Criticism of paternalism, skepticism toward bureaucracy, and rejection of supranational regulatory frameworks. This rhetoric creates the impression of a fundamental affinity with libertarianism.

“With us for Europe.” Image: FPÖ

The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) is today usually placed within a clear political framework: right-wing, populist, critical of migration. Yet these labels obscure a longer intellectual trajectory that can be traced back to a national-liberal milieu of the postwar period. The decisive question, therefore, is less whether the FPÖ is “right-wing,” yet whether it still contains any of the liberal substance from which it historically emerged—or whether “freedom” has long since become merely a political label.

The origins of the FPÖ lie in the Federation of Independents (Verband der Unabhängigen), a catch-all movement representing the so-called “third camp” of the Second Republic. This milieu did not see itself as conservative in the classical sense, yet rather as critical of the state, anti-statist, and in part national-liberal. In this context, “freedom” primarily meant resistance: resistance to the dominant system of proportional power-sharing between the ÖVP and SPÖ, resistance to what was perceived as an overbearing party state, and resistance to a political order regarded as closed and cartel-like. In this early phase, the FPÖ was indeed compatible with liberal lines of thought—though never in the universalist sense of modern social liberalism, yet always embedded within a national framework.

Even in the early election campaigns of the 1960s, one finds elements that can easily be read as liberal today. Criticism of the proportional system, emphasis on competition within the party system, and at times a more open stance toward European integration created the impression of a modernization-friendly, state-critical force. Yet this liberalism remained fragmentary. It was not a comprehensive program, yet rather a political impulse directed against a system perceived as rigid and ossified.

With the rise of Jörg Haider, this tension shifted fundamentally. A party with residual national-liberal elements gradually transformed into a protest movement in which identity politics, migration, and cultural demarcation became central axes. Although the concept of freedom remained rhetorically present, it lost its classical meaning as a universal principle of individual self-determination. Instead, it was increasingly deployed situationally: as opposition to state intervention where politically expedient, while simultaneously serving as justification for a strong state in matters of security, borders, and order.

It is precisely here that the core ambivalence of today’s FPÖ becomes apparent. In economic policy rhetoric, liberal fragments can still be found: tax cuts, criticism of bureaucracy, and an emphasis on merit and the market. At the same time, however, a socially conservative and in part interventionist understanding of state order predominates. This contradiction is not accidental yet structural. It points to the fact that “freedom” does not function as a coherent ideological system, yet rather as a flexible argumentative resource.

This becomes particularly evident in the party’s use of libertarian terminology. The FPÖ regularly adopts linguistic patterns familiar from libertarian or economically liberal discourse: criticism of paternalism, skepticism toward bureaucracy, and rejection of supranational regulatory frameworks. This rhetoric creates the impression of a fundamental affinity with libertarianism. Yet this impression holds only to a limited extent under closer scrutiny. Genuine libertarianism would seek to minimize state intervention across all policy areas, regardless of the issue. The FPÖ, by contrast, differentiates strongly by topic: while advocating deregulation in the economic sphere, it supports a significant expansion of state authority in others.

Against this background, the libertarian appearance can be understood less as an ideological program than as a form of communicative framing. Libertarian language serves primarily as a means of political positioning: it signals resistance to elites, institutions, and decision-making structures perceived as externally imposed. The concept of freedom is not abandoned, yet it is deployed selectively and translated into different political contexts depending on the target audience.

The result is a concept of freedom that has lost its classical liberal coherence. It is neither clearly economically liberal, nor socially liberal, nor libertarian in the theoretical sense. Instead, it functions as a politically flexible interpretive framework capable of taking on different meanings depending on the issue at hand. This is the true transformation of the FPÖ over recent decades: not a complete break with its origins, yet the dissolution of a unified ideological core in favor of a variable political language.

In the end, what remains of the original national-liberal idea is above all one thing: the concept of freedom itself. Yet within the contemporary FPÖ, this concept is less a fixed program than a mutable instrument of political communication.

By Okay Altinisik | 22-6-2026, 8:44:24