Right-wing extremism in Austria

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The right-wing applies in Austria rather than unconstitutional or criminal prosecution position. It provides for the protection of the constitution only an interesting for the prevention ahead of the by the Prohibition Act 1947 banned neo-Nazism is. Right-wing extremism has in Austria from the perspective of the state has a different meaning than in Germany, as it is the front of extremism to be protected concept of free and democratic order does not exist .

According to information from the Federal Ministry of the Interior , the right-wing extremist scene currently (as of 2011) does not pose a serious threat to democracy in Austria. In a European comparison, right-wing extremism is at a low level. Since 2004, however, there has been an increasing rapprochement within the scene. The working group for democratic politics (AFP) with its youth organization Bund frei Jugend (BfJ) serves as a collecting tank. The right-wing extremist skinhead scene is characterized by a high potential for violence . There is an overlap with the violent hooligan scene . In the neo-Nazi scene, a shortage of young talent can be seen, which is a threat to the existence of some right-wing extremist groups.

history

1950–1960: Foundation of the FPÖ

After the end of the Second World War, Austria was regarded as “the first free country to fall victim to Hitler's typical aggressive policy” on the basis of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, but here, as in Germany, measures were taken by the Allies of denazification carried out. 537,632 people were registered as members of the NSDAP , the SS or other organizations of the National Socialist regime. On the basis of the Prohibition Act , people's courts had passed 23,477 judgments by 1955, 13,607 of which were guilty.

Despite efforts towards political and administrative denazification, an ideological reappraisal of National Socialism and the role of Austria between 1938 and 1945 largely failed to materialize. Austrian right-wing extremism found its roots in developments shortly after the end of the war. After the end of the Second World War, neo-Nazi organizations were founded in illegality. The Soucek-Rössner conspiracy became the first prominent case of National Socialist re -activation in 1947/48 : the Graz merchant Theodor Soucek and several other people were arrested, three of whom were sentenced to death, but later pardoned. They organized a werewolf movement that, according to Hitler's orders, wanted to go underground after the collapse of the “ Third Reich ” and continue fighting from there.

However, in the course of political and social reintegration, National Socialist judges, public prosecutors and officers were accepted into the Austrian judiciary and executive . In spite of denazification measures, there were in some cases right-wing extremist tendencies at universities and colleges. This became particularly clear in the Borodajkewycz affair : At a demonstration in 1965 there were violent clashes, Ernst Kirchweger was fatally injured by a punch from a member of the Ring of Freedom Students . This was the first death in the political conflict in the Second Republic .

Just a few years after the end of the war, the two people's parties, the ÖVP and the SPÖ , began to woo sympathizers and officials of the Nazi regime in Austria . In February 1949 the " Association of Independents " (VdU) was founded, which gave former National Socialists, German Nationalists and right-wing liberals a mouthpiece for their political goals and interests, and above all NSDAP members, expellees and returnees - that is, Wehrmacht soldiers or politically persecuted - should be addressed. The VdU showed a clearly fascist attitude, so that its party sheets were confiscated several times for violations of the constitution. Courted by democratic parties and given legal influence in the form of the VdU, Austrian right-wing extremists of German nationality were able to become active again in public and organizations such as B. found various soldiers' associations and comradeship associations. These include the Austrian Comradeship Association , the Austrian Gymnastics Association and the Carinthian Homeland Service . These are accused of spreading right-wing extremist ideas. When the VdU broke up due to internal party tensions, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) emerged in 1956 , which subsequently positioned itself clearly to the right of the other parties, stood behind former NSDAP and SS members and polemicized against immigration.

1960–1970: The NDP gained strength

Until the founding of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1966/67, the FPÖ was also seen by the extreme right like Norbert Burger and many South Tyrolean activists as the parliamentary representative of the right-wing extremist movement in Austria. Burger was involved in the founding of the " Liberation Committee South Tyrol ", which wanted to enforce the annexation of South Tyrol to Austria with terrorist actions. However, since the NDP never achieved any notable successes and was criticized by some right-wing extremists for opportunism, the “ Aktion Neuerechte ” (ANR) was founded in the early 1970s . In the federal presidential election in 1980, Burger stood as a candidate and received 140,000 votes (3.2%). His election rallies were disrupted by anti-fascists, which led to violent clashes with his supporters.

