The fact that two of Austria’s far right parties received 29% of the votes in the national elections held two weeks ago, is not very surprising. Austria was one of the strongest pro-Nazi countries during World War II. Unlike what most Austrians were willing to admit after WWII, the fact of the matter was that the far majority of them celebrated the ‘Anschluss’ (Austria and Germany joining forces under Adolf Hitler) and the radical policies of the Nazis (aimed at, among other things, exterminating Europe’s Jewish population).

As Newsweek documents, the leaders of the two right-wing parties so powerful and influential in Austria today are not exactly liberal idealists:

Haidar took over leadership of the Freedom Party—a descendant of the old Austrian Nazi party—riding a wave of anti-Western feeling. He moderated his views, at least in public, and split with the Freedom Party when the more outspokenly extremist Strache took over in 2005, forming his own Alliance for Austria’s Future. Strache called for a ban on building minarets and vowed to create a ministry in charge of deporting foreigners. He has reportedly been photographed at what opponents say were paramilitary training exercises, though he claimed they were youthful paintball games.

Right, paintball games.

Anyway, although the far right is certainly resurging in Austria – also because Austrians have never truly broken with their radical past, and have never endevored to outlaw Nazi parties and / or to isolate them politically – it has to be kept in mind that both parties were only able to become successful after they moderate their tone… somewhat. Leaders of both parties still say pretty outrageous things, but if they would have been as outspokenly anti-immigration today as they were in the past, they would not have had so much success in this year’s elections.

Having said that, the following point made by the Newsweek article is also true:

“It’s becoming politically acceptable to take extreme positions,” says Simon Tilford of London’s Centre for European Reform. So while the Austrian rhetoric is often ugly, the parties’ positions are starting to sound kind of familiar. In Italy, parties as far right as those in Austria are now junior partners in Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition, and his center-right party is solidly behind one of the toughest anti-immigrant crackdowns in Europe, mobilizing troops to control crime attributed to foreigners. Mainstream parties in Denmark, France, Spain and Switzerland have also, to varying degrees, cracked down on immigrants. Indeed it may be that Austria is not so much behind the times, but out in front.

In other European countries far-right parties aren’t the only ones attacking immigrants. Those who are considered pretty mainstream, like Rita Verdonk in the Netherlands and to a lesser degree Geert Wilders (he’s not considered mainstream anymore, but also not truly right-wing, for he can count on the support of a large part of the Dutch population and his views are supported by several prominent intellectuals), often say the most outrageous things about immigrants and then especially Muslims and Islam. Wilders too wants to outlaw the building of new mosques because he considers such places of worship in breach with Dutch ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition, culture and history.

Europe is definitely moving to the right on the issue of immigration, but it seems that Europeans are not more willing to accept a bigger government than they did before in other areas. Instead, those who talk about less government influence, and speak about encouraging entrepreneurship can count on quite some support. Even the country’s labor party has moved to the center in recent years, realizing that the old big-government policies will not work in the years ahead.