Fighting politically for your own side in Austria - and elsewhere

The Austrian political analyst Natascha Strobl gives her readers a good, succinct example of why it’s a good idea for pro-democracy political parties to fight for their own side.

She uses a relatively simple example from this summer, where the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) – part of the Trump- and Orbán-admiring set of parties that want to follow the Mussolini path. Some of them (France’s National Revival, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and the Liga in Italy (a junior member of the current ruling coalition) are admirers of Putin’s regime and are pro-Russian at the moment. Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, head of the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) party has spent her entire career on the neofascist spectrum of Italian politics. As a teenager, she became a member of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a direct successor party to Mussolini’s Fascist Party, which morphed into the National Alliance, and her current Brothers of Italy party is in the same neofascist tradition. But at the moment, she is anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine in foreign policy.

Meloni is reportedly a favorite of Trump’s. (Has anyone explained to him that she’s not Putinist in foreign policy?) And this far-right spectrum is very much encouraged by the Trump Administration.

I suppose here I should say the obvious, which is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with political parties identifying themselves with similar trends in other countries. The European Parliament is formally organized into political groups across national boundaries. The AfD is part of the Europe of Sovereign Nations group, the FPÖ is part of the Patriots for Europe group, and Meloni’s party is part of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party.

So what was the big danger to Aryan culture that the FPÖ was fretting about this summer?

It was, uh, deposit fees on plastic bottles.

It’s been normal for a long time in Austria to have deposit fees on glass bottles. It’s included in the price. And when the glass bottles are empty, people can bring them to store on their next shopping trip and get a refund. It’s part of the normal shopping routine. There are even convenient self-service machines to take the bottles and provide the refund. People are used to using them.

In 2025, Austria started charging deposit fees on some types of plastic bottles. The FPÖ decided this was some new deprivation of freedom coming from the Green barbarians. So they started bitching about it in their party publicity.

As Natascha Strobl explains, this particular piece of agitation fell flat.

So the scurrilous claim was publicized that the deposit fee costs families many hundred of euros per year. Someone didn't get the message that you have to return the bottles and then you get the money back. [Just like with glass bottles.]

Or scary claims were promoted that storage rooms are overflowing with stored cans and bottles. As if you couldn't return the deposit every time you made a purchase and you didn't have to hoard it at all.

The third horror scenario is that deposit-refunding machines fail, or you sometimes have to wait until the person in front of you has finished. In the world depicted by the FPÖ, this causes almost daily strains of several hours. (1)

All of it silly nonsense, of course, like most of the FPÖ’s positions on anything.

But Natascha’s main point is that the other parties, particular the Greens and the current governmental coalition parties - the ÖVP (Christian Democratic conservatives), the SPÖ (Social Democrats), and the Neos (European-style liberals) failed to take advantage of the chance to ridicule the silliness of the FPÖ’s theme and use it to remind everyone that the FPÖ “populists” prioritize policies to make the richest richer and to give them even more influence over the political system.

The FPÖ has been off-track all summer. It would have been a perfect opportunity for all democratic parties to exploit this weakness. Unfortunately, none of them even recognized the opportunity, let alone took advantage of it. That is the real drama of the rise of the FPÖ. Even if it is bad, it stays on top because the others are too afraid to take up the fight.

In other words, the democratic parties need to fight for their own side.

The same thing the Democratic base in the US has been especially eager since 2003 (the Iraq War) to see the Democrats do on a regular basis.

I asked ChatGPT to “create an image illustrating the idea of fighting for one’s own side.” I had to get it to do a few variations before it came up with this one that seems to fit the theme:

Which reminded me of the Steppenwolf song, “Monster”: (2)

Notes:

(1) Strobl, Natascha (2025): Die FPÖ ist nicht übermächtig, hat es jemand gemerkt? Moment 08/26/2025. <https://www.moment.at/story/fpoe-pfand-mythen-kampagne/> (Accessed: 2025-09-02). My translation to English.

(2) John Kay & Steppenwolf-Monster/Suicide/America. Beto de Leon /Corazon Concerts 04/0/2020 <https://youtu.be/F61y8J0U0n4?si=EKrCx3_ybbDaH7c3> (Accessed: 2025-09-02).