Austrian Far Right Party Expels ‘Nazi’ Member
Austria’s anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) expelled one of its officials in Tyrol province over reports that he had displayed Nazi paraphernalia in the back of his pharmacy, a party spokesman said on Wednesday.
The FPO, which is fighting with the Social Democrats for the second place in parliamentary elections on Oct. 15, has on previous occasions expelled provincial officials for owning Nazi-related objects, which is illegal in Austria.
In Germany’s election on Sunday, the FPO’s sister party AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote, becoming the third-largest group in parliament and the first from the far right to win seats in the Bundestag since the 1950s. Austria’s FPO is poised to become kingmaker as a junior coalition party, with conservative front-runner Sebastian Kurz expected to gain around a third of the vote with his tough rhetoric on fighting immigration and Islamic “parallel societies.”
Martin Hochstoeger stepped back from his post as a member of the FPO Tyrol party executive after pictures were spread in Austrian media of a marble slate engraved with a quote by Adolf Hitler, a swastika and a tally of a local vote in 1938 favoring Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
