Sep 18, 2008, 14:37 GMT
Vienna - Austria's two right-wing parties are presenting themselves as mainstream political groups in the campaign for the upcoming general elections, as polls predict they could win up to 28 per cent of vote.
But while leaders of the BZOe and FPOe parties stress their social policies and anti-inflation measures, they keep revealing their xenophobic and anti-Islamic sentiments.
'It doesn't make sense, and we cannot allow that (...) our own children are insulted as 'pork eaters' in school, that our daughters are exposed to the greedy eyes and hands of immigrant hordes,' FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache wrote in a pamphlet for an anti- Islamic conference to take place this weekend in Cologne, Germany.
Forecasts say the Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) could win between 18 and 20 per cent of the votes in the early parliamentary elections on September 28, compared with 11 per cent in the last elections in 2006.
The Alliance for the Future of Austria, led by Joerg Haider, could win up to eight per cent, doubling the votes from 2006.
Although both ruling parties, the social democratic SPOe and the conservative OeVP, have said they will not form a coalition with the right wing, civic and religious groups are worried about the high number of politicians with extremist views in the FPOe.
'The FPOe is the only party which has such a high density of functionaries belonging to the extreme right,' the President of the Vienna Jewish Religious Community, Ariel Muzicant, said earlier this month.
While Strache is on tour in Austria, he seasons his speeches on tax and health reforms with xenopobic comments.
He frequently criticizes the city of Vienna for making social housing available for foreigners. 'If you need an apartment, all you have to do is put on a headscarf,' he said Monday at a rally in Vienna.
But despite the party's right-wing tendencies, people would vote for them more in protest against the current coalition government than out of ideological convictions, Muzicant said.
Haider's BZOe, which split from the FPOe in 2005, tries even harder to present itself as a party with a mainstream appeal, fighting for heating subsidies or higher pensions.
'They have more of a tactical approach to racism; its not part of their world view,' Heribert Schiedel, an expert on right-wing extremism in Vienna, said of the BZOe.
Haider, who is governor of Carinthia, made the news earlier this year by sending asylum seekers from his provinces to other parts of Austria, because he suspected them of criminal activity. They later turned out to be innocent.
He has also said he could imagine putting electronic tags on every asylum seeker, so that they could be monitored more easily.
Although commentators think the right-wing parties will probably not be represented in the next government, it would not be the first time that the FPOe would be in power.
After the 1999 elections, the FPOe joined the stronger OeVP as a junior coalition partner. European Union members reacted by scaling down their foreign relations with Austria.
Heinz-Christian Strache, as well as the FPOe's secretary general and campaign manager, did not find the time to be interviewed by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
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InfidelSep 18th, 2008 - 16:59:47
Anti-islamic parties are becoming very popular throughout Europe. Does anybody not know the reason why?
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