Small round glasses and the silhouette of a marathon runner: Herbert Kickl, the new face of the far right victorious on Sunday in Austria, remained in the shadows for a long time before attracting voters with his hard line on the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Kickl, 55, achieved historic success in the legislative elections on Sunday, obtaining around 29% of the vote ahead of the conservatives, without any guarantee of access to the chancellery due to a lack of partners to govern.
Neither photogenic like the pioneer of the Austrian far right Jörg Haider, nor tribune like his predecessor Heinz-Christian Strache, he made a career within the powerful Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), where he played for a long time the role of gray eminence.
Member of Parliament in 2006, Minister of the Interior in 2017, he imposes his three-day beard in the front row in 2021, on the ashes of a formation crushed by a resounding corruption scandal.
– “Rude” –
No excess alcohol or drugs, no scandal in his private life: voters favor his tidy and simple side, which contrasts with his language, outrageous when he hits his opponents.
A green elected official portrayed as a “dominatrix SM”, the president described as a “senile mummy”: the meetings of this former philosophy and history student take on the appearance of a café-theatre where everyone is squeezed.
“He is the rudest politician in the country,” explains journalist Nina Horaczek, who analyzed his speeches in a book published this year. “It’s a way of discrediting those who think differently.”
Herbert Kickl likes neither debates nor interviews. And especially not those in the public service, whose “lack of objectivity” he denounces. He prefers to speak directly to his supporters on social networks.
Even if it means multiplying slippages. A year ago, a video from the youth section of the FPÖ condemning the “replacement of populations” and “rainbow terror” created a stir. In particular, we could see the balcony from where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler celebrated the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich in 1938.
But the time has not come for appeasement: from 18% when he arrived at the head of the party three years ago, the party has continued to climb in the polls and Herbert Kickl has never changed of line.
After taking a conspiratorial turn in the face of anti-Covid restrictions, he opposed any support for Ukraine when Russia invaded it in 2022, in the name of Austria’s neutrality.
Driven by high inflation, he plays the “alone against all” card and wins.
– “People’s Chancellor” –
At the head of a group founded by former Nazis, he is also known for using formulas reminiscent of his historical roots. He says he wants to be “Volkskanzler”, the “people’s chancellor”, a German social democratic concept taken up by Adolf Hitler, even if he denies any Nazi references.
“It is a very targeted provocation which aims at two objectives”, according to Nina Horaczek: “To make people talk about themselves and send very clear signals” to the most radical fringe.
Herbert Kickl has never made a secret of his proximity to certain small extremist groups, sharing their hostility to Islam and refugees.
He adopted the term “remigration” as his own, with the plan of stripping their nationality and expelling Austrians of foreign origin. From 2016, he appeared among identitarians, classified as extremists in the Alpine country.
According to him, “politics takes precedence over the law”. In 2018, when he was at the Ministry of the Interior, he ordered a raid on the intelligence services and documents on links between the FPÖ and extremist circles were seized.
He is suspected by the courts of having ordered advertising inserts from a major press group during this period, “at the expense of the State”, to ensure “favorable coverage”.
In 2023, he posed in paramilitary uniform in his region of origin, Carinthia (south), on posters with the slogan “Fortress Austria – closed borders, security guaranteed”.
For the legislative elections, he put on a costume but did not change the slogan.
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