Ep.135: Philosemitism and Herbert Kickl

0:03 The hearing room at the European Parliament in Strasbourg was filling up fast. And by the time a severe-looking man with salt and pepper hair and thick-rimmed glasses switched on his microphone, you could hear a pin drop. Herbert Kickel, who leads an Austrian party founded by a former Nazi SS officer in the 1950s, and who authored an anti-Semitic slur at the turn of this century, and who refused to collectively condemn SS members a decade later, was about to acknowledge the Holocaust.

1:17 Indeed, Kickel has long been associated with trivializing the horrors of the Nazi era. Just two years ago, he took to calling himself a future Volkskanzler, or People's Chancellor, a term used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler. Even so, what Kickel said on September 16th was robustly pro-Israel enough for the country's foreign minister, Gideon Tsar, to announce the opening of a dialogue that could normalize relations between Israel and the FPO.

1:49 Tsar was not there in person, but a key advisor from Benjamin Netanyahu's Liquid Party, as well as a prominent member of the Knesset, were in attendance. Packing out the rest of the room were scores of MEPs and their assistants, from the Patriots, a far-right umbrella group at the European Parliament, co-founded by Kickel, that's now the third largest in the chamber.

2:13 Among Kickel's overtures were condemnation of Hamas's October 7th attack, and also, importantly, accepting Israel's preferred definition of antisemitism, and then promising to carry that definition forwards as a future Chancellor of Austria. That's a job Kickel nearly won two years ago, and his party is still topping the polls.

3:39 The title of the event, Islamism and Antisemitism, was somewhat oblique. Even so, Kickle leaned heavily into that theme too, spending much of his nearly 30-minute speech inveying against followers of Islam seeking to influence political systems in Europe. And as for EU aid to the Palestinians, that, said Kickle, was, quote, a stain on the history of the European Union.

4:56 Kickle was careful to add that he was making no blanket judgment about Muslims. But there's an obvious dissonance when you almost apologize for the Holocaust while simultaneously taking aim at another religion as a cause for Europe's ills. His approach can only have sharpened concerns among as many critics that he praises Jews chiefly as symbolic allies against other outgroups, like Muslims, and that he admires Israel mainly because it's an ethnically defined state.

5:28 In reality, of course, Arab citizens of Israel make up a fifth of the population, and they could even help decide the outcome of upcoming elections. To get a sharp take on the strategic positioning of Herbert Kickle, what he signals for the broader European far right, and to discuss the degree to which dangerously bigoted leopards really change their spots, I spoke with Farid Hafez.

5:54 Farid is a senior research fellow at the Bridge Initiative Project on Islamophobia at Georgetown University in Washington, as well as an assistant professor at the University of Limerick. Farid's latest book is titled Governing Islam in Austria and Germany, From Colonial Times to the Present, published by Oxford University Press, and he's written extensively on the shift by formerly openly anti-Semitic parties to Islamophobia as a means to gain mainstream acceptance.

6:25 We talk about this new love that Europe's far right expresses for Israel as a form of phyllo-semitism. It's a term that denotes a particular admiration for the Jewish people, but that same admiration can also be exaggerated and become highly problematic. Not least because antisemitism itself often rests on stereotypes.

6:46 Stereotypes that can in turn be weaponized against Jews. Farid, can you tell me a little bit about the history of the European far right reaching out to the Israeli hard right and far right? You know, how old or new is this phenomenon?

7:40 First of all, after the immediate end of the Second World War, most of these political parties on the far right were super marginal. There was no possibility for them that these political parties could be any time successful soon. And it really took them 40 years plus in order to regain some of the respectability.

8:04 And a lot of that is tied to the very question we are discussing today, which is anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Again and again, you would find some media would make some report on that that these people were still deeply anti-Semitic in their roots. A lot of these political leaders were seen as being too much intertwined and entangled with the old Nazi or fascist guards.

