Grieving attendees pay tribute with Nazi hymn at the funeral of a FPÖ political figure.
A video from Austrian media is creating a buzz just before their parliamentary election: It showcases a Nazi anthem being sung at the funeral of an FPO politician. The political parties express outrage.
In the run-up to Austria's parliamentary election, a tailpiece from the media stirred controversy. As per "Der Standard's" online release, members of the populist right-wing FPO attended the funeral of their former district councilor Walter Sucher on a Friday. A video shared by the newspaper depicts mourners surrounding a grave, singing a song that used to be popular among SS members during Nazi times - specifically, "Die heilige deutsche Reichswehr".
The video features draftspeople such as Harald Stefan and Martin Graf attending the ceremony.
The incident sparked intense criticism from various political spectrums. The Jewish Student Union JoH filed a complaint, among others, against the FPO politicians present.
Justice Minister Alma Zadic of the Greens labeled the FPO as "far-right." The conservative ÖVP criticized FPO leader Herbert Kickl for not objecting to such incidents, which they deemed as evidence of his "lack of objections towards right-wing extremists." The ÖVP encouraged voters to "unite the center" using their votes for the ÖVP on the election day, while Social Democratic SPO head Andreas Babler emphasized that the incident highlighted the inability of "building a country with such a party."
Despite the controversial context, the FPO, who could potentially emerge as the most prominent party for the first time at the Sunday election, insisted they had no hand in Sucher's private funeral arrangements. The FPO also criticized the political exploitation of the funeral as both "shameful and hypocritical."
Sucher had previously infuriated viewers in 2006 by concluding his speech at an FPO state party conference in Vienna with the Nazi salute "Heil." As recorded by the Austrian news agency APA, Sucher defended his performance by referencing the importance of preserving German "Volkstum." Furthermore, he defended the performance of "Wenn alle untreu werden," which was also sung at his funeral.
Austria is slated to hold a new parliamentary election on Sunday. In the most recent opinion polls, FPO, under the leadership of Herbert Kickl, has scored around 27%. This leaves them two percentage points ahead of the conservative ÖVP, which held over 37% in 2019. The Social Democrats of the SPO are forecast to net approximately 20%, and the Greens, who are currently in power with the ÖVP, to earn around 8%.
The controversy surrounding the funeral of FPO politician Walter Sucher led the Commission to investigate the incident, as the sung song was a Nazi anthem once popular among SS members. Following the scandal, several political parties called for a stronger stance against such displays of extremism, arguing that the presence of far-right politicians during such events is unacceptable.
