VIENNA -- Riding the crest of dissatisfaction that's made it Austria's front-running party for nearly two years, the far-right opposition Freedom Party wants voters to believe their increasingly crowded ship is doomed.
"If a ship gets a hole, the hole needs to be plugged or the ship will sink," its caustic chairman, Herbert Kickl, told a rally this month in Graz, Austria's second-largest city, to kick off official campaigning for national elections on September 29.
His nativist, Euroskeptic party owes its resurgence to post-pandemic anger, inflation, and fears around the war in Ukraine, in addition to anti-immigrant sentiments.
"If I let the water in and just spread it around the cabins, and maybe pump out a few liters, the ship will go under, and I don't want Austria to go under. That's why we will plug the hole and will not accept any more asylum claims," Kickl said.
Accusations Of Racism
The 55-year-old Kickl is anathema to political rivals and among the most disliked politicians in the country. His party has been widely criticized both at home and abroad for what its detractors say are its xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Critics say the party's nationalist and anti-Muslim policies promote division and undermine social cohesion, and its Euroskepticism threatens Austria's role in the European Union.
And yet, as the face of the party's Fortress Austria, Fortress Of Freedom platform, he has his Freedom Party poised to become the first far-right party to win an Austrian election since World War II.
WATCH: Austria's election comes amid growing concerns in the migrant community over the Freedom Party's agenda.
Forming any government will doubtless prove tricky, and Chancellor Karl Nehammer's ruling conservative People's Party could still emerge as the kingmaker.
But if the Freedom Party has its way, it is expected to try to use the country's outsized influence emanating from Austria's place at the crossroads of Europe to steer the continent toward tighter borders and more inward-looking policies.
Gabriela Greilinger, a researcher of the far right at the University of Georgia, says a Freedom Party-led government would also stiffen a "blocking minority" in the EU, with Austria joining neighboring Hungary and Slovakia in pushing back hard on rights issues, support for Ukraine, and sanctions against Russia.
Plan To Send Back Migrants
On migration, Freedom Party plans include sending back some foreigners, which the party calls "remigration," as well as slashing allowances for unauthorized migration and asylum seekers and ending the reunification of family members abroad with migrants already in the country.
Bahro Kacapor, a Bosniak cafe owner who arrived as a refugee from Serbia in 1991, worries about the focus on expelling migrants instead of giving them "a chance to prove themselves." He's had his business for 20 years now and still employs Turkish, Syrian, and Balkan immigrants to help them get on their feet.
"I was in the right place at the right time with the right people," Kacapor tells RFE/RL. "Policies of that time gave me, a migrant and a refugee, a chance to start working and building myself up."
The Freedom Party has consistently led national polls since November 2022, cresting a year ago at around 30 percent. Polls last week showed it at 27 percent, compared to the People's Party at 25 percent and the Social Democrats (SPO) at 21 percent.
Nehammer's People's Party has been in government since 1987, including as the senior partner in coalitions with the Freedom Party in 2000-02 and 2017-19. Their first linkup incurred EU diplomatic and other sanctions against Vienna for "legitimiz[ing] the extreme right in Europe."
After joining forces again in 2017, the People's Party and Freedom Party governed for 18 months before video from a sting operation caught Vice Chancellor and then-Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache hinting at corruption and influence peddling in what was known as the Ibiza Affair. The People's Party has governed in coalition with the Greens since 2020.
Marcus How, head of analysis at risk advisory VE Insight, says that while the main appeal of the Freedom Party to certain voters is its hard-line stance on immigration and especially the asylum process, "They're also more generally the party of protest for voters who are disillusioned with the status quo, with the political establishment, which they see as having betrayed Austrian values, [and] as having disenfranchised them economically."
They are, How says, "offering a little bit of everything."
Migrant Fears
"We want to get people out of the country who are here illegally," said Freedom Party lawmaker Harald Stefan. "[People] who behave criminally here and who do not contribute anything here. That is our 'remigration' policy."
The Austrian Chancellor's Office said last year that "immigrants are more likely to be both perpetrators as well as victims of crime," adding the situation on crime "has not changed much over the longer term."
Parties such as the Greens and Social Democrats argue immigration boosts the economy by filling labor shortages and that the country benefits from the innovation cultural diversity brings.
Meanwhile, more recent immigrants than Kacapur fear getting sucked into a spiral of anti-migrant sentiment the Freedom Party has helped create and whose consequences are difficult to foresee.
"I'll be very scared, terrified even, if [the Freedom Party] get the votes," Mohammad, an Iranian immigrant, says at the Brunnen international street market in Vienna where he works. He's been in Austria for seven years, he tells RFE/RL, and he and other migrants "work full days and pay taxes and don't want a government coming to power that will make life difficult."
