Austria

The project on Austria investigated the history of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) since the mid-1960s as the story of an epistemic community, united by shared aims, beliefs, and values. Founded by ‘former’ national Socialists in 1956, the party’s politics and practices were rooted in National Socialist ideology, imbued with narratives of victimhood and resistance against the postwar democratic consensus. The project analyzed the FPÖ’s transformation from a marginalized lobbying group for ‘former’ National Socialists into the far-right populist mainstream force it is today. 

Drawing on archival research and oral history interviews, the project examined how the FPÖ adapted to societal changes while maintaining its roots in far-right ideology, counter-memories, and a fundamental resistance habitus. It explored how the FPÖ navigated the contradictory tension between actively participating in and rejecting the postwar democratic consensus in Austria and Europe. 

The central finding of the project was that far-right politicians expressed this through an idiosyncratic understanding of normative values, such as freedom, democracy, and rule of law. By treating the FPÖ as a case study of postwar European far-right politics, the project also found that far-right movements redefine values like ‘freedom’ and ‘fundamental rights’ to legitimize their presence and contest liberal democracy from within. The FPÖ’s narratives of identity, resistance, and victimhood expose the far-right’s capacity to thrive within—and challenge—the democratic consensus. The project situated the FPÖ within broader discussions on the far right, memory politics, and the contested nature of democracy, offering fresh perspectives on postwar European history and political extremism.The findings will be published in a monograph.

Jeitler, Constanze. The Freedom They Mean: History, Ideology, and Memory of the Austrian Freedom Party. Routledge, forthcoming winter 2026-27.

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