1970–1986: Former National Socialists in the SPÖ and radicalization of the extreme right

The SPÖ minority government under Bruno Kreisky in 1970 comprised people who were burdened by their Nazi past. This included the former SS member Hans Öllinger . Oskar Weihs , Building Minister Josef Moser and Transport Minister Erwin Frühbauer were NSDAP members, Interior Minister Otto Rösch had belonged to the SA. The foreign public was sensitive to these members of the government. Kreisky triggered the " Kreisky-Peter-Wiesenthal Affair " against Simon Wiesenthal by protecting Friedrich Peter , a former member of a murder brigade of the Waffen-SS and then FPÖ chairman .

In the 1970s there was a radicalization of the extreme right. For example, the military sports group Trenck , which set up weapons and explosives stores, became active. There are also attacks in Austria by individual perpetrators and violent small groups who physically attack foreigners - or people who they believe to be. There were repeated desecrations of Jewish cemeteries and Nazi slogans were smeared on walls again and again.

1980–1990: Jörg Haider

In the early 1980s, party chairman Norbert Steger tried to align the FPÖ as a liberal party more towards the middle of the political spectrum, but failed and was replaced by Jörg Haider in 1986 . Under his leadership, the FPÖ took a stand against the "old parties" (SPÖ and ÖVP), tried to present itself as a movement apart from the political establishment and spoke out against immigration and " multiculturalism ". Haider was accused of mobilizing anti-Semitic and xenophobic prejudices. The right-wing extremist AFP maintained good relations with Haider and the FPÖ and decided not to vote in favor of the FPÖ.

In 1986 the " Waldheim Affair " shook Austria. Also in 1986 the Viennese right-wing extremist and revisionist Gottfried Küssel founded the People's Loyalty Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (VAPO) , which was crushed by the police in the course of the letter bomb affair in the early / mid-1990s.

1990–2000: Right-wing terrorism, participation of the FPÖ in government

In the 1990s, there was a series of devastating letter bomb attacks against people who were seen as representatives of liberal and foreigner-friendly politics, including Helmut Zilk and Arabella Kiesbauer . Four Roma fell victim to an attack on February 4, 1995 with pipe bombs and booby traps in Oberwart . Organized neo-Nazi groups were initially suspected of being the perpetrators. In the course of the investigation, some weapons depots were excavated. In this context, the ÖVP and the SPÖ wanted to crack down on the Austrian right-wing extremists. However, the attacks turned out to be acts of the radical right-wing individual perpetrator Franz Fuchs .

Under Haider's leadership, the FPÖ pursued a right-wing populist course that was criticized for its polarizing rhetoric. Nonetheless, the party managed to address both national voters and protest voters, who were dissatisfied with the grand coalition , to gain strong votes and ultimately to become the second strongest party in the 1999 National Council election with over 25 percent.

In December 1997, Engelwerk member Robert Prantner published the anti-Semitic ritual murder legend about Anderl von Rinn in the newspaper Zur Zeit von Andreas Mölzer and demanded an apology from "World Jewry" for further "ritual murders" that he claimed without evidence, without being prosecuted .

In 2000 the FPÖ entered into a coalition government with the ÖVP. This led to international protests, including diplomatic sanctions by the European Union. In the wise report from 2000, the FPÖ is described as a "right-wing populist party with extremist expressions". After government participation, right-wing extremist tendencies in the FPÖ declined. Individual members continued to draw attention to themselves with right-wing extremist statements and repeatedly caused outrage. For example, the FPÖ member of the National Council, Helene Partik-Pablé , Heinz-Christian Strache , Ernest Windholz , the then FPÖ regional chairman of Lower Austria , and the Carinthian governor Gerhard Dörfler .

