The narrow victory of Alexander Van der Bellen in the race for the Austrian presidency is causing misplaced sighs of relief throughout European capitals. There should instead be considerable concern that the far-right candidate Norbert Hofer was only defeated by the narrowest of margins. Out of an electorate of 6.3 million, Van Der Bellen won by just over 36,000 votes.
The fact that the neo-Nazi Freedom Party came so close to winning ought to be ringing alarm bells everywhere. Even though the role of the Austrian president is largely symbolic, had it been won by Hofer, it would have been symbolic of a continuing disastrous trend in European politics. Local pundits are already talking about there being a good chance that the Freedom Party will win outright power in national elections due at the latest by September 2018.
In the past, Brussels has been complacent about Austria and muttered about the country’s exceptionalism. Between 1986 and 1992 it had a president Kurt Waldheim, a former UN Secretary-General no less, who was unmasked as a wartime member of Hitler’s SS. He had lied about his military career in Yugoslavia and later denied any involvement in the German massacre of Serb partisans. Then, of course, there is the awkward truth that Hitler himself was Austrian and the first territorial gain he triggered on his road to the carnage of the Second World War was the 1938 annexation of his homeland.
The clear danger is that today Austria is the exception that will come to prove the political rule. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front, will have been clapping her hands at Monday’s Austrian result. It now seems clear that Le Pen will make it through to the final runoff in next year’s French presidential elections and it is by no means unlikely that she could win.
The key issue that is driving support for the far-right throughout Europe is the arrival of desperate refugees, largely from Syria but also from Iraq and Afghanistan, both also countries like Syria plunged into brutal conflict by the actions or inactions of the West. Despite the honorable and generous welcome extended to hundreds and thousands of migrants by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, many ordinary Europeans are deeply concerned at their arrival. It is not simply that these unfortunates come from different cultures. It is also that they are nearly all of them Muslim. Racist bigots in the likes of the Freedom Party and the National Front have used the issue of terrorism by Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) to stoke the fires of Islamophobia. They say every Muslim is a potential terrorist and, therefore, the doors of Europe should be shut against further refugees. And insidiously, these parties of hatred even hint that perhaps all Muslims already settled in Europe, some for generations, should be “sent home”.
Racist politicians are playing to a fear among European voters that is largely the result of ignorance. The greatest failure of mainstream European political parties lies in not arguing the social and economic case for welcoming migrants, who will enrich the societies that give them shelter. The focus on the humanitarian imperative to help these people is not of itself enough. The other benefits, not least the moral strengths of Islam, must also be promoted vigorously.
