The new Austrian government will brand itself as moderate - but don`t believe it | Cas Mudde
(The Guardian Austria)

Sebastian Kurz may change the drift of his party and government, and rebrand them as `centrist´, but it mainly illustrates how rightwing the Austrian and European center have becomeThe Austrian parliament is in disarray. After a scandal within the populist radical right Freedom party (FPÖ), the FPÖ´s coalition government with the conservative People´s party collapsed. New elections were held, which led to a mass exodus of Freedom party voters to the People´s party (ÖVP). When the Freedom party first entered the government in 2000, other EU member states confronted Austria with a boycott. That feels like a long time ago; when the Freedom party returned in 2017, radical right parties were in government in Hungary and Poland, and radical right policies were no longer at the fringes of European politics.Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His latest book is The Far Right Today Continue reading...