by Chiara Swaton and Oliver Noyan
Austria is often considered the birthplace of modern right-wing populism in Europe. However, the small Alpine country has recently been haunted by another political spectre – and this time, it comes from the left.
In most European countries, communism is an ideology primarily reserved for history books. And until recently, Austria was no different.
In the general election of 2019, the communist party KPO gathered a measly 0.69?%. However, the years of crisis that followed – from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine – have put the communists back on the political map.
In 2021, they won Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, and in April, they managed to secure almost 12% in the state election in Salzburg. On the federal level, they are also consistently polling at around 5%.
Right-wing populism has been a widespread phenomenon in Europe since the early 1990s – when the flamboyant Austrian politician Jorg Haider made extreme far-right ideas socially acceptable by staging them as modern.
As chairman of the right-wing FPO in 1986, he brought the party on a populist track and established it as the country’s third political force. Haider’s charisma and provocative rhetoric continue to inspire right-wing populists to this day.
However, the formula for the FPO’s meteoric rise now seems to be appropriated by the other side of the political spectrum too.
Like the FPO, the Communists are inherently Eurosceptic. For them, the EU is nothing but a devilish neoliberal project. One of their regional branches in Styria even called for an exit from the EU – a move not even the FPO dared to do.
Their position on Russia is also quite similar. Like the right-wing populists, the KPO seeks to end the Russia sanctions, and one of their senior party members even praised Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in 2021.
However, despite these apparent appeals to protest voters, there are also other reasons for the rise of the populist left that have more to do with the erosion of trust in the other parties.
Austria has been rocked by various corruption scandals in recent years, leading to mistrust in established parties and the political system as a whole.
While the conservative OVP around Sebastian Kurz was embroiled in bribery accusations, the centre-left SPO failed to show any competence whatsoever and instead focused on months of infighting, leading to a chaotic leadership election.
The most recent example is the mishap with the election of none less than the party leader. After a faulty transfer of votes due to an Excel spreadsheet glitch, the party accidentally announced the wrong person as their leader and only realised the mistake a day later.
The SPO’s mishap is one of many examples of why Austrians increasingly see politics as a joke, which is where the second left-wing populist party comes in: the Beer Party.
The Beer Party, led by punk musician Dominik Wlazny, has made international headlines during last year’s Austrian presidential election.
While the party only managed to garner 0.1% of the votes in 2019, Wlazny – whose stage name is Marco Pogo – came in third in the presidential election in 2022 and managed to receive a swapping 8% of votes as a satirical party.
His programme was somewhat unorthodox: Wlazny campaigned for building a beer fountain in the middle of Vienna and a tax reduction on alcoholic drinks.
However, despite this satirical presentation, the Beer Party’s political work in Vienna, where they hold 11 seats in district councils, already shows that they are serious about leftist policies.
With catchy slogans, simple rhetoric, and charismatic leaders, left and right-wing populists certainly have something in common.
But the Austrian example also shows that if trust in the traditional parties is eroding, the natural winners are the ones on the two ends of the political spectrum.
*first published in: Euractiv.com
