BERLIN — It was, once again, unpredictable.
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For 11 months, the dragged-out hope that Austria would not be the first European country to elect a right-wing populist head of state has rested on the scraggy shoulders of the retired economics professor and former Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen. Today, it looks like he has finally come through.
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Van der Bellen had already won the run-off vote in May, but after the defeated far right Freedom Party complained about the mishandling of absentee ballots, the constitutional court ruled that the election had to be held again.
And once again, the far right’s candidate Norbert Hofer seems to be accepting his defeat graciously. “I am eternally sad that it didn’t work. I would have liked to take care of our Austria,” he posted on Facebook at 5.30 pm today.
On Friday evening, Van der Bellen’s team held their last event in Lloonbase 36, an old factory-turned-event hall. A brass band took the stage and alpine images were projected on the wall, as if to play down the post-industrial chic of the location choice. Then, Pepi Reich, the conservative mayor of Van der Bellen’s hometown held a speech where he assured the crowd that Van der Bellen really does love his country.
It all seemed to serve as a meek rebuttal to the mudslinging that took place in the final presidential debate the day before. Hofer’s name-calling (he had previously slandered Van der Bellen as a communist and a freemason) reached a new low when he suggested that Van der Bellen had once been a Soviet spy. “This is the most hurtful thing I have heard in a long time,” replied Van der Bellen.
Van der Bellen had hoped that Trump’s brash victory in November would serve as a “wake-up call for Austria.” Hofer has a very similar position to Trump (he is anti-establishment, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee), though when asked how he fundamentally differs from the US-president elect, Hofer joked, “I have a different haircut.”
That’s the Hofer style – smooth and easy-going, irrespective of the Glock-26 that he carries with him. Some, like Austrian actor Josef Hader, called him a “kerzlschlucker” (a candle-swallower – someone who masks their inner rage with piousness), but lots of Austrians thought he was young and “dashing.”
Hofer’s camp had anticipated that if millions of Americans were willing to publicly support a populist, then Austrians must be ready to do so as well. And so, Van der Bellen’s success is soothing for Europe, where Germany, the Netherlands and France will be holding elections next year.
That Austria, of all places, should have been the first European country to elect a right wing populist head-of-state, certainly raised eyebrows. Vienna is regularly voted one of the world’s most livable cities and there is pride about the fact that some of the social housing complexes have rooftop swimming pools here.
But then there are areas like Simmering, a former village that lies in the outskirts of the capital, which have been looking more downtrodden in the past decade. But although Hofer has gotten some of his best results for Vienna in Simmering, the mood there this Saturday seemed devoid of excitement or hope.
One young man, who studies at the city’s university and works at a mulled wine stand on weekends, expressed little sympathy with his Hofer voting neighbors. “Seriously, some Austrians just moan and moan. They do not know how good they have it here. Now they are just worried that refugees will come and take some of this funding.” Still, he admitted, “I am left and I am struggling to vote for someone as far left as Van der Bellen.”
One of the biggest fears of Hofer’s win, was that as president (an otherwise mainly ceremonial position), he would make use of his right to dismiss the government and perhaps even appoint Freedom Party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, as chancellor. Obviously he won’t be doing that now. But regardless of this lose for Hofer; the Freedom Party is still likely to do well in upcoming regional elections and in 2018’s general election.
Strache, openly aggressive and hotheaded with an elusive Neo-Nazi past, is not considered as dashing a populist as Hofer. In the center of Vienna, some posters of Hofer have been vandalized with Hitler mustaches, others with Strache’s initials, HC.
A few weeks ago, Strache posted a picture of Van Der Bellen on Facebook and typed that the 72-year-old had, “forgotten to shave half of his upper lip”, adding, “what else will he forget?” This nasty post was not to the taste of some of his followers, though. They thought it was “childish” and one of them wrote, “Mr Strache, we bid you not to harm Mr Hofer with such unprofessional comments.”
Yet as surveys indicate that half of Austrians have lost trust in print media, Strache’s Facebook page, which is followed by one in eight Facebook user in Austria, stands at the heart of the Freedom Party’s web of alternative new sources. In interviews, Hofer frequently cited the blog unzensuriert.at, which is run by Walter Asperl, a member of both the Freedom Party and the “Viennese Academic League Olympia,” an organization notorious for its connections to right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, one joke at the liberal news channel oe24 is that, compared with Van der Bellen’s long, occasionally rambling, answers, one can’t help admiring how proactive the Freedom Party’s PR team has been – apparently they called the channel several times a day to pitch stories like “Mrs Hofer is going shopping later.”
Journalists in Vienna are reportedly sharing rumors that Breitbart is looking for contacts in Austria’s far right media scene. The site has already taken an interest in Austrian politics. One of the stories that Breitbart seemed to like was when right-wing extremists stormed a performance of the play, Die Schutzbefohlenen, on a night where refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were performing it.
That night, around 30 people entered the theatre to throw fake blood into the crowd, scatter flyers that read “multiculturalism kills” and push and hit members in the audience and actors on stage.
The Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinik, who wrote the play and has been criticizing Austria’s politics since the seventies, already swore to leave the country in 2000 should the Freedom Party get elected to the ruling coalition. This time, before the presidential election, she made no such statement. Maybe because the real trouble is just getting started.
