FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl likes to refer to himself as the "People's Chancellor," giving the impression that he acts in the interest of everyone. In reality, however, he represents a minority. Take the EU as an example: According to the latest "Eurobarometer" survey, a majority of Austrians want more integration, including a common security and defense policy among member states. They also support Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression.
In all these points, Kickl sides with a minority that holds opposing positions. This is not forbidden. It's just that he deceives people by pretending to represent everyone. That's the problem.
"But he came in first place in the National Council election," one might argue. True: Kickl's luck is that he largely faces no competition with his minority positions, so the 25 or 35 percent of people who share them remain with him. It's enough to be stronger than all the other parties, which more or less compete with each other and thus, if you will, keep each other small.
The troubling thing about all this "People's Chancellor" talk is that it doesn't do justice to the diversity in society. Yes, that Kickl doesn't even want to correspond to it.
It is his right to show no interest in the Song Contest. However, the way he comments on it reveals a lot: "The Song Contest is a stage for a small, but shrill and loud community," he said in an interview with the "Tiroler Tageszeitung": "If today as a man you don't wear a skirt, as a woman you don't have a beard, if you're not trans or something else, you're hopeless at the Song Contest."
For Kickl, there are only men and women, he wants it enshrined in the constitution that only two genders exist. He does not accept other identities. He just runs over them.
That the Song Contest will take place in this country next year doesn't matter to Kickl. That too is his right. Only: "Apart from the citizenship of the singer JJ, I can't recognize any specific Austrian connection," he says.
It is not clear what he wants to express with this. It may refer to the fact that JJ, whose real name is Johannes Pietsch, won with a foreign-language title ("Wasted Love"). Or to the fact that he is the son of a Filipina; that he is not an Austrian in the x-th generation on both his father's and mother's side and did not appear in a traditional national costume at the Song Contest final in Basel.
Either way, it stands for a narrowing and exclusion that already fully contradicts an open society.
Johannes Huber runs the blog dieSubstanz.at – Analyses and background on politics
This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.