Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Far-Right Party Surges In Austrian Election

(JTA) — Jewish groups called on the head of the conservative Austrian People’s Party to exclude a far-right party from the new government coalition following national elections in Austria.

Sebastian Kurz, head of the center-right Austrian People’s Party, or ÖVP, at 31, will become Europe’s youngest leader. His party came in first with a projected 30 percent of the vote in Sunday’s poll. The far-right Freedom Party, or FPO, came in second place with a projected 27 percent of the vote according to exit polls, slightly ahead of the center-left Social Democrats Party of outgoing Chancellor Christian Kern.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, who was the U.S. ambassador to Austria from 1986 to 1987, said in a statement that the FPO “is still full of xenophobes and racists and is, mildly put, very ambiguous toward Austria’s Nazi past.”

Lauder strongly warned against including the Freedom Party in any governing coalition. “Like the AfD in Germany, the National Front in France, or Jobbik in Hungary, the FPÖ is an extremist party that panders to racists and anti-Semites and whips up feelings against minorities,” Lauder said. “It is led by a man who in his youth expressed clear sympathies for the Nazis.”

There are currently about 9,000 Jews living in Austria, according to the Jewish Virtual Library figures for 2016, making them about 0.1 percent of the country’s population.

 

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.