Rights in Austria | When the door opens and dams break

The three women in the courtyard of the Bernsteiner pub wrap themselves in their jackets and blow out clouds of blue smoke. They think that it is unacceptable that the strongest party should be ignored. The Blues should finally get their chance, the women say unanimously. The skies over Graz are grey, and major political weather events are overshadowing the country. First, Herbert Kickl's FPÖ negotiates with the conservative ÖVP about a government coalition, but they fail . If the other parties do not pull together, new elections are threatened. And these would probably strengthen the FPÖ in particular - despite its scandals.

But what about the corruption and its anti-democratic tendencies? The racism of the FPÖ? None of this seems to be damaging the party - on the contrary. The party emerged from the National Council elections as the strongest force. How does it manage that?

Politicians from the FPÖ come and go to the Bernsteiner pub. Even the smokers know some of the names personally. "The whole world is ruled by idiots and crooks. But the FPÖ pays attention to it and blows it up," says Katja Ewald, who does not want to read her real name in the press. "I don't want to know what the situation is like with the other parties."

But it hardly looks like the FPÖ. The party's path has been lined with scandals. There was the Buwog affair in 2009, when former finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser allegedly received millions in bribes in the course of privatizations. There was the Ibiza affair: FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, high on cocaine, flickered across millions of cell phone screens while promising state contracts to an alleged oligarch's niece in return for campaign support. There was child pornography that investigators found on a Graz official; there was another who polarized people against foreign drug dealers, while his brother ran the largest crystal meth lab in Styria. There is, there is, there is... - and yet the poll ratings have been rising for years.

"Scandals definitely harm the FPÖ, but not for long," says election researcher Mario Rossmann, who works at the University of Graz. Because of the Jörg Haider scandal, the party's election results fell by almost a third in the early 2000s. He rummages through his notes and looks at a diagram. The results also fell significantly after Ibiza. But Rossmann shakes his head: "The really striking thing is that these effects only last for one election period, after that it doesn't matter again."

Ewald is now sitting in the warmth again, where a waiter in a suit puts a cup of tea in front of her. She says that it was Jörg Haider, his death, and the black flags on the cars that made her a "fan." Decades ago, she loyally voted for the SPÖ. Her face lights up when she talks about Bruno Kreisky, the chancellor of the economic miracle. "People were doing well under Kreisky." Today, she is missing a trustworthy social democracy. She says: "Kickl is the only one who I think is not corrupt."

It's always the others' fault

It is also this fixation on charismatic personalities that makes it difficult to recognise the corrupt nature of the FPÖ. Democracy researcher Daniela Ingruber explains this by individualising the problem. The party gets rid of the people who are the focus of a revelation: "Strache had to go to Ibiza. Then they said: yes, he was like that, we punished him. You see, we are the only ones who punish someone like that. We are the good guys - because the rest of us had nothing to do with it." It remains to be seen whether the FPÖ will continue to be successful with this strategy. In recent years there have been too many scandals in several parties, says Ingruber. "It no longer matters if lots of politicians do wonderful work. People remember the negative things more easily," she sums up.

In Graz, the former FPÖ deputy mayor Mario Eustacchio is currently suspected of having misappropriated party funds. The money involved is hundreds of thousands of euros, and he is accused of having passed on public funds to fraternities, among other things. The proceedings are still ongoing.

At the local level, says one of the women sitting in the pub, they are not behind the FPÖ anyway, but behind the KFG. This is the so-called corruption-free municipal council club, which was founded in 2022. At the time, Claudia Schönbacher was head of the Freedom Party in Graz. She publicly stated that she wanted to help uncover the financial scandal surrounding Eustacchio. This had consequences. Federal Chairman Kickl personally expelled Schönbacher from the party. The party then founded the KFG.

The voters from Bernstein prefer this self-proclaimed corruption-free faction. The women are concerned about Schönbacher as a person. She was the one who convinced many of them to join the FPÖ, and when she had to leave, they simply followed her.

Cultivated Fascism

In a friendly, almost casual tone, one of Ewald's friends explains: "If they have jobs," she is talking about migrants, "that's good. But there are too many of them. Women shouldn't be allowed to have so many children." Her demand amounts to birth control for certain ethnic groups.

In the Jausenstadl, just a few houses away from the Bernsteiner, Puntigamer beer is consumed in droves in the afternoon. The prices are reasonable and the owner brings the food to the table in sweatpants. Beer is already being drunk here at lunchtime. Anyone who admits that they don't vote blue causes heated discussions.

When the topic of migration comes up, Roman, one of the guests, clenches his fists and rears up: "Don't work, but get everything. That's a disgrace!" The master carpenter blames migrants for his economic situation. He notices how people can afford less and less on their salary. His face is red with anger: "The important thing is that the foreigners get out!" he says. Roman seems like a textbook horror fascist. But if you ignore the drastic nature of his words, what is the difference between him and the nice woman who wants to introduce birth control?

"As far as xenophobia is concerned," sighs democracy researcher Ingruber, "a dam has been broken in Austria for quite some time." Racism is becoming more and more common in other parties as well. This strengthens the original. The more unclear the supposed danger from foreigners is, the better the narrative works, she explains. With its racism, the FPÖ has managed to penetrate the mainstream.

Alexis Pascuttini is driving to a public meeting in the Gösting district. Two years ago he was still the Freedom Party's club leader, but like Schönbacher he was thrown out because he wanted to clear up corruption. Now he stands for the KFG. As a local politician, he is still close to the blue electorate. "The FPÖ is now responsible for so many blatant scandals," he says, "that at a certain point people can no longer believe that it is true." There is a lot of ignorance. Corruption cases are mainly dealt with in the newspapers, but most of the party's voters get their information from social media.

Ingruber believes that right-wing extremists discovered social media for their propaganda very early on. The FPÖ has built up a victim myth around itself: "Everyone is against us and accuses us of things that they themselves do. But they are only so mean to us," the researcher quotes the right-wing extremists as saying. "Repetition is the best propaganda tool, and the FPÖ is very good at that." Terms such as remigration or system media are spread until they seep into the mainstream.

"I'm not right-wing radical," says the housewife with whom Pascuttini is sitting at the dining table. Around a dozen people meet here over coffee and cake to discuss a noisy railway line. "We are oversocial and we get into too much debt," says the hostess firmly. Her husband's father was mayor of a small town for the People's Party for 20 years. But now both believe in the Blues. Election researcher Mario Rossmann explains that the FPÖ gained ground in the middle class and also among women after 2017. Gösting tipped over in the last local elections. The ÖVP stronghold turned blue.

The hostess believes that people who receive social benefits should be monitored more often. Isn't she afraid that the cuts made by a blue-black coalition could affect her too? The woman, who lives in a house with a garden, answers: "It can't get any worse than it is now, the others don't want any change."

Whether it's the Bernsteiner, the Jausenstadl or this bourgeois home, racism permeates all economic strata of Austrian society. For many FPÖ voters, the party's scandals are not decisive because they expect nothing else from politics anyway. As long as the FPÖ serves the racist prejudices and social contempt of the poor, the electorate is willing to overlook its scandals. Because above all, people want fewer migrant-looking people in the country. The misanthropy has seeped through, the mood has changed.

The research for this article was carried out together with Tamara Ussner from Radio Helsinki – Das freie Radio in Graz. Further material from this research can be found at: dasnd.de/helsinki