David Albrich

In December 2017 the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) formed a coalition government with the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). This was a real shock to anti-fascists around the world. An international call to boycott Austria’s new cabinet, first published in the French newspaper Le Monde, rightly labelled the junior partner FPÖ as the “heirs of Nazism”. Like many others, the author of the article understands the FPÖ to be a fascist party. But the Freedom Party, and, more generally, those new fascist parties that mask their politics (sometimes termed “Euro-fascist” parties), such as the Front National (now Rassemblement National) in France, do not fit precisely into the classic definition of fascism—whether the brilliant analysis of fascism by Leon Trotsky or those developed by other political traditions.

This article deals with a fascist party that got into government at a time when the creation of a fascist dictatorship, or even the formation of an SA type street fighting movement, appears impossible. I argue that masked fascist parties are more dangerous than open fascists and call their strategy of hiding their fascist project and preparing the political ground for a fascist street-wing “fascism in peace time”. The article seeks to generalise from the Austrian experience and draw some conclusions for the development of anti-fascist theory and strategy internationally today.

From: International Socialism 2019 issue 161

Editor: Wang Yi