8:30 And therefore, there had to be a generational shift. And hand in hand with that generational shift, there came also a new ideological positioning. And this is exactly what we see at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s. With a growing anti-Muslim racism and the diminishing of anti-Semitism in the public sphere, there was this idea that, okay, let's reposition us as being against Muslims, as safeguarders of the Jews.

9:02 And that idea actually did not come originally from the far right. And who is that? Pimfotin in the Netherlands, who wrote in the early 1990s a book against Islamization of Europe.

9:27 Close the borders. Holland is full. But his extreme views had marked him.

9:34 As Fortown is heading to his car, Volkert Vandergraaf walks past him. He turns around and shoots him in the back and the head.

10:13 So there was a sort of like a progressive, almost pro-feminist, pro-liberal sort of discourse that he had entertained, and that I see then the far right having co-opted by the end of the 1990s, early 2000s. And that really comes into play then after 9-11 happens, after Islam becomes a much more salient issue in the public sphere.

10:38 And what about Austria?

10:41 Austria specifically.

10:42 Well, the far far right in Austria, the very first political party to uh gain power in what was then the EU-15 member states. Back then, the very reaction of the other 14 member states of the European Union was let's boycott them.

10:59 Complete shock. Yeah. Complete shock.

11:01 Yeah, complete shock. This is a no-go. We can't have a party that was established by former Nazis. We cannot allow them, Jörg Haider in Austria, to form a government in the European Union. So there was a boycott that lasted for 10 months or so.

11:19 A leader of Austria's far right, Jörg Haider, drew widespread outrage from within Austria and the rest of Europe, which imposed months of sanctions against the Austrian government. Europe's condemnation of the Freedom Party's success has merely increased popularity.

11:41 I'm hopeful that in a few weeks the situation becomes calm and uh the Israeli government will change his opinion and we will be good friends in the future.

11:55 One of the things Jörg Haider said to Strache is Heinz Christian Strache, his successor, if the Jews accept us, we're not gonna have any problem. So there is an interesting anti-Semitic core that is still operating, which is like there is this all-powerful Jewish world control, and if we are gonna be accepted by the Jews, then we're gonna be able to form governments, we're gonna be accepted by the global community.

12:23 So the anti-Semitism is still really there, but in a different Philo-Semitic expression.

12:30 So many questions there, but let me keep it simple. Why does the rapprochement between the European hard right and Israeli hardliners seem to have been really intensifying in in recent years?

12:45 So there is a couple of reasons for that. Uh first of all, I would say there is an ideology to reproachment. And the far right is largely presenting itself as the protector against uh the so-called Islamization of Europe, this conspiracy theory that Muslims are taking over Europe. All right. And with Israel presenting itself as the only democracy in the Middle East full of wild barbarian Muslim terrorists, they're basically doing the same.

13:14 And there is an interesting example for that in 2010, when the first official far-right delegation visited Israel. Back then, still not welcomed by the high echelons of the Israeli political elite, but only by you know more marginal MKs, uh, members of the Knesset. Back then, they were uh drafting what was called the Jerusalem Declaration.

13:38 So, this Jerusalem Declaration, what it said was that we are fighting the same fight, and Israel is basically at the border of what they would conceive as Europe to fight against Islamic terrorism. The other thing is, specifically now, after uh October 7th, and after the genocide and the repercussions for Israel on the global scale, which is like diplomatically, they they are outsiders now.

14:05 So any kind of what they also see as a growing far-right support in Europe is a potential win for the future for the state of Israel.

14:15 And who was in that Jerusalem, uh that 2010 Jerusalem Declaration? Was that a general uh group?

14:23 No, uh there were uh members of the Sweden Democrats, the Freedom Party of Austria. Back then, when the AFD was not in existence yet, there were a couple of regional far-right political parties in Germany that participated, and also the Vlaams Belang from Belgium participated. Very extreme parties, yeah.

14:44 Oh, yeah, those are like all the you know, former Nazi origin political parties that today have become very successful coalition partners in many instances.

