Karl Nehammer, the outgoing Chancellor of Austria from the conservative Austrian People's Party, described Herbert Kickl as a "security risk". But apparently 1.4 million voters think otherwise, because at the end of September they gave Kickl and his Austrian Freedom Party a major electoral success - with 29 percent, the party took first place, and now its approval rating is already at 35 percent according to polls.
After talks to form a centrist coalition collapsed, President Alexander Van der Bellen officially handed the Freedom Party a mandate to form a government.
From one-man to candidate for "people's chancellor"
According to polls by Austrian public broadcaster ORF, only two percent of far-right voters said the party leader was crucial to their support.
Herbert Kickl is not considered as particularly charismatic as previous Freedom Party leaders. He is more of a loner who has long operated behind the scenes. He was born in 1968 in Villach, Carinthia, and not many details are known about his biography: he is married, has one son, is involved in triathlon and mountaineering, studied humanities, but never graduated.
Now he declares his readiness to become the next Austrian chancellor - what is more, to be a "people's chancellor", as he is defined by his party, which is not afraid that this phrase evokes associations with the Nazi past. Because before the term "Führer" was established, Adolf Hitler was called that.
Like a phoenix from the ashes of the "Ibiza" affair
Kickle is making a party career step by step. First, he was a speechwriter and advisor to former party leader Jörg Haider, then became secretary general under his successor, Heinz-Christian Strache. Strache's career ended after the "Ibiza" affair - after the release of a secretly filmed video showing the then vice chancellor and a fellow party member openly discussing corruption.
Kickle, who has been at the helm of the party since 2021, managed to escape the scandal, although suspicions were raised against him. At the time, he was interior minister in the government of Sebastian Kurz of the Austrian People's Party. Kickl then refused to resign along with Strache and ended up becoming the first dismissed minister in Austria's recent history.
Migration hardliner, Putin supporter
Kickl has only been in office as Interior Minister for 17 months, but he has repeatedly demonstrated his stance on migration policy - he has sometimes planned a ban on leaving refugee reception centers, and sometimes the deportation of foreigners convicted in the first instance before they have even had a chance to appeal. During the 2019 European elections, Kickl even announced that he wanted to bypass the European Convention on Human Rights. "Because I still believe that the following basic principle applies - the right to follow politics, not politics - the right," Kickl told ORF at the time.
He shares his party's Eurosceptic views - he has previously described EU policy as "arrogant and complacent", the Freedom Party's election program calls for a reduction in the powers of European institutions, and its leader wants "Austria as a fortress" within the Schengen area. And although it is more moderate than the Alternative for Germany on the issue of a possible exit from the EU, the Austrian far right, like the German one, also uses the word "remigration" to advocate for mass deportations. Kickl only reinforces his party's Islamophobic slogans, using the slogan "Daham instead of Islam" - "daham" in his election campaign means "at home". During the pandemic, he has come out as a supporter of conspiracy theories and an opponent of immunizations.
Like the "Alternative for Germany", the Freedom Party is against arms supplies to Ukraine, and in February 2023, on the first anniversary of the war, Kickl spoke before the Austrian parliament about the "long history of provocations by the US and NATO", which were to blame. Kickl is also an opponent of European sanctions against Russia, and his party signed a friendship treaty with Putin's "United Russia" in 2016. German CDU MP Roderich Kiesewetter called the Freedom Party "Russia's Trojan Horse in Europe".
Austria on the Path of Orban's Hungary
Kickle's critics fear that as chancellor he will follow the course of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is also close to Russia, and may even reshape Austria along the Hungarian model. The two maintain good relations and in the summer, together with former Czech Prime Minister Andrij Babiš, they founded the "Patriots for Europe" faction in the European Parliament.
After the election victory in September, Austria initially formed a bulwark against Kickl's party. "Nobody wants you," Christian Stocker, the then secretary general of the Austrian People's Party, told parliament. Over the weekend, however, Stocker was named the official successor to the previous party leader, Nehammer. He announced that he was now willing to negotiate a joint government with the Freedom Party.