The Rise of the Austrian Far Right | Jan-Werner Müller
Vienna regularly ranks among the world’s most livable cities. A long tradition of municipal government by Social Democrats has made for famously affordable housing and well-run infrastructure. There is also a level of diversity that conjures up nostalgic images of the Habsburg empire as a haven of tolerance, or what Joseph Roth called an Übernation containing many nations: 40 percent of Vienna’s residents were born abroad. The rest of the Alpine Republic—much of it significantly more conservative—isn’t so bad either. A 2022 poll in Der Standard found that a clear majority of Austrians approve of their quality of life as a whole. Yet the far right prevailed in the recent Austrian parliamentary elections—a first in the country’s postwar history. The victorious Freedom Party (FPÖ) might not come to power, though. To the outrage of the far right and its supporters, President Alexander Van der Bellen, of the Green Party, has asked the biggest loser of the vote, sitting chancellor Karl Nehammer, of the center-right People’s Party (ÖVP), to form a new government. After weeks of “exploratory talks,” the ÖVP is now in …