14:56 So there are a few different takes on, you know, why this is happening. I'll try and do some brush strokes here, but some commentators emphasize how much this is about Europe's neo-Nazis seeking to whitewash their fascistic and anti-Semitic past by obtaining a stamp of approval from Israelis in return for their support for basically a greater Israel.

15:19 And then there are takes that include ideas around imported anti-Semitism, that that concept. It's that latter take that sort of, if I'm not wrong, links with your emphasis on Islamophobia as a common ground for building pan-European right-wing unity, or I think what you call Islamophobic populism. Can you sort of take me through your thinking on that?

15:46 Sure, absolutely. And you know, I think both both of these arguments are very true in their own ways, right? I mean, the the idea that it's not anymore the Nazis or the former Nazis um or the white population, basically, but it's kind of the immigrants who are the new anti-Semites. That is a very convenient thinking, right?

16:08 Because it puts the burden on the Holocaust commemoration. And everything that white Europe did in the past puts it on the shoulders of the new immigrants.

16:19 And that's in a nutshell the imported anti-Semitism. I mean, just to unpack that term, these are the relatively recent arrivals in Europe who are now bearing the guilt of putative anti-Semitism.

16:35 Absolutely. And this is what what I call victim rehearsal. You argue that you have, while you have been the perpetrator, or your fathers and mothers have been the perpetrators a generation before, you now put all the blame on the new arrivals, the new immigrants, make them the new anti-Semites, and kind of ignore whatever happened.

16:56 And you know, to give you a very good uh example for that, when in 2010 this delegation of far-right folks visited Israel, one of the things that Andreas Mölzer back in those days said, and he was an a member of the European Parliament for the uh Austrian Freedom Party, he said, yeah, you know, we had anti-Semitism in the 19th century, we have anti-Semitism now, and that was it.

17:22 So he basically skipped over the 20th century, the Nazi period. And I think what is happening currently is a little bit different because when Herbert Herbert Kickel uh gave this speech in Strasbourg, what he said is we have to come to terms with anti-Semitism in the Nazi period. So that that is a shift.

17:44 That did not happen 15 years ago. So so I I I see something and I I give all of that credit in the sense. I don't believe that they, you know, they let loose of anti-Semitism, certainly not. And you know, one of the studies and research that I did a lot of times was trying to understand, specifically in the Austrian context where I'm originally from, how does the anti-Semitism a hundred years ago compare to the Islamophobia of today?

18:13 And sometimes it's almost like the literal uh reproduction that you could just exchange the words Jews and Muslims, but you have the same structure, the same pattern of exclusion. It seems almost as one anti-Semitism scholar Morsha Zuckerman once put it like that. He said, It's almost like you cannot be anti-Semitic anymore.

18:38 That's why you basically are Islamophobic, but in this exact same way as you were anti-Semitic. And just to give you one simple example for that, one of the slogans for one of the election campaigns of the far right in Austria was uh Vienna shall not become Istanbul. Now, 120 years before it was Vienna shall not become Jerusalem, and it was basically about the Jews.

19:03 So there there is so many similarities, and this is just like one superficial example that I can give you where you can clearly see that the Islamophobia of today is almost like the anti-Semitism 100 years ago. Uh now they serve a different function in that specific political context, but they are actually very similar.

19:24 So difficult question. I don't ask this to be flippant or anything, but you know, how much might the phylosemitism that we're seeing today still be linked with a logic of displacement of Jews from Europe?

19:38 Yeah. And here you could obviously um, you know, come up with uh almost a historical analogy, because that's certainly also what the Nazi system itself did, right? It it was enabling also Jewish exodus to what was then Palestine, right?

19:56 In the early days of Nazism, we had this warped fascination with Zionism that we saw, for example, in the ideas of Adolf Eichmann.

20:11 April 1961. A Nazi colonel named Adolf Eichmann stood trial in Israel for his part in the Holocaust during the period 1939 to 1945, caused the killing of millions of Jews.

20:25 But Eichmann, who before the Holocaust viewed the creation of a Jewish homeland as the ideal tool to achieve the Nazi goal of making Europe free of Jews.

