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BEING AGAINST THE RIGHT IS NOT ENOUGH  
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Magdalena Berger
October 30, 2024
Transform!Europe
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_ The politics of ‘being against’ is part of the problem. The
left’s claim must always be to make a difference in the daily life
of people. _

Far Right Austrian FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl FPÖ leader Herbert
Kickl. Source: Wikimedia Commons., (source: Wikimedia Commons).

 

‘_FPÖ VERHINDERN_’( BLOCK THE FPÖ) – FOR DECADES THIS HAS BEEN
THE SLOGAN OF LEFT AND LEFT LIBERAL PARTIES IN AUSTRIA. THE RESULTS OF
THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS SHOW ONCE AGAIN THAT RIGHT-WING FORCES
CANNOT BE DEFEATED IN THIS WAY.

The right-wing extremist FPÖ took first place
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Assembly elections. With 28.8% the party – founded in 1955 as a
gathering point for former Nazis – achieved its historically best
result. Two days before the election top FPÖ politicians participated
in a funeral at which an SS allegiance song was sung. The incident was
one of many similar scandals which can no longer damage the FPÖ.
People seem to have gotten used to such transgressions. Within the
party itself there were not even any appreciable attempts to distance
itself.

For Austria’s left the results are a catastrophe. Not just because
the FPÖ’s win is so strong but also because the left did was unable
to offer an alternative. Under Andreas Babler, the SPÖ’s programme
was more left than it has been in decades, yet it landed in third
place with 21.1%. The KPÖ too scored below expectations. For the
party this is the best electoral result since 1962 but at the same
time, at 2.4%, it fell well short of the 4% needed to enter
parliament. The parliamentary left has never been as weak since 1945.

At the same time, the issues before the public were completely
advantageous for left parties. At 44% the increased cost of living was
the most important issue
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Immigration was only second, and health and care third. Those who had
followed the electoral campaign in the final weeks and months would
have to think that Austrians are only interested in immigration. The
talk was of ‘street battles’ by immigrant youth or apparent
anti-terrorist action after a cancelled Taylor Swift concert. ÖVP
head Nehammer and FPÖ chair Kickl seemed to outdo themselves in
demonstrating who was the most zealous racist opponent of immigration.
Left parties were unable to break dominance of this issue.

From the local to the national KPÖ

Many leftists, communists, and socialists set great hopes in the KPÖ.
After successful electoral campaigns in Styria, in Salzburg, and in
Innsbruck its chances were better than they had been in decades: It
was the first time in 65 years that a party to the left of the SPÖ
might be able to enter parliament. That it did not happen shows that
the party still needs to find answers to open strategic questions.

At the Salzburg city council elections in March the KPÖ could reach
23% because it was able to make its issue of affordable housing into a
decisive electoral issue. In the end even the FPÖ saw itself forced
to take up the issue. In Innsbruck too the housing question was
crucial to the party’s entry into the city council. This is
understandable, as Salzburg and Innsbruck are Austria’s most
expensive cities. The housing shortage is more strongly felt there
than in the rest of the country.

However, it is far more difficult to become a national ‘tenant’s
party’. In 2023 only 43.7% of Austrians were rent-paying tenants;
thus for more than half the country’s people this issue matters
less, if at all. Outside of the cities, therefore, the KPÖ has to
work to get the trust of the population with other social issues. In
short, it needs to show that it can not only carry out effective
municipal and regional policies but is also a left force to be
reckoned with at the federal level.

That this currently is not working was shown by the results in the
strongholds the KPÖ had in the regional elections. In Graz and the
city of Salzburg the party got around 6%, which although above average
remains clearly below the results of the regional and municipal
elections. How the party can transfer its successful local model to
the national level will be its biggest task for the coming years.

No one needs an SPÖ ‘for democracy’

The SPÖ is in another position, for it is forced to hear the
accusation that Andreas Babler’s project has failed. Here the main
problem is still the SPÖ’s structure which torpedoes a left
candidate from inside. Babler did not proceed strongly enough against
these internal party opponents, and he gave in where he – as the
former mayor of Traiskirchen, the locality with the largest refugee
accommodation in Austria – should not have given in: immigration. In
June he committed to deporting ‘the most dangerous criminals’
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broke his promise to carry out another kind of immigration policy,
which had always been part of his persona.

At the same time he failed to project his own issues. In part this is
due to Austria’s media apparatus which prefers to report on internal
party conflict rather than substantive debates. This is why Babler
critics from his own party, like Hans-Peter Doskozil from Burgenland
or Georg Dornauer in Tyrol get so much attention. Even in the midst of
the electoral campaign quarrels were conducted publicly. When a Doris
Bures – the second National Assembly president (for the SPÖ) and
one of the party’s most important women – writes an email four
weeks before the election in which she criticizes Babler’s
programme, she knows what she is doing. It was clear to her that this
email would end up being made public.

As a result the party could only have one issue around which everyone
could unite: we are against the right and for democracy – the very
issue with which the SPÖ has for decades now lost votes from one
election to the next. Such warnings about the end of democracy are
pointless; by being ‘against the right’ you certainly get the
approval of your own people but you cannot construct political
majorities that way.

There are voters in this country who have never experienced how their
living conditions have been improved through left policies. Only
people above 50 can talk from their own experience about the reduction
in working hours and the progressive women’s policies of the social
democratic era under Bruno Kreisky. It is precisely young people today
who know only one world, in which the only political project is to
‘block Black-Blue’.[1]
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is the world of 2016 when Norbert Hofer was prevented from becoming
the first FPÖ federal president, only to pave the way a year later
for an FPÖ – ÖVP coalition under Heinz-Christian Strache and
Sebastian Kurz. It is the world in which the FPÖ destroyed itself in
2019 through Ibiza,[2]
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then become, five years later, the strongest force in this country.

This politics of ‘being against’ is part of the problem. The
left’s claim must always be to make a difference in the daily life
of people. The KPÖ managed to do this at the local level, but at the
national level it needs to show greater strength. For the SPÖ, on the
other hand, it is its own party apparatus that most stands in the way
of its being seen once again as a force capable of action. But to
change things in the next years in a positive direction we will need
both parties.

REFERENCES:

[1]
[[link removed]] Black
is the colour of the centre-right party (ÖVP) and blue of the FPÖ.
[2]
[[link removed]] In
a sting operation, Strache was caught on video, among other things,
promising to sell off Austrian assets to someone posing as the
daughter of a Russian oligarch.

_Magdalena Berger is Assistant Editor at JACOBIN Magazine._

_transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22
countries, active in the field of political education and critical
scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation
corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL).  This
cooperative project of independent non-profit organisations,
institutes, foundations, and individuals intends to use its work in
contributing to peaceful relations among peoples and a transformation
of the present world._

_THE ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN GERMAN ON THE WEBSITE
OF JACOBINE MAGAZINE
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* Left Strategies
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* far right
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* Austria
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* Austrian Communist Party
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* Austrian Social Democratic Party
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