NEW YORK — Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria's Future, won 29 percent of the vote in the latest Austrian general election — double their total in the 2006 election.
Both parties share the same attitudes toward immigrants, especially Muslims, and the European Union: a mixture of fear and loathing. Since the two parties' leaders, Heinz-Christian Strache and Joerg Haider, despise each other, there is little chance of a far-right coalition taking power. Nonetheless, the result is disturbing.
That 29 percent is about 15 percent more than populist rightwing parties get in very good years in other European countries. Strache, the leader of the Freedom Party, wants the government to create a new ministry to manage the deportation of immigrants. Muslims are openly disparaged. Haider once praised the employment practices of Hitler's Third Reich. Inevitably, the new rightists bring back memories of storm troopers and race laws.
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