Abstract
ABSTRACTIn this paper, Rheindorf and Wodak provide a discourse-historical analysis of extreme-right cultural politics in Austria, ranging from the blatant racism in the speeches of Vienna’s former Deputy Mayor Johann Gudenus (now MP in the Austrian parliament) to the construction of an idealized national body in the election campaigns of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), its programmatic agenda in handbooks and pamphlets, and the performances of far-right pop singer Andreas Gabalier. Rheindorf and Wodak argue that such cultural politics use a wide spectrum of discursive strategies both inside and outside established party politics and that the accompanying production of an ideal extreme-right subject is informed by nativist ideology. The cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that the cultural politics of the Austrian extreme right ranges from appropriated national symbols to coded National Socialist iconography. These politics pervasively construct a gendered and racialized national body, policed by a ‘strict father’ and nurtured by a ‘self-sacrificing mother’, vis-à-vis an apocalyptic threat scenario identified with migration, intellectual and political elites, cosmopolitanism and progressive gender politics.
Highlights
In this paper, Rheindorf and Wodak provide a discourse-historical analysis of extreme-right cultural politics in Austria, ranging from the blatant racism in the speeches of Vienna’s former Deputy Mayor Johann Gudenus ( MP in the Austrian parliament) to the construction of an idealized national body in the election campaigns of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), its programmatic agenda in handbooks and pamphlets, and the performances of far-right pop singer Andreas Gabalier
Rheindorf and Wodak argue that such cultural politics use a wide spectrum of discursive strategies both inside and outside established party politics and that the accompanying production of an ideal extreme-right subject is informed by nativist ideology
The cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that the cultural politics of the Austrian extreme right ranges from appropriated national symbols to coded National Socialist iconography
Summary
Since Heinz-Christian Strache took control of the FPÖ in 2005, the public activities of the party— in election campaigns and social media —have seen a softening of extreme-right positions and an increase of banal nationalism:[52] displaying the Austrian flag; singing the national anthem; Ibid., 118 and 110–12. With Strache’s leadership came a rebranding of the FPÖ as the Soziale Heimatpartei, the Social Homeland Party (a label it shares with the extreme-right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) of Germany) Two such provocations relate to Austria’s national anthem: first, the public refusal to sing the amended national anthem (since 2011, the lyrics include ‘daughters’ alongside ‘sons’), breaking the relevant law; and, second, the use of an alternative anthem, titled ‘Immer wieder Österreich’, for the party’s campaigns. The extreme right’s salient construction of the national body and use of associated symbols shows a constant effort to mobilize feelings of national pride but of national emergency, of threat and the need to defend and to reassert gender relations as heterosexual and primarily reproductive
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