20:35 You know, he's not an ordinary criminal. He found himself thinking that he had something in common with other idealists like other Zionists, and that he was working towards a common goal with them. The first solution that the Nazis came up to to the Jewish problem was expulsion. Now, on the one hand, a Nazi who's helping Jews to get out of Germany by stripping them of their money and forcing them out is not the same as a Zionist who's trying to get the Jews out, right?

21:05 That's it's there's a grotesque stupidity, banality to such an idea.

21:14 What one always has to keep in mind that in terms of the contemporary uh racial ideology that the the so-called new right supports is what is called ethno-pluralism, which means that there is to some extent a respect for plurality of peoples, of religions, whatever, but it is only as long respected as there is no intermingling between the peoples.

21:40 So the idea that there can be a Jewish nation state in itself fits pretty much into this ethno pluralist racist thinking. Uh, and even to have Muslims living in Muslim countries fits well into that, which allows then, you know, far right delegations go to other places. Like meeting the Taliban in Afghanistan, etc., because deeply within their ideological commitment, it's fine that other people rule over other territories as long as they don't mix up with the Western white nations, as long as the Western world is racially pure in the sense of a white Christian, pagan, whatever kind of identity.

22:25 And to that point about ethno-pluralism and the idea that different peoples are fine as long as they're in their own, quotes, homelands. I mean, to what degree do you think that that's really what the FPO thinks about not only Muslims today, but also Jews?

22:44 I mean, it's difficult to say. I mean, I haven't done any kind of in-depth interview in the recent past. And I'm fully aware that there's also contestation around the recognition of Israel. Because we should all not also not forget that up until the 1990s, uh, a lot of far-right uh uh parties were, because of their anti-Americanism, also against Israel, right?

23:10 Because they saw it as part uh and an extension of uh the American superpower. And I think one of the things that that are important here to keep in mind is a lot of that what happened within the last two decades was also possible because there was a shift within the American domestic politics. Uh, think of, for instance, uh, you know, no Republican Party official 20 years ago or during the days of Jörg Haydn when he came to power would ever have been sitting with these folks.

23:46 And now we have those leaders of the far right going to the uh um uh uh you know the AFD being invited to the White House.

23:57 Yeah, and being in officially endorsed by members of the Trump administration.

24:04 Yeah, and far right leaders going to the inauguration, and so on and so forth. So the the landscape has so dramatically changed in the United States that that is, I think, also one of the key explanatory factors that uh lets us understand why we are where we are today. Yeah.

24:23 And what about Herbert Kickel, this leader of the FPO, the Austrian far-right party? He's the fellow who was speaking at the European Parliament in September. And I should say that Kickel and the FPO are the front runners whereby there could be an FPA chancellor in the form of Herbert Kickel. I mean, this is astonishing.

24:50 It's astonishing, and I think uh a lot of the blame uh should also be put on actually what used to be the center of Austrian politics, uh foremost the center right, but also the center left, in the sense of having co-opted a lot of the policy claims of the far right, um, and at the end of the day, the voter won't go to the one who copied a policy claim, but to the originator.

25:17 And this is, I think, what we are seeing.

25:20 One thing about Kickel is that he is notorious for this anti-Semitic incident in 2001, where he was the speechwriter for the former FPO leader uh Jörg Haider.

25:33 So Herbert Kickel, prior to becoming the new chairman of the Freedom Party in Austria, was famous or infamous for being the speechwriter of Jörg Haider, who was largely seen as a rhetorical genius. And in that sense, uh the rhetoric genius behind him was actually Herbert Kickert. Uh, even though, I mean, uh, Jörg Haider was in many ways um a very intelligent person, you know, a legal scholar, and and very well trained, and so in many ways, a professional.

26:05 But Herbert Kickel wrote this one speech uh where Jörg Haider then said during the so-called Asher Mitruch uh speech that he gave uh how can somebody be called Ariel if he has so many uh um I'm searching for the for the English word now.

