Espionage War Beckons As Nationalists Declare Victory in Austria

East of the Shankill Road, Vienna is potentially the most perilous place to play politics in Europe. Now almost sixteen years to the day since the ambiguous death of nationalist leader Jörg Haider, his FPÖ party is again on the cusp of power in the Central European state.

Racking in an impressive 29% of the vote share, 3% higher than their 2017 performance which saw them enter a doomed coalition with the centrist ÖVP, the only alternative now to a nationalist-led government in Vienna is a grand and inherently unstable coalition of the social democrats, greens and the centre. 

Originating from a post-war milieu that ran the ideological gamut of national liberals to thinly veiled National Socialists, the FPÖ has been something of a dark horse for European populist parties.

Quietly radical yet startlingly professional, the FPÖ is very much a product of the byzantine world of underground Austrian power politics in what many regard with justification as the espionage capital of Europe. 

Party leader Herbert Kickl is arguably more vocal than any other European populist leader in the need for “remigration” of third-world migrants, with the party maintaining a strict anti-NATO line the past two years in the popular defence of Austrian neutrality.

Coming to power as junior coalition partners in 2017, senior members of the FPÖ were subsequently accused of establishing a parallel deep state at the heart of the Austrian government encompassing media tycoons, intelligence officials and largely Russian backers. The aim of this deep state would ultimately be a break with the Western liberal order, an idea toyed around by Jörg Haider himself before his death by car crash in 2008.

In what is perhaps the strangest chapter in 21st-century European politics the FPÖ coalition with the centrist ÖVP was brought down by a hidden camera scandal known as “Ibizagate”, wherein party chiefs were supposedly caught trying to rig the Austrian media ecosystem in their favour in conjunction with the financial aid of Russian oligarchs.

While most of the claims made during the Ibizagate were rubbished in the courts it did not stop many FPÖ officials including Austrian foreign affairs minister Karin Kneissl fleeing the country for fear of their lives in what many said amounted to an American-backed coup. 

The then-Austrian prime minister Sebastian Kurz departed for a comfy role within a CIA-adjacent company as a newly installed technocratic government imposed one of Europe’s austere lockdowns.

A comedic highlight of the Austrian power struggle came with rival wings of the intelligence agencies, sometimes at gunpoint, raiding each other’s offices in what was reminiscent of a military junta in the Sahel rather than a Central European democracy.

Indeed, Austria’s history, its geopolitics, and its legacy of being an imperial capital lends itself to being the spy capital of Europe. Never fully de-Nazified and purposefully left as a space of chaos by the great powers during the Cold War, nothing is ever what it seems in the Austrian state.

Speaking anonymously to The Burkean, one FPÖ youth activist “Sebastian” mapped out the likely next few months for any prospective nationalist regime. Declaring his belief that the party would start moderate before growing in radicalism once a coalition agreement was bedded down with the centrist ÖVP. “Sebastian” described how the prospective nationalist administration sought to prosper from a looming Atlanticist defeat in Ukraine as well as a Trump presidency more focused on Taiwan than goings-on in Vienna.

Ultimately aiming to consolidate the state akin to how Fidesz has done so across the border in Hungary, the key aspect to this will be control of the intelligence services, judiciary, and relevant portfolios without triggering tripwires in Brussels or Washington D.C.

Praising former party leader Heinz-Christian Strache for promoting radicals at both the core of the party and state organs, “Sebastian” described the natural role of the Austrian right to act in a “diplomatic function” in reverence to its Habsburg lineage as nationalists made a stab at reforging the European order. 

While disappointed that the ÖVP was not punished more severely, “Sebastian” was confident at the results especially in Western Austria where the Christian Democratic stranglehold  looks to be fatally wounded.

In tandem with this European outreach, the FPÖ also aims to revamp the Austrian security forces with a new emphasis on border security following a roadmap pursued briefly by Herbert Kickl when Interior Minister.

A tall order for any fledgling nationalist government, the results of the prospective FPÖ takeover may light a beacon for their fellow Germanics in the AfD labouring under an increasingly oppressive albeit politically moribund left-wing government.

Regarded by many as something of an illiberal rogue state beneath the surface, the impending institutional clash in Vienna may augur as to the next decade of European politics.

When Simon Harris travels to European Council meetings later this year he may be faced with a nationalist counterpart committed to remigration rather than a Europe of Welcomes in the form of Chancellor Kickl as Ireland yet again lies unprepared for the tumultuous years to come.

One even smiles at the idea of liberated Martin Sellner broadcasting north of the border from the confines of the new FPÖ state.