Austria Moving Right Again

AP: Austria set for rightward political turn after Sunday vote

The Freedom Party is strongly euroskeptic. And while it has long distanced itself from its Nazi roots, and its leader, Hans-Christian Strache, has dismissed his own links with neo-Nazi organizations as youthful folly, its presence in a government could present a new challenge to moderate EU governments shortly after Germany's anti-migrant and EU-critical AfD gained seats in the federal parliament for the first time.

Few saw it coming two years ago. Back then, the Social Democratic-People's Party coalition fervently backed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open border policy, as hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants flooded into Austria and beyond in their search for a better life in Europe's heartland. The two parties criticized the Freedom Party's call for closed borders and zero migration.

Anyone making predictions based on Socionomics saw it coming. At the time, I said Merkel's policy was almost perfectly wrong, indeed it may be impossible to make a policy more in contradiction with prevailing social mood. Allowing a migrant invasion of hostile foreigners at a time when the public is in a trend that could end with a total ban on immigration is insanity, unless your real goal is to ban immigration must faster than the social mood would otherwise allow.