According to the final tally, Austria’s sovereignist Freedom Party (FPÖ) won the parliamentary election with 29.1 percent of the vote, a historic gain of 13 percentage points. FPÖ is the only genuine “opposition party” in Austria’s immigrant-friendly, pro-LGBTQ, anti-family, pro-EU political oligopoly. For the first time, FPÖ came in first place, which is a truly historic milestone.

Despite this stunning first-place finish for Austria’s populist right, a coalition of the losing left-wing parties will band together to ignore the popular will and keep FPÖ from power. FPÖ and its leader, Herbert Kickl, will be treated as threats to “democracy.”

Everyone on the political right across the Western world now uses a political party’s stance on immigration and family values as a litmus test. Any party that fails to stand for these values doesn’t deserve support. That the mainstream media machine routinely describes FPÖ’s stance on immigration and family values  as “extreme right,” “radical right,” and “far-right” indicates that the party is sound.

In fact, FPÖ is no more extreme than Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, or the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in Germany. Its message is simple: Austria for the Austrians, no immigrant deluge, and no transgenderism or other “-ism.”

Austria’s “center-right” People’s Party (ÖVP), the equivalent of the NeverTrump wing of the America’s Republican Party, came second with 26.5 percent of the vote, a loss of 1 percentage points. This was the ÖVP’s worst showing ever.

The leading party of Austria’s left, the Social-Democrats (SPÖ), also logged a worst-ever result, slipping to 21.1 percent of the vote and finishing in third place for the first time in Austria’s post-war history. The Greens only achieved 8 percent of the vote, losing 5.9 percent of the vote, and falling behind the equally bad left-liberal Neos party, which took 9 percent.

Predictably enough, all of these parties had rejected any deal with the FPÖ in advance of the vote—following the German anti-AfD model, in which the right-wing populist parties are considered threats to democracy. Equally predictable, a coalition of losers is emerging as we speak. ÖVP and SPÖ together only achieved 47.6 percent, but this is enough for an absolute majority of seats in the Vienna National Council.

In the likely alliance with the Neos, the majority against the Freedom Party would be even clearer. The Austrian media machine gloatingly predicts a “sweetheart coalition,” alluding to the future tripartite coalition’s color symbols of turquoise, red, and pink. That alliance could also be fortified with the diminished Greens.

The establishment will claim otherwise, but the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) nevertheless can celebrate a sensational election victory. It scored double-digit numbers and became the strongest force in the country for the first time. In a normal democracy, on this score the winning party’s top candidate would be asked to form a government. But Austria is not a normal democracy, just as Germany and France are not normal democracies. It is a “Western” democracy.

The will of the people suggests that FPÖ federal party leader Herbert Kickl should take the reins of government, but that will not happen. The arguments against a Chancellor Kickl are as arrogant as they are mendacious. The defeated ÖVP Chief Karl Nehammer raged about Kickl the “conspiracy theorist” mainly because Kickl systematically demolished the government’s rationale for an insanely authoritarian COVID regime, including mandatory vaccinations and totalitarian lockdowns.

Worse still, Kickl is a “populist” and therefore he must not be allowed to endanger “our Democracy”—an phrase now used by leftists across the Western world. The fact that the people voted for him, that he won the election, is immaterial. His inauguration would be the wrong outcome—and in today’s collective West the election process exists merely to produce the right results, those preordained by Nehammer and his ilk.

Born in 1968 in the southern province of Carinthia, Kickl grew up in modest circumstances. He studied journalism, then philosophy and history at the University of Vienna, but he never graduated. In the early 1990s, during Jörg Haider’s tenure as FPÖ leader, Kickl began his career as a speechwriter and ideas man. This made him influential in shaping the party’s positions and tone in political discourse. He played a key role in turning the FPÖ from a marginalized opposition party into a strong and enduring force. His rhetorical quick-wittedness and his ability to get to the point on complex issues quickly made him indispensable.

Under Heinz-Christian Strache, Kickl was appointed FPÖ general secretary, which gave him considerable influence on the party’s strategic direction. His criticism of the EU and immigration, and his call for reaffirmed national sovereignty, resonated.

One of the high points of his political career so far was his appointment as interior minister in the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition from 2017 to 2019. In this role, Kickl took a hard line on immigration policy and internal security. His view that “The law must follow politics, not politics the law” was controversial but sound: it embodied the necessity to resist Austria’s dysfunctional immigration system. He tightened the conditions for asylum seekers and advocated greater surveillance of certain groups, mostly Muslims.

In 2019, Kickl was dismissed from the cabinet by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. This led to a deep rift between Kickl and the center-right ÖVP, which continues to this day. He took over the party chairmanship in 2021 and initiated a new course: to sharpen the FPÖ image as the most consistent anti-establishment force in Austria.

Kickl accepts his role as a provocateur with a certain pride. He increasingly focuses on various issues of social and economic justice for the native population. At the same time, he insists that, far from being a threat, he is a defender of civil liberties, which are threatened by the all-powerful state. His rhetorical skills and popularity within the party make him a key figure who will shape the political climate and tone in Austria for many years to come.

Kickl wondered aloud on election night how the ÖVP and SPÖ “feel about democracy.” He knows the answer: they despise it. The FPÖ leader said that “our hand is outstretched in all directions,” but nobody will shake it. Austria’s Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen (a Green) has already indicated that, for him, the “beauty of the constitution” means keeping the FPÖ out.

Chancellor Nehammer will remain head of government and he’ll mendaciously claim that he’s been given a mandate to do so by the voters. Of course, President Van der Bellen will break with the tradition of giving the strongest party the mandate to form a government. The bad people will prevail in Austria, for now, just as they still prevail north of the Alps and west of the Rhine. They will continue to lose votes, however, because their policies are manifestly disastrous for Austria’s identity and security, and they can’t turn millions of immigrants into voters, U.S. style.

It is noteworthy that the core of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire is emerging as a solid bulwark, an axis of resistance to thedictates from Brussels. Hungary’s Orbán and Slovakia’s Fico (who has miraculously recovered from the multiple wounds suffered in an assassination attempt) now have solid allies in Austria, the core of the old Empire.

Even the ever-so-enlightened Bohemia is soon likely to join the ranks. The main Czech opposition group, led by former “populist” Prime Minister Andrej Babis, won an election on Sept. 28 for one-third of the seats in the country’s upper house, the Senate. The result is a huge boost for Babis ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections. His Ano is the most popular party in the country, and it is favored to win that vote by a clear margin.

It is interesting how old identities, and old loyalties still manage to reassert themselves. The electoral map of today’s Germany clearly indicates that the German Democratic Republic (DDR) of yore, for all its Communist drabness, did not manage to extinguish the national spirit among its denizens—the feat astonishingly achieved in the Federal Republic west of the Elbe.

The spirit of the Habsburg Monarchy, with its respect for the supposedly antiquated local polities and traditions, likewise still lives in the hearts and minds of some tens of millions of Austrians, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Czechs. The beast of Brussels may have hoped to defeat them in detail, but it will find the task impossible, if and when they form a solid bloc of resistance.