At a beer-fueled meeting of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party this week, members of parliament referred to Afghan refugees as “knife-wielding sex offenders” and to the EU’s “repression of speech”, hidden camera footage has revealed.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has sought to allay fears over its extremism, with its leader, Herbert Kickl, in pole position to become chancellor and the party in coalition negotiations with the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) following Karl Nehammer’s resignation earlier this month.
But elected officials within the FPÖ express views that remain anything but moderate, a recording obtained by the Austrian newspaper Der Standard from French journalists of France Televisions shows.
Infiltrating a local party meeting at a local pub in the Vienna district of Simmering, a team of French journalists recorded the FPÖ members of parliament Harald Stefan and Markus Tschank launching tirades on issues from the EU and migration to human rights and their coalition partners.
In a rebuke of Brussels, Stefan said that “the EU has become something insane – we should really leave, but it’s not an option – the surveillance, the repression of freedom of speech…”
The video also includes words of praise for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, with Stefan suggesting that Austria pays them for the return of migrants and asylum seekers.
“I don’t feel like giving [the Taliban] a single cent – but I think it’s worth it. Every one of these knife-wielding sex offenders that leaves our country is worth a lot of money” said Stefan. “I’d be happy to pay taxes for that.”
The video also shows Tschank detailing his preferred plan to deal with migrants: “We have to go into a sort of cultural struggle – if that doesn’t work, load them on a military plane and bye. You’ll be gone so fast, you won’t see it happen.”
“We have always said – it has to be as unpleasant as possible for these people – then they’ll stop coming,” he added.
The video also risks undermining the FPÖ’s ongoing government formation talks with the ÖVP – with the far right party needing to explain why a senior member has been privately slandering their would-be coalition partners.
The two parties have previously governed together before in 2000 and 2017, but after the last government spectacularly imploded in the so-called Ibiza affair, the ÖVP under Nehammer had ruled out working with the FPÖ again.
Tschank expresses clear views in the video about who they would be working with – a “pitiful” party, “horny for power,” which “actually belongs banned from government.”
[Edited by Owen Morgan]