Austria’s accidental hard-right leader
A new biography portrays the rise to the top of an obscure man
“If a party is a boat then I prefer to be in the engine-room rather than at the captain’s dinner.” Thus spoke Herbert Kickl when Heinz-Christian Strache was still boss of Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party (fpö), according to “Kickl and the Destruction of Europe”, a new biography that will be published (in German) on April 15th. Lacking in charm, Mr Kickl was always meant to be the machinist rather than the captain. “I think he is still sometimes surprised to be the leader of the fpö,” says Robert Treichler, one of the two authors (the other is Gernot Bauer, also a journalist at Profil, an Austrian weekly).
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The machinist who became captain”
Europe April 13th 2024
From the April 13th 2024 edition
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