(Bloomberg) — Herbert Kickl, the conservative-nationalist tasked this week with forming Austria’s next government, is at once one of the most admired and loathed politicians in the country’s post-World War II history.
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After two years of recession, supporters have thrown their weight behind Kickl’s claim that only an outsider like him can fix Austria’s flailing economy. Detractors counter that he’s a dangerous character who has raised ethnic and religious tensions by unfairly blaming foreigners for the country’s troubles.
While Kickl handily won 29% of the vote in September’s national election — pollsters say he would take 37% if ballots were cast again — almost seven out of 10 Austrians say they don’t trust him, according to the latest data. That makes him one of the nation’s least credible public figures.
“It’s possible, I admit, that some aren’t happy with our form of government,” Kickl said on Tuesday. “It’s a very clear, honest and direct form of politics”
A career politician from the state of Carinthia on Austria’s border with Italy, the 56-year-old rose through the Freedom Party’s ranks as a wordsmith and master strategist. After studying Hegelian dialectics at university, he cut his teeth writing speeches for the deceased anti-immigrant demagogue Joerg Haider, lifting the then-provincial governor into national politics at the turn of the century. Kickl then enjoyed a two-year stint as Austria’s interior minister before the government imploded in 2019 on the back of a sensational influence-peddling scandal that played out on the Spanish island of Ibiza.
So much for the official biography.
“In stark contrast to every other Freedom Party leader, we know next to nothing about him privately,” said Natascha Strobl, who studies right-wing networks, in an interview. “That’s part of the strategy. He has great discipline. People project a lot onto him.”
Always seen in gray horn-rimmed glasses, he lives with his family in a bedroom community outside of Vienna and is reported to enjoy long-distance running.
Unlike previous Freedom Party leaders whose campaigns would fill beer halls with supporters only to see the candidate drink with them, Kickl comes off as more reserved.
Until he opens his mouth.
Like Donald Trump, Kickl enjoys putting on a show. His campaign jamborees are typically packed with folksy country musicians, enormous video screens, flag waving and two-hour-long speeches.
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During party meetings viewable on Facebook, Kickl has been known to lionize “normal” people and harangue “eco-communists.” He accuses the US of enforcing a “double morality” for sanctioning Russia over its war on Ukraine and promises to maintain Austria’s “neutrality.” He swears the Freedom Party will build a “fortress Austria” and that he will become a “chancellor of the people” and against “the system.”
How he plans to address acute problems in Austria’s economy and find as much as €18 billion in budget savings in the near future while avoiding a third consecutive year of recession is difficult to decipher from his party’s ideology-infused campaign program.
Kickl often reserves special praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who he has met repeatedly and holds up as a model for how he’d like to govern Austria. “The faster we can do it like Hungary the better,” Kickl has told supporters. “Hungary is an example for me.”
The far right has mastered the art of subliminal messaging, said Marcus How, a geopolitical-risk analyst at Vienna’s VE Insight in an interview. Kickl’s Freedom Party, founded in 1956 by a former Nazi officer, raised eyebrows across Austria’s political spectrum when its leader adopted the moniker of Volkskanzler, or “Chancellor of the People,” a term with deep roots in Germanic traditions.
“Kickl regards himself first and foremost as a strategist and thinker,” How said. “He is really a political operator who revels in provocation and craves power. But for all his posturing, there isn’t all that much ideological coherence to his worldview.”
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