Danger signals are being displayed in Europe warning that their countries are politically polarized and may be sliding to politically far-right authoritarian political systems. The torchlight in May 2016 was on Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in 1889, a country divided down the middle that almost gave birth to a victory for a populist, far-right party, the Freedom Party (FPO), that was founded by a Nazi and still is considered to have pro-Nazi overtones. The FPO victory would have been a political earthquake in a country that has been dominated since 1945 by two mainstream political parties that now cannot deal effectively with the migrant crisis among other issues.
On May 21, 2016 Norbert Hofer, the 45-year-old aeronautical engineer and candidate of the FPO, lost in a very close contest in the runoff, second round of elections for president of Austria. In the first electoral round a month earlier, Hofer had gained 35.1 % of the vote while his rival the 72-year-old ecologist Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, son of refugees who fled the Soviet controlled Estonia, had got 21 percent.
The two mainstream parties, the center left Social Democratic party (SPO) and the center-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP) only received a combined 23 per cent in this first round election. The two parties are declining in popularity. In 2002 they received almost 80% of the poll: in the 2013 parliamentary election they got only 50%.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/the_far_right_in_austria_did_not_have_a_rendezvous_with_history.html
