“Define far-right for me, please”: Marlene Svazek’s debate over political labels

A discussion billed around the AfD’s success in Saxony-Anhalt quickly became a debate about Austria’s FPÖ, political labels and the limits of the term “right-wing.”

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This ‘far-right’ has become a fashionable term.

The ORF programme’s opening question asked whether the right should enter government or be excluded. Moderator Susanne Schnabl noted that the AfD had no coalition partner in sight and drew a parallel with FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl: first on election night, but with no government in prospect.

Marlene Svazek, the FPÖ’s deputy leader, rejected what she saw as the casual merging of different political categories. “This ‘far-right’ has become a fashionable term,” she said, arguing that right-wing, radical-right, right-wing populist and far-right positions were increasingly treated as the same. She then asked Schnabl: “Please define for me: what is far-right?”

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Please define for me: what is far-right?

The moderator pointed to the German domestic intelligence service’s classification of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as far-right extremist. ÖVP parliamentary leader Ernst Gödl said he regarded the AfD and the FPÖ under Kickl as a security risk, although he opposed political exclusion walls. He said the FPÖ itself had never been called far-right, but that the environment around it was, citing the Identitarian movement.

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The FPÖ has never been described as far-right by us.

Gödl referred to people speaking about “Aryan bones,” facial measurements and “racial defilement,” but Svazek interrupted him. The exchange grew heated. Svazek said Kickl had distanced himself from the Identitarians, which Gödl dismissed as a false claim. She described the group as simply “an activist group” and said she understood that it had dissolved. The programme eventually tried to return to the AfD, but the participants preferred discussing their own parties and the possibility of a coalition with the FPÖ.

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An activist group.