26:22 I actually have the quote in front of me where Jörg Haider attacks Ariel Musikant, the then president of the Jewish community of Vienna, with this kind of crude play on words involving the laundry detergent Ariel. Quote, I do not understand at all how someone named Ariel can have so much dirt on his hands.

26:43 End of quote. And later on, Musikant compared Kickel to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and and Haider was barred by a court from repeating that slur. So just a quarter century ago, Herbert Kickel, this future potential chancellor of Austria, writing this stuff.

27:06 Yeah. And it's a perfect example by attacking uh a very prominent figure. He was, I think, for almost one and a half decades the president of the Jewish community, Avil Nusikant. It it really uh shows you that anti-Semitic anti-Semitism is very central to the general ideology that you have within that political party.

27:29 I would even go so far, uh, you know, as someone who has grown up in Austria, to say it's even much more spread than within the far right. Um and you I could also give you examples of the center right, where political members more behind the scene are speaking similarly like that, and where there is not really any repercussion.

27:51 Just to go back a few weeks, among the latest steps by Kiekel is to have pledged that his party will adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Now, IHRA stands for International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which is this multinational body on Holocaust education and combating anti-Semitism. Austria actually adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in 2017.

28:26 It even includes examples to help you call out hate when you see it. Some people argue such a definition would be a violation of the right to free speech. It is not.

28:47 A definition that is widely used to stifle criticism of the state of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights. And then there are the 11 examples. Seven of these examples refer to the state of Israel, and they define specific speech regarding Israel as anti-Semitic.

29:05 In any case, Farid, what do you see specifically as the goals of Kickel and the FPO here in embracing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism?

29:17 I think it's symbolically very important, especially post-2023. And that might be the reason also why they are re-embracing it so symbolically in Strasbourg as part of the Patriots for Europe delegation, where Likud now is also a member of the party in terms of having an observatory status. So embracing the IHRA definition, uh, given that it blurs the lines of what could be a legitimate critique of the policies of the state of Israel and what could be anti-Semitism, I think what that signals to the Israeli counterparts is to say that no matter what happens, we're gonna stand on your side and we're gonna use the IHRA definition tool also to silence critics.

30:05 Because what happens is that some of that anti-terrorism legislation goes after people in the name of them being anti-Semitic because of their critique of the state of Israel and its policies. So I think it is in that sense to be read as a hint to look, guys, if we are in power, we're gonna be defenders of Israel no matter what.

30:30 So what is Kickle up to here in terms of his electability? Is there is there a play?

30:39 Yeah, I think so, because you know, as of last year, the official state of Israel uh would not have diplomatic ties to the FBA. So if that happens in this year, that's gonna change the position of the FBA on a global stage a lot. And that makes him actually in the long run electable for many people. Because then uh let's say the conservative folks can say, uh, yeah, we know Kikel is really a bad guy and he has done awful things, but look, he has really improved, and this is why we can have joined a coalition this time, because we can see they have made progress in really overcoming anti-Semitism.

31:22 That will be the narrative that they're gonna spin.

31:25 And so does it matter for Kikel if and and for the FPO and and what you've just laid out, if, for example, Gadi Eisencot in Israel and Yashar take power rather than Netanyahu and Lekud as the result of an election later this month.

31:42 Isencot is campaigning as the anti-bibi, bringing together figures from the right and the left to challenge Netanyahu. Eisencot is not campaigning on a radically different approach to the Palestinians. He supported Israel's military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq. He's called demands for a Palestinian state irrelevant.

32:04 So has Kickle locked in what he he needed to lock in?

32:08 I think he has done everything that was necessary on his side. Because at the end of the day, I think it's really not about likud or not likud. It's really about our alliance to the state of Israel to give a signal to the United States, to give a signal to the Israeli political establishment. And this, by extension, should mainstream them.

32:32 And that's actually something that the Secretary General of the far right of Sweden Democrats, Kent Ekaroth back then, had literally said. There was this uh sequence in where he was sitting in a circle with Israeli Knesset members, and he would say, your Jewish communities have to legitimize us in Europe.

