IT WAS too close for comfort. The choice of Austria’s new president came down to postal votes. Alexander van der Bellen, a former Green Party leader, took 50.3% of the votes, against 49.7% for Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Mr van der Bellen’s victory only became clear on May 23rd, almost 24 hours after polls closed. Among those who cast their ballots on election day, Mr Hofer enjoyed a narrow win. But once absentee ballots were counted, Mr van der Bellen came out ahead. Even before the final results were announced, both the FPÖ’s leadership and its rank-and-file were suggesting it had been fixed.
That Mr Hofer came so close to winning the presidency was a product of both local and continental circumstances. On the one hand, anti-immigrant parties are rising all across Europe. On the other, Austria is a country where the far right has long been strong, one that has never fully come to terms with its complicity in the Third Reich. The FPÖ epitomises that. Founded by former SS members in the years after the war, for decades it pushed for closer links between the German-speaking peoples. Several of the...Continue reading
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