2000-2010

From 2002 there was an increased occurrence of skinheads in Vienna. Right-wing extremist perpetrators carried out attacks on SPÖ institutions, among other things. In 2008, the Styrian state government stopped paying grants to the Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend (RFJ) after it had promoted the setting up of flocks of sheep in the Graz city park as an “immediate measure against Turkish-Muslim rape”. The responsible state councilor, Bettina Vollath , described the subjects of the RFJ as "inhuman and racist statements" that ran counter to the state's funding criteria. An RFJ official was convicted of incitement to hatred because he alleged a tendency towards sodomy to Muslims in claiming sheep flocks.

In May 2009, several young people attacked a memorial event for survivors of the Holocaust in the former Ebensee concentration camp . The perpetrators shot at the participants of the event with soft guns and articulated National Socialist slogans. In August, the armed forces, headed by Defense Minister Norbert Darabos, stopped participating in the Ulrichsberg meeting . Since 2009, the Federation of Free Youth has been observed by the security authorities as a “carrier of right-wing extremist ideas”. In 2009 the right-wing extremist website Alpen-Donau.info was published.

Since 2010

In January 2010, several neo-Nazis singing National Socialist songs carried out an attack on a group of young people in a pub in Graz. During the public viewing of a soccer game, some of the same people attacked the National Council member Werner Kogler and seriously injured one of his companions. The perpetrators, some of whom came from the RFJ milieu, also committed various re- activities with Franz Radl . In July 2010 there was an arson attack motivated by right-wing extremists on a house in the Floridsdorf district of Vienna, where the majority of the population is inhabited by foreigners .

In 2011 several people were taken into custody after many years of investigations against the operators of Alpen-Donau-Info. In 2012, three people, including Gottfried Küssel as the operator or initiator of the website, were sentenced to several years' imprisonment in the first instance because of National Socialist re-use .

In August 2012, the disbursement of state subsidies to the RFJ was criticized in Upper Austria after an RFJ activist foreign women u. a. threatened: "Because of you we lock Mauthausen again and gasify you alive!" . The perpetrator was sentenced to a conditional prison term for hate speech and dangerous threats. In February 2013, the Upper Austrian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution initiated an investigation into an Innviertel municipal council of the FPÖ, who claimed an economic war of a “Jewish World Congress” against Germany in 1933 in a social network and described the film Schindler's List as a “Jewish propaganda film”. The district chairman of the RFJ in Ried had previously published a picture of himself in a T-shirt with the inscription "Auschwitz rules" on a social network .

In August 2013, the computer of the right-wing extremist blog kreuz.net was confiscated during a raid by the Austrian police , and house searches were carried out on two Catholic priests in Vienna and Upper Austria . In September 2017, seven people in Austria were still being investigated for incitement to hatred and National Socialist re-activism on kreuz.net, as Justice Minister Wolfgang Brandstetter (ÖVP) confirmed at the request of the Greens in the National Council. The publisher of the website was among those investigated further.

In Austria, the branch of the right-wing extremist Bloc identitaire from France was entered in the register of associations in 2012 under the name Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Cultural Identity . One of the reasons for the establishment of this new right-wing extremist movement, known in Austria and Germany as the Identitarian Movement , is the shift away from open neo-Nazism to a more harmless form due to the increased pressure of repression after 2010. In the 2017 report on the Protection of the Constitution , the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism described the Identitarian Movement Austria (IBÖ) as "one of the main carriers of modernized right-wing extremism".

