Austrian voters on Sunday defeated the bid of Norbert Hofer, the candidate for the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) for president and instead elected the independent candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, as new head of state.
Hofer, of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam FPÖ, sought to become Europe's first freely elected far-right head of state since World War II but conceded defeat soon after polls closed. Van der Bellen called the result a vote for a "pro-European" Austria based on "freedom, equality and solidarity". The office of president is a largely ceremonial post in Austria.
The second-round run-off election was held following irregularities in an election in May, when Hofer garnered May 49.7 percent of the vote, narrowly losing to Van der Bellen.
In Paris, several hundred Jews applauded and cheered upon hearing of Hofer’s loss during a debate at the annual convention of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities. Christine Ockrent, a well-known journalist, prefaced her announcement during the event’s main debate on the global effects of the US presidential elections with the words: “I have good news.”
Many Austrian Jews warned Hofer’s popularity might lead the far-right in Europe to a significant victory.
The head of the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG), Oskar Deutsch, on Monday welcomed the result and congratulated Van der Bellen. Deutsch said that for the first time, the IKG had been compelled to issue an endorsement prior to the election, in favor of Van der Bellen.
The Jewish community in Austria was decimated by the Holocaust. Some 65,000 to 70,000 Austrian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. In the mid-1930s, around 200,000 Jews lived in Austria, while the current estimate stands at around 15,000.
The FPÖ, allied with other right-wing political parties in Europe such as Marine le Pen's Front National and Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), expresses pan-Germany sentiments and, as late as the 1990s, still backed some of Adolf Hitler's labor policies.
Although the party has attempted to distance itself from its anti-Semitic past, some Austrians have expressed concerns about the party's stance on immigration and Islam, for example, which Hofer says has "no place in Austria".
