‘This is the normalisation of racism’: apprehension at prospect of election success for Austria’s far right

After winning the EU elections in June, Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) seized the moment, calling for the appointment of a EU “remigration” commissioner to be tasked with the forced return of migrants and citizens with a migration background to their countries of origin.

The muted reaction that followed was a sharp contrast to Germany, where months earlier, allegations that members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had attended a meeting at which they discussed remigration dominated headlines and prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.

The difference was not lost on Farid Hafez, a senior researcher at Georgetown University. In Austria, “there was no outcry,” he said. “This is the normalisation of racism that the far right has achieved and that has become a very normal part of daily Austrian politics.”

This view will be tested on Sunday as Austrians head to the polls for parliamentary elections. Polls suggest that the anti-migrant, anti-Islam FPÖ, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, could narrowly emerge as the most voted for party for the first time in the country’s postwar history.

Related: Austria elections: could the far-right FPÖ take power and what are its plans?

The victory would be a show of strength for the party, which in 2000 was catapulted into Austria’s mainstream politics – leaving the country facing isolation in Europe and fending off international scorn – after it achieved the best result for any far-right party in western Europe since the second world war.

The party’s 90-page manifesto calls for homogeneity, pledging to promote remigration, reduce the granting of asylum and block family reunification for people already in Austria.

While polls suggest the FPÖ will fall short of an outright majority, leaving it reliant on negotiations with a coalition partner to form a government, its decades-long rise to power has left many in the country reeling.

“The Freedom party is, historically speaking, a party that was established by ex-Nazis for ex-Nazis,” said Hafez, who is from Austria and now works with Georgetown’s The Bridge Initiative, a multiyear research project on Islamophobia. “For me, as a political scientist of colour, I believe at the end of the day, one should not underestimate the fact that these people are coming from a deeply racist ideology.”

In its first three decades the party languished on the fringes. In the early 2000s, it seized on anti-Islam rhetoric to try to gain votes by stirring up fears.

As the strategy proved successful, the conservative Austrian People’s party (ÖVP) followed suit, closing mosques and attempting to ban headscarves in schools. “So in a way, what we have witnessed since then is that Islamophobia has become so mainstream that it is no longer confined to the far-right,” said Hafez.

About 700,000 people in Austria, from practising Muslims to those with Muslim backgrounds, had been left to bear the brunt of this discourse. “Muslims are not in a safe place,” said Hafez.

The issue is exacerbated by Austria’s citizenship rules, which rank among the most restrictive in the EU, leaving many Muslims without the right to vote. In essence, said Hafez, they are “an easy target to hit and nobody will hit back”.

The Austrian NGO Civil Courage and Anti-Racism Work, or Zara, said the impact of this political discourse had been “clear and felt deeply” by many in Austria, citing consequences including arson attacks on asylum centres and police violence.

“This political discourse legitimises hate speech, discrimination, and violence, often targeting women in hijabs, asylum seekers, and Bipoc (Black, Indigenous and people of colour),” it said.

If Sunday’s elections yield an FPÖ-led government, the organisations that provide crucial support to these communities could be weakened, further eroding the social safety net for these vulnerable groups, it added.

Bernhard Weidinger, a senior researcher of rightwing extremism at the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, said the FPÖ had long sought to recast debate through the lens of migration.

“It has shown a strong tendency to basically ‘ethnicise’ any political debate on any topic,” he said. “Whether we’re talking about crime or housing, the welfare state, the job market – the Freedom party would always try to … frame it as a foreigner problem or an immigration problem.”

Years of this strategy had left an indelible mark, he said. “It has an effect on how people perceive the situation. It’s interesting that the Freedom party does well in areas where there are very few foreigners. So these people don’t experience immigration first-hand. But they read about it, they hear about it.”

Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, a politics professor at the University of Vienna, said that unlike some of the populist radical-right parties that had cropped up across Europe in recent years, the FPÖ’s 70 years of existence and two stints as a junior partner in short-lived coalition governments have given it a singular influence over Austrian politics. “It has definitely shaped the discourse on immigration more than most other parties have.”

This influence has had a direct impact on people’s lives, said Valerie Mussa, of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria. “Anti-Muslim racism has really become an everyday experience for many Muslims in Austria, be it on the street, public transport, schools, housing market and labour market.

“It’s not only physical and verbal attacks or graffiti on mosques, but it’s also institutional discrimination and the increase in online hate.”

As a result, Mussa said, many view Sunday’s election with mixed feelings. “The elections offer us the opportunity to shape the future of the country. But there are a lot of concerns about what the following years will look like, what policies they will decide on, what rights they will try to cut. We don’t know what the future will bring.”