32:53 All right? So again, the assumption is Israelis can help making the far right more mainstream in Europe. So that is the that that is the whole idea.

33:04 Farid, going back to the European Parliament, but in a slightly different context now, what in your view are the meaning and consequences of something else that has been happening? This Islamist entryism resolution that was approved in October. This resolution is broadly seen as relying on Islamophobic tropes and wrongfully targeting legitimate civil rights organizations without proof.

33:30 Yeah, I think what it was interesting to see was who voted for that resolution. It was tabled by the European People's Party, but it was really embraced by the Liberals, uh the other conservatives, and all the far-right factions, like Patriots for Europe and the nations of the sovereign nations. That in itself tells you something.

33:52 Everybody except of the Greens, the leftists, and the social democrats, were on board. So it tells you something about a divided Europe. Still, I mean, even though the resolution is not a legislation, it it has some weight. And what I see in the future happening is that a lot of governments where the far right and the center right, which is undistinguishable from the far right, are gonna be in power, they you're gonna use this resolution to say, look, we should do something about this, and let's go after this and that, and so on and so forth.

34:28 Now, the whole idea, which is even in the slogan that this resolution is against Islamist entryism, the whole idea of Islamist entryism has been invented and being used in a French context where the assumption is that Muslim civil society and anti-racist organizations are subverting uh the French society.

34:52 So it's highly conspiratory.

34:54 This is not a small improvised network.

34:58 The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in the 1920s and played a key role in the fight against British colonialism.

35:05 It's very well funded and knows how to speak our language.

35:09 In Algeria, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supported the war of independence against French forces.

35:14 They know how to frame their issues through the lenses to have languages palatable to Western audiences.

35:22 They remained the voice of opposition against monarchies, ultranationalist, and military dictatorships in the Arab world.

35:29 They will never openly speak about jihad and frame, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of religious terms.

35:36 In Palestine, during the first Intifada of 1987, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hames, was born.

35:43 They will use the language of post-colonial theory, oppression, apartheid, and so on, that they know how to camouflage their real goals.

35:53 But is this really about terrorism? Or is it about silencing the voice of opposition?

36:00 The idea is basically to exclude Muslims from civil society, engagement, and participation in policy-making processes, etc. The problem with that now is having such a resolution, you might not come to the point where, let's say, uh the Muslim Brotherhood is put on a list of designated terrorist organizations or the like, but it there is a momentum in having that resolution being passed.

36:28 And it's it's gonna increase the pressure that already exists on uh anti-racist and Muslim civil society actors. And I especially fear that this is kind of like an attempt to even crack down more on organizations that are already very much marginalized and excluded, like the European Network Against Racism, that was also explicitly mentioned in that resolution.

36:56 What I do hope is that the other factions uh within the European Parliament will double down in their support of defending the civil liberties of their citizenry, including people who are engaged in those civil society organizations that work on anti-Muslim racism, or who are Muslims and just want to speak for themselves.

37:18 And when you say going after people, this touches you in the sense that you have been investigated by Austrian authorities in the past, had your home inspected, and so on and so forth, and frequently mentioned in these uh conspiratorial assaults on the Muslim community in Europe. And I should also say that both you and the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University, where you're a senior researcher, are seen as problematic by key backers of this resolution because of significant funding for the Bridge Initiative from Qatar, a country that hosts Muslim Brotherhood Networks and figures, but is also a key US and European military and energy ally.

38:06 In any case, this resolution at the European Parliament seems designed in part to make any form of Muslim civic engagement inherently suspect. And I think that's kind of what you were explaining, right?

38:20 Yeah. And you know, I mean, again, uh, in regards to all these rumors that are being spread, etc., I I think a key aspect is also whatever work you do, I have never experienced any kind of interference from anyone, not a government, and so on and so forth. So we're doing our work. Uh what I find interesting in terms of the resolution is that this resolution explicitly mentions that they are against foreign influence coming from Turkey and Qatar, while at the very same time, everybody knows who knows anything about the topic that the currently the most foreign influence to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization comes from a different country.