See also

Portal: right-wing extremism  - overview of Wikipedia content on right-wing extremism

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Heribert Schiedel : The right edge. Extremist sentiments in our society. Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2007, p. 172.
  2. a b Report on the Protection of the Constitution 2012 . (PDF; 566 kB) Federal Ministry of the Interior / Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism, p. 13 ff.
  3. Constitutional Protection Report 2007 . (PDF; 1.25 MB) Federal Ministry of the Interior / Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Fight against Terrorism, p. 39 ff.
  4. ^ Moscow Declaration, translation by Alfred Klahr Society .
  5. Ralf Hanselle: Two hearts in three-quarter time. In the contemporary history forum in Leipzig, an exhibition examines the German-Austrian neighborhood . In: The Parliament , 23–24 / 2006.
  6. ^ Proceedings before Austrian People's Courts: Estimates and, for the first time, detailed figures for Vienna ( Memento from January 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance ; Retrieved July 2, 2008.
  7. Boris Jezek: On the history of right-wing extremism in Austria . In: Inprekorr , No. 341/2000, February 8, 2000.
  8. Christa Zöchling : Kreisky's coup. In: profil , 46/2006, November 13, 2006, p. 26.
  9. Working Group for Democratic Politics (AFP). In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance ; last accessed on April 29, 2019.
  10. ^ Fritz Plasser , Peter A. Ulram, Franz Sommer: Analysis of the National Council election 1999. Patterns, trends and motives for decision. (PDF; 116 kB) (No longer available online.) Center for Applied Policy Research (ZAP), October 4, 1999, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on April 29, 2019 .
  11. Report by Martti Ahtisaari, Jochen Frowein, Marcelino Oreja (PDF; 126 kB); adopted on September 8, 2000 in Paris (German translation).
  12. You have to avoid some corners. In: The Standard. October 23, 2002.
  13. RFJ Steiermark no longer receives any funding. In: The Standard. May 13, 2008.
  14. Incitement: judgment against Michael Winter final . In: The press. December 1, 2008.
  15. Decision about custody by tomorrow . In: The Standard. May 13, 2009.
  16. ^ Ulrichsberg meeting: Darabos cancels participation of the army . In: The press. August 25th 2009-
  17. Interior Minister Liese Prokop : 2751 / AB XXII. GP - Query response (PDF; 16 kB), May 23, 2005.
  18. a b "This brutality shocked me" . In: The Standard. March 23, 2012.
  19. Young libertarians under suspicion of re-employment. In: The Standard. May 10, 2012.
  20. ^ Graz: Indictment against neo-Nazis with blue connections. In: The Standard. February 3, 2010.
  21. Radl convicted of re-activating the Nazis . In: The Standard. 5th December 2012.
  22. The "Saufnazis" Floridsdorf . In: The Standard. July 20, 2010.
  23. Jump up ↑ Gottfried Küssel in custody. The well-known right-wing extremist was arrested as a suspected mastermind of the Alpen-Donau homepage . ( Memento of April 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Courier , April 12, 2011.
  24. ^ Nine years imprisonment for Gottfried Küssel - tight decision of the lay judge. In: ORF Online. January 11, 2013.
  25. RFJ activist threatened to be "gassed". In: The Standard. April 18, 2012.
  26. FPÖ municipal council resigns after questionable Facebook postings . In: Upper Austria news. February 13, 2013.
  27. Hermann-Josef Frisch : Not church sheep, but courageous Christians. Patmos Publishing Group, August 26, 2014. ISBN 978-3-8436-0547-2 .
  28. Computer confiscated from kreuz.net . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . August 10, 2013.
  29. ^ Colette M. Schmidt: Justice Minister confirms investigation against kreuz.net. In: The Standard. 15th September 2017.
  30. Answer of the Austrian Ministry of Justice 13020 / AB to inquiry 13812 / J (XXV.GP), BMJ-Pr7000 / 0148-III 1/2017. (PDF; 550 kB).
  31. Federal Ministry of the Interior , Register of Associations, State Police Directorate Styria, ZVR number 380600847.
  32. Identitarian Movement Austria (IBÖ). doew.at
  33. Constitutional Protection Report 2014 (PDF; 1.14 MB) Federal Ministry of the Interior / Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Fight against Terrorism, p. 11 ff.
  34. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism (ed.): Verfassungsschutz Report 2017 . Vienna 2018, p. 53 ( bvt.gv.at [PDF; 1.5 MB ]).