issues,” said Thomas Meyer, a politics professor at the University of Vienna.

Predicting the outcome has been made even harder this year by two tiny parties — the Austrian Communists and the Beer Party — that are close to reaching the 4 percent needed to enter the 183-seat Parliament.

Severe flooding in early September also led to a suspension of national campaigning and may give a boost to the Greens, a junior partner in the current government.

On a recent evening in Simmering, a working-class district in Vienna, Sascha Kaiser, a local resident, was having a drink after work and mulling the question of whom to vote for. “I don’t know whether to vote strategic or follow my heart,” he said. “But I don’t want Kickl to get in.”

Around the World With The Times

Our reporters across the globe take you into the field.

• Africa’s Youngest Elected Leader: In his first interview with Western media since becoming president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye said the United Nations has to change to reflect changing world demographics.
• A Litmus Test in Japan: The nine candidates vying to become prime minister have been differentiated by their stances on a law requiring married couples to share a family name.
• Finding Solace in Soccer: For dozens of women who fled Myanmar and settled in Thailand, soccer has become a refuge from both the troubles of daily life and conservative cultural norms.
• Sri Lanka’s New President: Anura Kumara Dissanayake offered his broad leftist coalition as the best hope for a different political culture in the country, one not ruled by nepotism and corruption.
• An Irish Bishop’s Secrets: The funeral of Bishop Eamonn Casey in 2017 seemed to draw a line under his scandalous affair years before. But this summer, disturbing new allegations emerged.