Austrian voters have elected the most right-wing parliament since 1945. The FPÖ gained 5.5 points, totaling 26 percent of the vote. But the undisputed winner was the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), which rose from 24 percent in 2013 to 31.5 percent.
With a combined share of 57.5 percent of the vote and 103 (out of 183) MPs, the right bloc has never been larger. After you add in the neoliberal, pro-business “Neos,” who entered parliament with 5.3 percent, right-wing elements enjoy a two-thirds majority, giving them the power to potentially change constitutional law. [...]
The plan worked. With Kurz, Austrian voters could vote for the FPÖ’s program without associating themselves with the far right or fascism. The extreme right’s preferred topics — Islam, migration, refugees — dominated the campaign. Both Kurz and FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache presented closed borders and Islamophobic laws as the best solution to the country’s social and political problems. [...]
The new right-wing government will also target Austria’s system of collective bargaining, a key component of wage regulation in a country where 97 percent of all employment contracts are covered by a minimum union wage. Together, these reforms will create a low-wage sector with a highly flexible — read: precarious — workforce, which will drive up profits from global export markets. [...]
Authoritarian right-wing populism has now become a truly hegemonic, cross-class project. 74 percent of blue-collar workers voted for one of the two right-wing parties, as did 64 percent of entrepreneurs. Shockingly, the FPÖ won among voters 16 to 29 years old with 30 percent of the vote. Add Kurz’s 28 percent, and you have a 58 percent majority for authoritarian right-wing populism among young people. The only demographic that liked the Social Democrats were pensioners. This is what deep, right-wing hegemony looks like.
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