Kickl, FPÖ and Putin’s influence

For Herbert Kickl, remigration is not a fighting term, but rather a central political program of his possible government. What the candidate for chancellor of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) wants, he has made it clear to everyone: a “Fortress Austria” against the “migrants”, as well as maximum distance from Ukraine and the EU, and a rapprochement with Russia.

Kickl and his people have set out to fundamentally reshape Austria. With this clear announcement, the FPÖ won the elections. Is the country now becoming a laboratory for the authoritarian-identitarian movement?

The Austrian Federal President Van der Bellen and the other parties in the National Council, especially the ÖVP, are now faced with the challenge of weighing up personal convictions and their own power against responsibility – while respecting the will of the voters.

A radically different idea of ​​Europe

Kickl and his FPÖ form a node in a network that extends from the New Right to deep into the Kremlin. Unlike in the past, the actors don’t even bother to hide their connections. On the contrary: the exponents of the movement maintain their friendships in public.

Evidence of this is the congratulations from the European right-wing populists after the FPÖ’s election victory on Sunday evening: Geert Wilders from the Netherlands reported with a post, as did Björn Höcke, the AfD election winner in the eastern German state of Thuringia, who immediately placed Kickl’s success in a larger context states: “The victory of the FPÖ is not just a victory for Austria – it radiates far beyond the borders of the Alpine republic and sets a good course for Europe.”

Jordan Bardella from the French Rassemblement National immediately put himself in the spotlight of the election winner and published his handshake with Kickl: “It fills us with pride to sit in the European Parliament next to our allies from the FPÖ.” Bardella is the parliamentary group leader of the Patriots for Europe in Strasbourg.

This association was only founded after the last European elections – on the initiative of Kickl, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Fidesz) and the Czech Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) around the former Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Matteo Salvini’s Lega from Italy is also part of the group, but the AfD was not included.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia deliberately stayed at a distance. In contrast to the Patriots for Europe, they want to continue to maintain strong transatlantic relations and a close partnership with the USA. It is no coincidence that Meloni’s MEPs in Strasbourg sit in the same group as the representatives of the Polish PiS, the conservative and reform group.

Kickl, Orban and Babis have a fundamentally different idea of ​​Europe. When they founded their association, they presented a “patriotic manifesto” in Vienna. At its core, it is about dismantling the EU: “We believe in a Europe of nations,” the statement says, “which rejects any further transfer of national sovereignty to the European institutions.” The self-proclaimed patriots would rather fend off irregular migration with closed borders than together with European partners.

Kickl goes one step further: During the election campaign he consistently used identity vocabulary – such as the term remigration.

The new ethnic movement

The Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner commented particularly euphorically on the election results: This year the activist published the ideological combat pamphlet “Remigration – a proposal”. He was celebrating Kickl, the “living legend,” all night long, he wrote on

The Swiss Corona activist Nicolas Rimoldi also belongs to Sellner’s environment. He posed several times alongside the Austrian Identitarian. Meanwhile, he has also adapted the language of his movement to the identitarian style. In general, the aftermath of the pandemic seemed to ideally connect the different actors with one another. In Austria, however, the government put a stop to them with its rigorous Corona policy: Kickl and Sellner were able to distinguish themselves as vehement critics of the measures.

However, the pandemic was merely an accelerant. The movement’s core concern is ethnically homogeneous nation states.

In his thinking, Sellner follows the German identitarian Götz Kubitschek, who laid the ideological foundations of the New Right in his Institute for State Policy in Schnellroda (Thuringia). The ideas of historical National Socialism are linked to current migration policy positions. Sensitive statements are described with new terminology, which only reveals the ethnic content at second glance.

The friendship with the Putin party

Kubitschek’s Institute for State Policy is also the source of inspiration for the Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke. Semantically, the German and Austrian identities speak exactly the same language. There is no institutional collaboration between Kickl and Sellner or between Kubitschek and Sellner. However, a number of joint events are documented.

In November 2023, Kubitschek was invited by the Young Freedom Party to give a speech in the FPÖ parliamentary club. He then discussed on a podium with FPÖ General Secretary Christian Hafenecker and Jan Wenzel Schmidt from the AfD. There had previously been turmoil in front of the University of Vienna when Kubitschek wanted to perform with Sellner.

Kickl, on the other hand, borrows the geopolitical vocabulary directly from the Kremlin: He wants peace in Ukraine, but by that he means Kiev’s submission to Moscow’s dictates. This is no coincidence: the FPÖ concluded a friendship agreement with Putin’s United Russia party in 2016. Symbolic of this closeness is the curtsy of former Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, nominated by the FPÖ, to Russian President Vladimir Putin after a dance at her wedding, which he attended as a surprise guest in 2018.

At this point, a double affair with threatening connections to Moscow was already coming to a head beneath the surface: on the one hand, the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism, and on the other hand, the financial service provider Wirecard. Russia seemed to have succeeded in infiltrating Austria sustainably.

Although Kickl was the Austrian Interior Minister during exactly the critical years (2017-2019), there is no solid evidence that he was in direct relationship with the key figures in these scandals, including Jan Marsalek, one of Wirecard’s top managers, who is now considered to be more orthodox Monk lives in Russia.

That is one of Kickl’s strengths: He came to the top of the FPÖ as a man from the background. While those around him got their hands dirty, he played with words and phrases. The old FPÖ slogan “Daham instead of Islam” comes from Kickl, and he is not afraid to borrow from the past: Kickl wants to become “People’s Chancellor” and is thus reminiscent of the political storms before the Second World War.

Factor of division and fragmentation of Europe

The FPÖ, with all its connections, is a prototype of the parties that have shaped the discourse in most European countries in recent years. However, this is not a new phenomenon in Austria. The FPÖ has a long history as a sharply right-wing party and at the same time a sharer of power.

In the first free elections after the war in 1956, the FPÖ ran as the party of the old Nazis. After the end of the Cold War, it was a coalition partner of the ÖVP twice, but failed due to the excesses of its strong men.

Jörg Haider, who led the FPÖ to success in the 1990s, was an eccentric bon vivant, Hans-Christian Strache, vice-chancellor under Sebastian Kurz, stumbled upon the Ibiza affair: under circumstances that are still not completely clear, Strache was found drinking vodka filmed with an alleged Russian oligarch. In the intoxication of the night, he boasted about the FPÖ’s plans to expand power through corruption.

Such escapades are alien to the ascetic Kickl. He will be all the more determined to ensure the sustainability of the election success – perhaps even more efficiently without government involvement. As opposition members in the role of outcasts, Kickl and the FPÖ could almost drive a “coalition of losers”: without responsibility, only for external impact and committed to their own ideology.

In this way, the FPÖ could further prepare the country for a radical restructuring based on Orban’s model. Kickl speaks openly of an “orbanization” of Austria. This creates resistance and divides society. The Kremlin in particular benefits from this, as it can further expand its influence. The goal is a fragmentation of Europe.

Importance for the security of Europe

The election results from last weekend should therefore also be assessed from a security perspective. Austria, with its critical infrastructure in the Alpine region – similar to Switzerland – is very important for Europe to function at all.

Three risks are in the foreground:

These are considerations based on a pessimistic scenario; a coexistence of two realities seems more likely for the time being. Commentators in Vienna agree that there is hardly any path to power for Kickl and remind them that, despite all the scandals, Austria is a stable democracy with strong institutions.

But Kickl’s election victory is a warning: the dubious networks around him and the FPÖ will further increase the pressure on the current order: with or without a ministerial post.