Herbert Kickl, Austria’s hard-right ideologue who played the long game

THE PROSPECTFPÖEUFPÖÖVPFPÖFPÖFPÖÖVPFPÖFPÖFPÖEUFPÖEUEUEUFPÖFPÖ of Herbert Kickl, the leader of the hard-right Freedom Party (), running Austria in the Alpine republic and . Paul Lendvai, a prominent Austrian journalist, predicted in , a daily, that the country will become “a fortress dominated by far-right politicians”. Other commentators fret that Mr Kickl’s views contradict the values of human rights, the rule of law and media freedom that the stands for.But his leadership could . After talks to form a three-party coalition without the collapsed on January 3rd, the conservative People’s Party () said it would enter coalition talks with the (which are said to have already begun at a secret location). Tens of thousands (25,000 in Vienna alone) took to the streets all over Austria on January 9th to protest against the prospect of a government led by Mr Kickl.Who is the short, bespectacled man causing such concern? Mr Kickl was born in 1968 in Villach, in Austria’s south, the only child of a working-class family. As a child he was a good student and by all accounts popular, with an interest in all things military including a penchant for cargo pants. But he never finished a philosophy degree at Vienna University, nor, despite his interests and discipline, his military service. When he was 27 years old he joined the and became a disciple of Jörg Haider, the party’s charismatic leader from 1986 to 2000.Early on he took the role of speechwriter for Mr Haider, who had spotted his talent for coining a phrase. Mr Kickl came up with some of the party’s nastiest slogans such as “” (“More courage for our Viennese blood”, used during Vienna’s mayoral elections) and “ ” (“ instead of Islam”, using Austrian dialect for “at home”).When Mr Haider quit the in a huff to set up a new party in 2005, many expected Mr Kickl to follow. But he stuck with the party (presumably because he thought he would be in a stronger position to win influence), which picked as its new leader Heinz-Christian Strache, a jolly, slap-on-the-back politician. Mr Strache served as vice-chancellor in a coalition government led by the between 2017 and 2019. His lack of political nous, however, made it easy for Mr Kickl (who was interior minister) to pull strings behind the scenes.In 2019 Mr Strache was caught up in a corruption scandal, which triggered the fall of the coalition government. Mr Strache was kicked out of the party, and the disciplined but comparatively dull Mr Kickl rose to become its leader, one who looks unlikely to follow his predecessor’s path. An avid triathlete, he prefers water to beer, is scrupulous with his finances and is said to be uninterested in getting rich.The made Mr Kickl, but he has in turn remade the : into a xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Islam and Eurosceptic party. He has proved strategically shrewder than his predecessors, moving the party further to the right during the covid pandemic, during which he galvanised protests against vaccinations and government restrictions. He has praised Europe’s “identitarian” movement, a home-grown equivalent of America’s alt-right. And the struck a friendship treaty with Vladimir Putin’s party United Russia in 2016 and steered a pro-Kremlin course even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr Kickl opposes sanctions on Russia and vowed to block arms deliveries to Ukraine.He sees himself as a disrupter who will set Austria on a new course. On the eve of parliamentary elections at the end of September, the ’s social-media accounts posted that “we will bring down the system” alongside an emoji of bulging biceps. The party’s 92-page manifesto is titled “Fortress Austria”. It calls for a suspension of the right to asylum via an emergency decree (which would breach law), benefit cuts for immigrants, processing centres for migrants in third countries outside of the and stopping payments to the if it fails to police its external borders.Mr Kickl’s political hero is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic leader. But unlike Hungarian voters who first voted Mr Orban in, few Austrian voters seem enamoured with Mr Kickl. Only 2% of voters in September said they voted for the party because of Mr Kickl, while 45% said they did so because of its policies.Still, they are voting for the party. In September the came first with 29% of the vote. According to polls, it would receive around 37% if elections were held today. Mr Kickl has wanted for years to be , a peoples’ chancellor, a term tainted by the Nazis’ use of it for Adolf Hitler. Until recently he probably thought his best chance would come in 2029, when the next elections had been due. It is now likely to happen much sooner.