39:04 But nobody will talk about the United Arab Emirates.

39:08 Right. Why would the UAE, a Muslim country, invest so much in demonizing Muslims that it supports the Islamophobic far right in Europe? The UAE appears to fear its youth interacting with practicing educated British and Western Muslims.

39:36 Because if you're really about, you know, stop foreign interference, then you should be serious about it and you should look at all the key players in that game who might be more than sympathetic to this very resolution are not mentioned, I think tells you something.

39:54 Let's also go to Austria itself and what we know about Kiekel's and the FPO's plans for Muslims and Islam in Austria. What are some of the specific policies that they have in mind that we know about that lead observers, many observers, to talk about surveillance, securitization, and re-migration?

40:21 In terms of the anti-Muslim policies, we currently have a very new legislation in place that was implemented just a month ago, which is the hijab ban for uh children in elementary and parts of secondary school until the age of 14. One of the arguments of why that hijab ban was necessary was because the hijab was basically framed as uh an expression of political Islam.

40:49 So, this is also how we see that you know the ostensible uh alleged fight against uh so-called political Islam is actually um uh a limitation of the religious practice of Muslims. Uh similar other previous legislation and measures such as like you know, uh closing mosques, police raids, etc., have all been legitimized by uh referencing this the battle against political Islam.

41:17 These are some of the things. Uh currently the the government is also talking about uh surveilling and controlling uh Islamic religious education in public schools, something that has been in place uh since 1981, and which they basically want to uh stricter control in the future, which obviously is very stands very much in contrast to other religious education by churches, especially the the most dominant one, the Catholic Church, but also minority churches and religious communities like the Protestants or uh the Jewish community or the like.

41:54 So Muslims in the current phase are going through a couple of different hardships and challenges as they see that their rights are being questioned as equal citizens, and as they are put under more surveillance. You know, sometimes people ask me, like, but don't they understand that if they act like that, the mistrust will grow?

42:17 And this is exactly what's gonna breed antipathy uh with the Austrian government. But I think they are very aware of that, and maybe that's also what they want. At one point, if somebody does something stupid, then they can double down in their crackdown on the Muslim community. So they are very ill-advised uh if the advisers are serious sincere, um, and they are very clever if this is exactly what they want.

42:45 What is the mood in the Muslim communities in in Austria when it comes to this threat of re-migration, which is the idea of repatriating up to millions of people who are regarded as being non-European to other parts of the world, yeah, outside of Europe, are the concerns about this becoming a reality if somebody like Akikel becomes the Chancellor of Austria at some point?

43:16 One of the important realities is already here. Uh, because if you go back to the initial uh speech that Martin Sellner gave in this secret meeting.

43:26 A secret meeting involving far-right activists, neo-Nazi sympathizers, and senior figures from Germany's right-wing AFT party took place at a hotel in Potsdam outside Berlin. Their mission to discuss the mass deportation of migrants, asylum seekers, and naturalized German citizens judged to have assimilated poorly to life in their new country.

43:50 Principal guest speaker, the notorious Austrian white supremacist Martin Zellner, invited to provide the group with the ideological heft and the means of imposing it.

44:03 He said, Martin Zellner, we cannot on legal grounds push Muslims out. So what we have to do is we have to create an environment in which they opt to leave Europe. So, in other words, you increase the pressure, they're gonna leave themselves without you having to re-migrate them as a kind of an active process.

44:30 And that is already happening. I mean, it's not happening on a mass scale, uh, but it's happening with those people who are more mobile, who are better educated, who can find um a different alternative life somewhere else in any centers of the global north. Uh, what would happen if more uh far-right political parties come to power?

44:52 I think it would become a serious issue. Uh, what the European Commission did with in terms of uh strickening border controls and border uh policies is already an indication of you know creating and recreating and stabilizing the frontier Europe on the one hand, and with resolutions like against Islamist entryism, these are also clear signs that it's gonna become uh much tougher for Muslims living in Europe to continue a life of uh based on equal citizenship.

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46:25 Thanks for listening.