(Bloomberg) -- Austrian far-right leader Herbert Kickl doubled down on the rhetoric that’s made his Freedom Party popular among many voters but alienated the political opponents he needs to form a coalition government.
In a 20-minute speech on Saturday, Kickl accused Austria’s conservative People’s Party and the Social Democrats of a “sinister and undemocratic show of force and a self-image characterized by great arrogance.”
The anti-immigrant Freedom Party won the most seats in Austria’s Sept. 29 national election, but is still well short of the majority needed to form a government. The People’s Party and the Social Democrats, who finished second and third respectively, received enough votes to form a government on their own or with a third party - freezing out Kickl.
At a meeting on Friday with President Alexander Van Der Bellen, the Austrian head of state whom Kickl has referred to as a “senile mummy,” the Freedom Pary demanded it lead the next government.
“I didn’t hide my assessment from him,” Kickl said during his speech on Saturday, which was streamed online from his party’s TV studio. “I would consider a coalition of the losers to be a deadly signal to voters. It would be nothing short of a slap in the face.”
The drama playing out in Austria is the latest example of the limits to derisive politics in consensus-based European democracies.
Parties in France and Germany this year have similarly formed alliances aimed at preventing rule by far-right parties that have gained in popularity but remain far short of the support needed to govern by themselves.
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