Austria has seemingly embraced an EU-friendly, migrant-welcoming view of the world in electing Alexander Van der Bellen as its President and rejecting the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer.
Herr Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Green party, said he would be an “open-minded, liberal-minded and above all a pro-European president”. Herr Hofer might feel aggrieved at that. He was not exactly campaigning for an Austrian exit from the EU either.
THE ANTI-ELITE MOOD IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL
Austrians are said to be pro-European Union, but despite the sense of relief in Eurocrat corridors of power, we should not think the prevailing anti-elite mood has had an abrupt about-turn.
Crucially, mainstream politicians were not in the running. The Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) candidates came fourth and fifth in the April 2016 first round, behind Herr Hofer, who won, Herr Van der Bellen, second, and independent Irmgard Griss in third place . This allowed the Green Party’s avuncular Herr Van der Bellen to claim to be an ‘outsider’, just like Herr Hofer.
The significance of the first round was that parties winning over 50% of the vote for the Parliament in 2003 (see below) were soundly rejected by the electorate.
So when Werner Kogler, a Green party politician, described the result as a “small global turning of the tide in these uncertain, not to say hysterical and even stupid times”, he missed the point, as well as casting voters in the UK and USA as stupid.
VOTING PATTERNS IN AUSTRIA
The Freedom party secretary, Herbert Kickl, was more astute. He acted as Hofer’s campaign manager and was well aware that the establishment had swung behind Herr Van Der Bellen, but quietly. He said: “In this case the establishment – which pitched in once again to block, to stonewall and to prevent renewal – has won.”
In the 2003 Austrian Parliamentary elections, the Greens polled 12.42% of the vote, winning 24 seats. Hofer’s Freedom Party, the FPÖ, polled 20.51% and won 40 seats. Between them, the SPÖ and ÖVP had over 50% of the vote and 99 seats. Clearly, many of their supporters voted for Herr Van der Bellen. But equally, a good number voted for Norbert Hofer, concerned about immigration and jobs.
An analysis of the voting patterns in May is highly revealing. Men voted considerably more for Hofer, women for Van der Bellen. The young were somewhat more inclined to go for Van der Bellen. The working class were overwhelmingly for Hofer. Cities voted for Van der Bellen, the countryside for Hofer. This time around is likely to have returned similar results.
ONE MAN’S REFUGEE …
Herr Hofer was castigated by some for apparent antipathy to “the weak, poor and vulnerable – who today particularly include refugees and foreigners”. The barb had significance in the country which gave birth to Adolf Hitler. Indeed, so well did the ‘far-right’ label stick (but was Hitler actually far-right or far-left?) that Herr Hofer’s posters were routinely defaced with little moustaches.
But one man’s refugee is another man’s economic migrant and yet a third man’s terrorist infiltrator. After an initial welcoming stance, and also lying on the Hungary to Germany route, the Austrian Government clamped down, and today caps applications for asylum at 37,500 per year.
A Christian position may well remember the Holy Family were refugees in Egypt, but they did not go there to subvert the Egyptian government, start a wave of crime or begin a campaign of terror.
There is a theological balance to be struck between hospitality and security, as I show in this video:
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It’s easy to look at things from your preferred direction. It has been said so often that Norbert would have been the first extreme-right leader in Europe since 1945, but Alexander seems to be the first Green Party leader of any country in the world ever, as far as I know. What Greens actually do when in power is a little uncertain.
Not only was Austria the birthplace of Hitler, but it disappeared and became an integral part of Germany from 1938 to 1945 . Just how willing this was would depend very much who you asked, and when you asked them. I don’t think there was a great deal of protest during that period.
When the Israelites were refugees from Egypt and went to Canaan, they were not so peaceful as the holy family was when fleeing to Egypt later.
The President of Austria, they say, does not have much actual power, but has influence. He is a ceremonial figurehead, I read.
I also read the contemporary state was created in 1955, and ‘Republik Österreich’ means Republic of the Eastern Realm.
Good point also about the Israelites. Now that must be why it is never them and always the Holy Family who we are told to remember from the Bible in any consideration of the current refugee / migrant / entryist crisis …