When Austria chooses a new parliament on Sunday, Kathy Tanner will be watching closely.
Born in Belfast and raised in Derry and Dublin, Tanner came to Vienna aged 20 in 1972 and, after a successful acting career here, has now embraced agitprop.
With her older Austrian friends, Tanner is worried that Sunday could bring a postwar first: victory for the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).
That’s why they have stepped up their public performances as the activist group Omas Gegen Rechts, known in English as Nannies against Nazis.
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“The FPÖ are using frighteningly Nazi slogans that put the fear into people but offer no solutions,” Tanner tells The Irish Times in a Viennese cafe.
Omas Gegen Rechts was founded here seven years ago after the FPÖ took office, then as junior partner, with the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP).
That coalition collapsed in scandal and acrimony and the ÖVP pivoted to the Greens, but now that alliance looks set to lack a majority for re-election.
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl has revived his party by promising a “Fortress Austria” and a zero-asylum policy, if voters hand him power as “Volkskanzler” or people’s chancellor.
Outgoing ÖVP chancellor Karl Nehammer has refused to work with Kickl, though not his party, calling him a “danger for Austria” for his robust migration rhetoric and controversial law-and-order record as interior minister.
“I’m the guarantee that Kickl won’t be chancellor,” said Nehammer in a final direct television debate with the FPÖ leader.
The centre-right ÖVP leader hopes his campaign promises – lower taxes, family-friendly measures and its quick funding for recent flood victims – will help his party nose ahead on Sunday into first place.
But a second year of economic shrinkage, and inflation stuck above the EU average, has seen the ÖVP slump 12 points from its last election outing.
Nehammer carries none of the wunderkind aura of his predecessor, Sebastian Kurz, expelled over graft claims.
In the last weeks of campaigning, the ÖVP has zeroed in on Kickl as an authoritarian acolyte of Viktor Orban and a pro-Russian stalking horse.
The latter accusation is controversial given Austria still draws 83 per cent of its gas imports from Russia, compared to 15 per cent on average elsewhere in the EU.
Seasoned political observers expect Sunday’s election to yield no immediately obvious coalition. A good result for the ÖVP could see Nehammer demand a Kickl-free FPÖ alliance, or a three-way alliance with its Social Democrat (SPÖ) and liberal Neos rivals.
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Kickl has decried the latter as a “loser coalition”, further proof of a widespread conspiracy of mainstream parties and media against his party and voters.
Political analyst Thomas Hofer suggests Kickl could be happy with a strong result and another term in opposition, given the difficult economic outlook.
“He knows the next government will struggle to have anything positive to announce,” says Hofer. “And his choice of language and themes makes him come across as authentic to his supporters.”
Like no one else in the last 30 years, Kickl has shaped the FPÖ's populist brand – in particular its trademark rhyming, racist rhetoric.
He helped Jörg Haider secure the first FPÖ alliance with the ÖVP in 2000, triggering sanctions from the EU in 2000.
A quarter century on, sanctions are unlikely now given two groupings of right and far-right nationalist parties occupy 15 per cent of European Parliament seats.
As far-right politics have spread across Europe – fuelled by frustration and fears over irregular migration, security and the cost of living – so, too, has Omas Gegen Rechts.
For group founder Monica Salzer, a Vienna psychotherapist and theologian, the focus now in Austria is on “waking up the young people” to the dangers of the anti-democratic surge. “Given the shift to the right in Europe, we need more solidarity and dialogue among each other,” she says.
Vienna’s Mariahilfer shopping precinct is a popular spot to canvas passersby. Here Omas don their trademark woolly “pussyhats” with ears and sing their recent hip hop track “Democracy is not a Gift”. Its chorus: “Democracy has to be lived and cared for.”
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For younger shoppers, the grannies are a welcome distraction – but not everyone is ready to shun Herbert Kickl.
For Jonas, a 17-year-old trainee carpenter sipping an energy drink, Kickl’s FPÖ has some “good arguments” to deport foreigners who have committed criminal offences and cut welfare payments to zero for asylum seekers. “The borders are too open, and only the FPÖ seem to be worried about security,” he says.
In conversations, the Vienna grannies, some wartime survivors, never belittle younger voters’ concerns but remind them how the last politician to dub himself Volkskanzler – or people’s chancellor – was Adolf Hitler.
“We’re not going out there to say ‘F**k the FPÖ’, we are saying, ‘stick to democracy’ – and we appear to be making an impact,” says Kathy Tanner, mentioning the group’s knack for triggering FPÖ leaders and supporters on social media.
“One of them tagged me recently, saying witches like us would have been burned in the 1600s,” says Tanner with a laugh. “We are a force to be reckoned with, us witches.”
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