10-14 October 2010 Campaigning almost exclusively on an anti-Islam and anti-immigration platform, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has succeeded in augmenting their standing by 10% and attracting over a quarter of all voters in Vienna – a height not seen since Jörg Haider had achieved the same scores in 1996 in Vienna and…
7 October 2010 In front of a crowd of 1500 supporters and 300 counter-demonstrators, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache, ended his campaign for the Viennese elections with a rally in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Strache spent most of his time attacking the Social-Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)…
3 October 2010 In an interview with Die Presse, Omar Al-Rawi, a Social Democratic (SPÖ) politician and Integration spokesperson for the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGiÖ), stated that more mosques are not needed in Vienna, though many need to be renovated or relocated. According to Al-Rawi, Muslims could also “tip the scales” in the…
28 September 2010 The former leader of the Styrian branch of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Leopold Schöggl, has called the anti-Islam strategy used by the FPÖ as “not decisive” for the FPÖ’s success in the recent Styrian elections. In Schöggl’s opinion, it was especially federal-level politics which led to a backlash against the…
26 September 2010 Despite the legal proceedings begun by the state prosecutor concerning an anti-minaret video game used by the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) during the recent Styrian election campaign, the FPÖ has not suffered any negative backlash. To the contrary: the FPÖ received almost 11% of the vote in the recent elections, and…
