Marc Champion, Columnist

When the Far Right Wins in Hitler’s Birthplace

Austria’s Freedom Party is negotiating to take power. Time to focus on protecting democratic institutions.

January 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM UTC

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right Austria Freedom Party.
Photographer: Michael Gruber/Getty Images Europe

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Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, looks set to welcome its first far-right Chancellor since World War II, in the form of Freedom Party head Herbert Kickl. This looks less like an anomaly than part of a trend that’s sweeping the developed West, so for those of us who believe in the value of liberal democracy and its institutions, how worried should we be?

A lot is being written about the accelerators of Austria’s nationalist phenomenon. These include Russian troll farms and alt-right networks, as well as the Austrian center-right’s decision to “normalize” the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) by adopting some of its ideas and inviting it to share power. Kickl himself is a former interior minister, who had police raid the country’s intelligence service offices in an attempt to discredit them.